UEFA withdraws confidence in FIFA President Gianni Infantino
UEFA has declared that it has lost confidence in FIFA President Gianni Infantino, intensifying the fallout from the governing body’s abandoned proposal to sell stakes in its competitions to private investors.
The European football governing body issued the strongly worded statement on August 1, shortly after FIFA confirmed it would no longer pursue the investment plan, which had sparked widespread opposition across the sport. UEFA had previously warned it would boycott future World Cups if the plan proceeded, and other confederations also expressed serious concerns.
While UEFA welcomed FIFA’s decision to drop the proposal, describing it as “a victory for the whole game,” it accused Infantino of failing to honour key promises he made when seeking election as FIFA president in 2016.
The statement read:
“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.’ He told the assembled stakeholders: ‘The money of FIFA is your money. It’s not the money of the FIFA president. You are the national associations and the money of FIFA has to serve for the development of football and not for anything else.’ 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.”
UEFA added that football could no longer tolerate “secret schemes of fast‑track timescales cooked up by faceless individuals and of dubious benefit to the game.” It called for those behind the proposal to be identified and held accountable.
The confederation pledged to work with its member associations and other confederations to prevent a similar situation from recurring. It also said it would collaborate with partners to design a new method of distributing resources through the existing FIFA Forward programme.
UEFA further criticised Infantino for not using member associations’ funds for the benefit of football, urging that idle money in FIFA’s bank account be deployed to support grassroots development without selling off the sport’s assets.
“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 statement concluded.
The controversy has increased pressure on Infantino ahead of the FIFA Congress in March, where he is expected to seek a fourth term as president.
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