The rapid unraveling of FIFA President Gianni Infantino's plan to privatize the football governing body's commercial business has left his future in growing doubt, after UEFA said it had lost confidence in his leadership.
Europe's football governing body issued a scathing rebuke of Infantino on Saturday, just hours after he dropped controversial plans to privatize the World Cup organizer's commercial business, calling the FIFA proposal a “shabby, back room, opaque deal” that was “anything but transparent.”
“The current FIFA leadership has not only lost UEFA's confidence but also that of many other members of the football family,” UEFA said in the statement.
The proposal this week to set up a company to control FIFA's commercial rights and sell a stake to private investors sparked an immediate global backlash from footballing bodies, top clubs and even key executives at FIFA itself.
After days of trying to weather the storm, Infantino conceded in a statement in the early hours of Saturday, saying: “Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place.”
Infantino has signaled he wants to fight on, saying he intends “to bring all interested parties back together in the coming days and weeks in the spirit of shared interest in our game.” But he does so facing an increasingly hostile reception, internally and externally. FIFA's Chief Operating Officer Kevin Lamour said on Friday that he and staff were deceived by the plan, while Carlos Cordeiro, a senior adviser to Infantino, announced that he was quitting in opposition.
On Saturday, UEFA said the withdrawal of the plan marked “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.”
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