In brief
- Key allies continue to turn on FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
- His plan to privatise parts of the World Cup has exploded into one of football's biggest controversies in years.
Pressure on FIFA president Gianni Infantino intensified on Tuesday, with opposition emerging from within world football's governing body as well as from external critics over his since-abandoned proposal to open the World Cup to private investment.
Former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, appointed in 2019 by Infantino as FIFA's chief of global football development, said in a statement on Tuesday that "the decision to withdraw the project was absolutely necessary and beyond question".
His remarks followed hot on the heels of an extraordinary internal email to FIFA staff, seen by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, in which secretary-general Mattias Grafstrom appeared to distance himself from Infantino on the issue.
Previously seen as close to Infantino, Grafstrom describes the fiasco surrounding the plan as "a sad and reproachable series of events".
FIFA had floated the plan last Tuesday, saying it could raise up to US$4.2 billion based on a valuation of US$20 billion for a new commercial subsidiary, called the FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), which it proposed would run events such as the World Cup and Club World Cup.
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By Saturday, it was dead in the water as Infantino announced the embarrassing climbdown after widespread condemnation, as UEFA wielded the nuclear option of boycotting all FIFA competitions, including the World Cup.
Far from calming the waters or shoring up his presidency, Infantino has been swamped with criticism of his style of leadership and a previously smooth path to being re-elected unopposed to a fourth and final term next March in Rabat now looks a very rocky one indeed.
'Take immediate steps'
That is a problem down the road. For now, he has others to confront.
Even though he had withdrawn the scheme, UEFA issued a letter through their lawyers in the US threatening legal action over what they had scathingly described as a "shabby, backroom, opaque deal".
"You and FIFA are required to take immediate steps to identify, locate, and preserve all documents and electronically stored information described in this Notice that are in your or FIFA's possession, custody, or control," their lawyer Andrew Levander said in the letter sent last Friday and seen by AFP.
Several of UEFA's member associations — Wales, Finland, Sweden and Serbia — have withdrawn their letters of support for Infantino and the English FA is strongly rumoured to be on the verge of also joining them.
The scant comfort for Infantino came from a handful of supporters, including 2030 World Cup co-hosts Morocco, as well as Kuwait, Qatar, where he has a house, and Lebanon, which granted him honorary citizenship in February.
Their criticism only adds to the impression that Infantino has lost the confidence of even his closest FIFA collaborators.
A new challenger approaches?
Among Infantino's detractors, the hunt for a replacement has reportedly already begun.
The question now is whether his opposition can rally round one candidate with the deadline for nominations arriving on 18 November.
The name most frequently mentioned as a potential challenger or successor is Victor Montagliani, president of CONCACAF, which governs football in North and Central America and the Caribbean.
An emboldened opposition could also move sooner than that and call for an emergency meeting of the FIFA Council.
That would require the backing of 19 of the 37 members of the FIFA Council, triggering a meeting that must be held within two weeks.
In theory, the opposition has the numbers to force such a meeting, as the three confederations who were scathing of Infantino's leadership control 21 seats on the council.
European football's governing body UEFA has nine members, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has seven, while CONCACAF boasts five.
There is another more radical option, but one that is conceivable given the backlash: a no-confidence vote in Infantino.
An extraordinary FIFA congress can be held if 20 per cent of the 211 members associations formally request it in writing.
It would take the support of just 43 member associations to spark such a move, a threshold that could easily be assembled from UEFA (55 members), CONCACAF (35) and AFC (46).
For the moment, just Wales, Finland, Sweden and Serbia have publicly withdrawn their support from Infantino.
Morocco, co-hosts of the 2030 World Cup, are one of the few to voice their support for the president.
Should it come down to a leadership contest, Montagliani appears the obvious challenger as a non-European candidate. Europe has held the post since Sepp Blatter was elected in 1998.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin and Norway's football chief Lise Klaveness — who would be the first woman elected as president — have both ruled themselves out in the past.
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