European football’s governing body UEFA says it has lost confidence in the sport’s global governing body FIFA under its current leadership.
UEFA voted on Thursday to boycott FIFA if it did not withdraw its proposal to sell minority shares in World Cups and other events to private investors.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced late on Friday that he would be scrapping his FIFA Future Enterprise (FFE) plan following widespread backlash.
UEFA has welcomed that move in a statement on Saturday, but has gone on to detail its criticism of Infantino.
“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. We must identify those responsible and hold them to account,” UEFA’s statement read.
“The current FIFA leadership has not only lost UEFA’s confidence but also that of many other members of the football family.
“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 it wants to work with partners and stakeholders to propose new ways of distributing resources through the existing FIFA Forward Programme.
“UEFA thanks all the fans, leagues, clubs, players, individuals, associations and confederations that opposed the scheme, alongside the many Prime Ministers, Heads of State and commentators who have demonstrated to the FIFA President that football is not for sale,” the statement added.
“We must start to use some of that money that is sat idle in FIFA’s bank account to deliver the kick start that the grassroots and the wider game need in each of the 211 countries of FIFA. But we don’t need to sell off the family silver to pay for it.
“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 move by UEFA to clearly criticise Infantino in the statement heaps pressure on the Swiss-Italian’s presidency – a position he has held since 2016.
Elections are scheduled for March 18, when it was expected that Infantino would be re-elected unopposed, as he was in 2019 and in 2023.
A November 18 deadline had been set for any candidates to stand.
It appears unlikely at this stage that Infantino will be unopposed for his final term, but the question will also be raised as to whether he can continue in his role given the weight of criticism.
Earlier on Saturday, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) was the first continental governing body to react to FIFA’s scraping of its plans.
In a letter posted on the AFC website , its president, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, said he expects “any initiative that has the potential to impact global football will be presented and discussed with the Confederations, the FIFA Council, Member Associations and other stakeholders in a timely, transparent and meaningful manner”.
“The future of global football must always be shaped through proper consultation, collective dialogue and respect for the established governance structures of our game,” he said.
Sheikh Salman was defeated by Infantino in the 2016 FIFA elections to replace Sepp Blatter as president.
The 60-year-old is likely to be among the frontrunners should a challenge for the presidency form, as will be Paris Saint-Germain president, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who is also a member of UEFA’s executive committee and of the FIFA Council.
