Fifa’s shameful scheme to sell off World Cup is gravest existential threat to football yet - but will anyone stop it?
· Yahoo Sports
Fifa spent 1,403 words in a public statement seeking to rationalise their new plan to sell off stakes of the World Cup to private investment, but a few choice phrases are now ringing out elsewhere.
“Shocking.” “Football’s nuclear bomb.” “Worse than the Super League, and bigger than 115.” “The line in the sand.”
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None of that is exaggerated because it ties together so many of the extremes that have been pushing, pulling and twisting football - let alone the world - for so long, potentially crystallising so much of what has been coming to dictate its future: what the game should be and what it’s becoming; how it repeatedly shows it has a social value that you can’t buy as so many involved try to financially exploit that; what people say in private and what gets done in public.
You can even roll that right up to the seemingly dry details of governance like how the people who are going to vote on this - the heads of the member associations - are in many cases directly paid by Fifa through positions and committees.
This is when all of that matters most. How are they going to vote?
And, maybe most pertinently given the direction of the sport for so long, where is the resistance going to come from? Uefa have talked a good game, with a statement that directly says this “crosses a line” and rightly asserts the World Cup’s is “not FIFA’s to sell” - but are they finally going to play a hand?
Is this long-running tension going to spill out into a war that football arguably needs? Is anyone going to look at the bigger picture and actually make a stand?
Because, and this really can’t be stressed enough, once you start selling the game off, there’s really no getting it back.
Typical of how football and the world are going, Fifa’s 1,403-word statement of course turned all of this rationale on its head. It’s of a piece with Gianni Infantino’s unhinged Sunday statement about criticism. This announcement was headlined “Fifa intends to expand football development funding to over USD 10 billion subject to approval by FIFA Member Associations”, so duly framed by ideas of redistribution and democracy.
The move comes hot on the heels of a Trumpian rant by Infantino defending the 2026 World Cup (PA Wire)Once again, a not-for-profit raising money, any money, was automatically elevated as if it’s a good thing without any further thought. The core reality was finally referenced a bit further down, as Fifa spoke of “carefully selecting long-term investors who will purchase minority, non-controlling interests” in the new Fifa Forward Enterprise programme. That is set to bring the creation of a new company being formed to run the primary competitions, where Fifa would own a majority stake, private investors would have 20-30% and then the 211 members a small stake totalling around 20%.
Except, “non-controlling” isn’t how such money tends to really work. In reality, that kind of money brings a lot of influence.
By the same token, for all that Fifa bleated in seemingly endlessly paragraphs about how such thinking “lifts the whole game” and the need “to make sure the rest of football grows”, those now responsible for voting on this need to actually earn their money and think about the deeper implications.
There are profound concerns here even beyond the core philosophical virtue that the World Cup only belongs to the countries of the world - and, by extension, its football communities - and that’s it. What do they think happens once you allow such interests in? There might be the short-term benefit of being able to point your own national association to newly flush cash reserves of up to $20m - but what next?
Infantino has been called before a US Congressional committee over allegations he sought to curry favour with Trump and his administration (PA Wire)Clue: such interests don’t tend to have wider societal concerns; they don’t care for what doesn’t make money. As one source puts it, “the current stakeholders benefit but everyone loses out in the future”. Trickle-down economics don’t work here, as the last few decades of football have made emphatically clear. This is why Celtic or Ajax don’t win the Champions League any more. It’s why every other country suffers a talent drain to western Europe.
And what would now be directly incentivised - especially through the establishment of a company to run all of this - is the expansion of the Club World Cup and all of the ideas that serve existing wealth, both in the game and society. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Infantino was involved in Super League discussions, with the clubs at one point thinking they had Fifa’s blessing.
The global governing body have now already confirmed that Josh Kushner - brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner - has been in talks about becoming the proposed lead investor.
Infantino’s long relationship with the US president suddenly takes on an even sharper perspective, especially among the mooted next steps for this. An excellent exclusive by Martyn Ziegler of the Times has already broached that Infantino would be lined up to run the company as a “commissioner” once his final presidential term expires in 2031. In other words, a lucrative post-presidency life.
Members of the Fifa Council insist they were found out about the plan through the media (Reuters)When you stand back, this looks a lot like one man using his position - and the sport - for personal betterment. Or, as one senior insider put it, “only in Infantino’s world can things somehow get worse for the game every day”.
It should be what anyone who cares for the sport stands against, but will those with actual say really do that? Will they, as one other insider states, “put their bollocks on the line”?
Some who despise the idea have already marvelled at its realpolitik “genius”, likening it to the fait accompli of the Saudi Arabia 2034 “acclamation” in how everything already looks lined up. Every individual association would get a huge figure - or could sell off some of their share in the new company - so those in power right now are clearly incentivised to vote for it. And this in a world where only a fifth of member associations actually return audited accounts to show how the money is used.
It reminds us how broken the system is, how the reform that was supposed to take place after Infantino succeeded Sepp Blatter never happened. And in that structure, how is this actually going to be stopped when such a financially attractive package is taken to Congress for approval and there are no checks and balances?
Josh Kushner has been in talks about becoming the proposed lead investor, Fifa confirmed (Reuters)It all speaks to this central long-running theme of the game being taken further and further away from those who have an actual emotional stake in it; a personal stake - right up to the ownership of clubs. Members of the Fifa Council insisted they only found out through the media, re-iterating how the body now works. The FA, chaired by Fifa vice-president Debbie Hewitt, were completely unaware of the proposal and it was not mentioned at Friday’s board meeting.
Many similar figures declared themselves shocked, appalled, disgusted. Except we’ve heard so much of this before. This, more than ever before, is a time to act. Could Uefa countries actually threaten to pull out… or will the individual countries just look at those financial figures?
The world should watch how everyone votes on this. Hiding behind the majority, and pointing to Fifa’s dismally dull politics, will no longer cut it. This is a decision with repercussions way beyond all of that.
This is what all of the politics, all the game’s long problems, were ultimately leading to. This is the line.
Let’s see who stands where.