Uefa has 'lost confidence' in Infantino's Fifa leadership
Uefa has 'lost confidence' in Infantino's Fifa leadership
Gianni Infantino has been the president of Fifa since February 2016
- Published
Uefa says it has lost confidence in Gianni Infantino's Fifa leadership as the fallout from the scrapped controversial investment plan intensifies.
On Saturday, Infantino said Fifa would no longer proceed with the proposal to sell stakes in the governing body's competitions to private investors.
Uefa - which governs European football - had earlier voted to boycott World Cups if the plans went ahead, and other governing bodies also voiced their opposition.
On Saturday, Uefa said it welcomed the decision to withdraw the plan, describing it as "a victory for the whole game".
It also accused Infantino of failing to deliver on promises, quoting a speech he gave when campaigning to become Fifa president in 2016.
The fallout from the plans means Infantino is now under immense pressure as he seeks re-election for a fourth term as president at the Fifa Congress in March.
"The current Fifa leadership has not only lost Uefa's confidence but also that of many other members of the football family," Uefa's 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."
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham - who was the first leader of a major country to call on Infantino to resign - said Fifa made "the right decision" to back down.
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What did Uefa's statement say?
Uefa had been highly critical of the proposals since they were first reported in the media on Tuesday.
In a powerful, lengthy statement released several hours after Fifa announced it had scrapped the plans, Uefa said:
It "cannot keep going on" with "secret schemes of fast-track timescales cooked up by faceless individuals and of dubious benefit to the game"
Those responsible for the plan should be identified and held to account
It would devise a plan "with its associations and in close co-operation with other confederations" to make sure this "cannot occur again"
And it would work with partners to "propose a new way of distributing resources through the existing Fifa Forward programme"
It also accused Infantino of "failing to use associations' money for the benefit of the game".
"We must start to use some of that money that is sat idle in Fifa's bank account to deliver the kickstart that the grassroots and the wider game need," the statement added.
"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."
Fifa has yet to respond to Uefa's statement.
The Football Association said it supports Uefa's position, adding: "It is time for a full and robust review of Fifa's leadership and governance to ensure that the global game is run transparently."
Lise Klaveness, president of the Norwegian Football Federation, said it was "reassuring to be part of a strong and united Uefa throughout this process".
"We must acknowledge the entire framework of international football cooperation was unnecessarily put at risk in pursuit of individual interests rather than the best interests of the game," a statement read.
"Going forward, all our efforts must be directed towards improving governance.
"This cannot end as merely another power struggle conducted behind closed doors or through bilateral discussions."
'A thunderous barrage of criticism from Uefa'
Any hope Infantino might have had of tiptoeing away from the scene of his World Cup private-investment wreckage having sustained only minor damage to his reputation has been obliterated.
Uefa has gone straight for the Fifa president.
The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) couched its condemnation of Infantino - and, make no mistake, it is livid - in creative terms.
But Uefa's statement is one of the most ferocious - possibly the most ferocious - ever aimed at the head of world football.
Words such as "shabby" and "secret schemes" speak for themselves.
It is fair to ask why football's powerbrokers didn't step in before now. There have been plenty of instances in the past few months alone when people have felt Fifa's president seemed to be acting against the benefit of the wider game.
But that is a different question.
Uefa has now taken aim at Infantino with a thunderous barrage of criticism, condemnation and vicious questioning.
The damage to Infantino is severe and it doesn't appear anyone is coming to help.
How does Fifa actually make decisions?
How did the proposal fall apart?
The proposal - first reported in the media on Tuesday - was met with widespread criticism, with Uefa voting on Thursday to boycott World Cups if the plans went ahead.
European football's governing body said the World Cup "cannot be treated as an investment product".
Two other major confederations then spoke out against the plans.
Concacaf, which governs football in North and Central America and the Caribbean - and hosted this summer's World Cup - said its members "rejected" the proposal, with sources saying the vast majority of associations from the region are losing, or have lost, faith in Infantino.
The AFC said it stood in "solidarity" with Uefa and Concacaf, while Burnham said Infantino was "the wrong man" to lead Fifa.
On Friday, Fifa's chief operating officer Kevin Lamour said the governing body's own administration had been "deceived" about the project.
Carlos Cordeiro - Infantino's senior adviser on global strategy and governance - resigned over the matter, saying the proposal was "a bad deal for football" and would "mortgage football's future".
What were Infantino's plans?
Fifa and Infantino wanted to create a commercial subsidiary to run its main events, including its World Cups, and external investors would have been able to buy stakes in it.
It said it would "invite third parties to make minority, non-controlling investments" in a new subsidiary - Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE).
In a 25-page document created by investment bank JP Morgan, it was made clear Fifa's tournaments would expand to hit an estimated increased pay-out of 24m euros (£20.5m)per member association in the 2035-2039 cycle.
In the document, the World Cup was described as the "most widely viewed" sporting event but Fifa, by contrast, was said to be "under-monetised".
There was no mention of the women's game.
Fifa said Thrive Eternal was expected to lead the proposed investor group for FFE, had it been approved.
Thrive is an American venture capital firm founded by Joshua Kushner - the brother of US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared.
A report in the New York Post, which broke the story of the Fifa plan withdrawal, quoted an unnamed source saying the situation had become a "brand nightmare" for Kushner.