Uefa's Strong Reproach of Infantino's Leadership
Uefa has delivered its most ferocious public rebuke of Gianni Infantino’s presidency, warning that his style of leadership has driven Fifa into a crisis that now demands a “thorough and fundamental” overhaul of its governance.
The European confederation’s leadership, under president Aleksander Ceferin, issued a blistering statement that railed against “secret schemes”, “shabby backroom deals” and “faceless individuals”, making plain that the world governing body’s overnight U-turn on Infantino’s controversial commercial plan is nowhere near enough.
The message was unmistakable: the project may be dead, but the reckoning has only just begun.
Uefa turns on Infantino
Infantino had pushed a proposal to sell a 20% stake in a new commercial vehicle, Fifa Forward Enterprise, to private investors. The scheme was tied directly to a vast expansion of payments to national associations: Fifa Forward funding would jump from $8m to $20m per four-year cycle, with an additional $20m one-off bonus for those signing up by a 19 September deadline.
The backlash was instant and ferocious. Under mounting pressure, Fifa abandoned the plan overnight. That climbdown, though, has only emboldened Uefa.
“We cannot keep going on like this with secret schemes on fast track timescales, cooked up by faceless individuals and of dubious benefit to the game,” Uefa declared. “We must identify those responsible and hold them to account.”
Behind the statement sits a clear political intent. Senior European officials, already angered by what they see as a presidency built on opaque decision-making and financial patronage, have started the process of identifying a candidate to challenge Infantino at next year’s Fifa presidential election. Those conversations will accelerate in the coming days.
Uefa has stopped short of openly demanding his resignation. Yet its leadership is understood to be determined that Infantino should not emerge intact from what it regards as a crisis of his own making – a sentiment shared by many of the game’s most powerful governing bodies beyond Europe.
A president under pressure
Infantino, 56, had been cruising towards what looked like a formality: re-election for a third full term at next March’s Fifa Congress in Rabat. He already holds more than 200 letters of support from member associations endorsing his campaign. On paper, that is overwhelming backing.
But those endorsements can be withdrawn. And the deadline for rivals to declare their candidacy is 18 November. The political arithmetic can still change.
Several names are already circulating. Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi is favoured by many in Europe, though he is believed to be reluctant to stand and remains deeply embedded as chairman of the influential European Football Clubs grouping. Victor Montagliani, the Canadian president of Concacaf, and Asian Football Confederation president Salman al-Khalifa – narrowly beaten by Infantino in the 2016 Fifa election – are also viewed as potential contenders.
What was once a closed race now has the feel of an open field.
Infantino’s words turned against him
The most stinging part of Uefa’s intervention came when it used Infantino’s own 2016 campaign rhetoric as a weapon.
“When Gianni Infantino asked for the trust and the votes of Fifa’s Member Associations to elect him as their president in 2016, he said, ‘Of course we have to be transparent. I have been this in the last 15 years of my life in Uefa. You will have to play a part every day in the life of Fifa,’” the statement recalled.
He also told those same stakeholders: “The money of Fifa is your money. It’s not the money of the Fifa president. It’s your money. You are the national associations, and the money of Fifa has to serve for the development of football and not for anything else.”
Uefa’s verdict on that legacy was brutal. “On both these promises, he has failed to deliver. The shabby, back room, opaque deal he hatched and tried to force through were anything but transparent. And with reserves standing at over $5bn, he has also failed to use associations’ money for the benefit of the game.”
The reference to Fifa’s vast reserves cuts to the heart of Uefa’s anger. With more than $5bn sitting in the bank, European officials argue there is no need to “sell off the family silver” by inviting private investors into a new commercial structure simply to boost payouts to associations.
Patronage under fire
At the centre of the storm lies the Fifa Forward programme, which distributes equal central payments to all 211 member associations across each four-year cycle. Under Infantino, that money has grown significantly, transforming the finances of many smaller federations.
Critics see something else: a powerful machine of patronage. Handing out millions of dollars to tiny nations, they argue, has entrenched support for the president and helped insulate him from dissent. The proposed $20m signing bonus for those who backed the new Fifa Forward Enterprise scheme only intensified those accusations.
The deadline-driven bonus was condemned across the game as a crude inducement. Uefa’s statement made clear it wants that entire model rethought from the ground up.
“Uefa will begin work immediately with partners and stakeholders all over the world and right across the game to propose a new way of distributing resources through the existing Fifa Forward programme,” it said. The aim, it stressed, is to unlock money “sat idle in Fifa’s bank account” and drive it into the grassroots and wider game in all 211 Fifa countries – without inviting private investors into the heart of world football’s finances.
The pressure finally told on Infantino’s plan. It may yet tell on his presidency.
A victory – and a warning
Ceferin has already shown his ability to marshal a united European front. Last Thursday he persuaded all 55 Uefa member associations to back a World Cup boycott, a remarkable show of solidarity that underlined the depth of European frustration with Fifa’s direction.
Uefa now insists it will work “in close cooperation with other confederations” to understand how the World Cup stake-sale proposal advanced so far and so fast – and to ensure it cannot happen again. It wants a review that is “thorough and fundamental”. It insists that “no option should be off the table”.
“The current Fifa leadership has not only lost Uefa’s confidence, but also that of many other members of the football family,” the statement declared.
For Uefa, the collapse of Fifa Forward Enterprise is not the conclusion but the starting point. “This is a victory for the whole game. But it must not be the end of the story. The proposal has gone. The task of rebuilding trust in Fifa has only just begun.”
The question now is whether that rebuilding happens under the same president who, in Uefa’s eyes, helped tear that trust apart.
