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FIFA president Gianni Infantino scrapped his proposal to sell stakes in the World Cup after widespread backlash, including from within global soccer’s governing body, and a threatened boycott by European nations.
Infantino has proposed spinning off FIFA’s commercial businesses, including World Cups and Club World Cups for men and women, into a $20 billion subsidiary, with 20% owned by private investors.
The “anchor investor,” described by FIFA, is a New York-based investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
But in a statement late Friday, Infantino said the “proposal will not proceed.”
“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,” he said.
Two senior FIFA officials criticized Infantino’s World Cup plan earlier Friday, with one resigning as a presidential adviser and a second saying staff members were deceived by the project that must not go ahead.
Carlos Cordeiro, who represented the soccer body on the White House Task Force for the World Cup, resigned in protest of the private equity plan.
“I cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup,” Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs banker, said in a statement about his resignation as adviser to Infantino that urged other senior FIFA staff to speak out.
FIFA’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour said in a statement to The Associated Press that staff were “deceived” by Infantino’s lack of openness in planning the private investor scheme and “deserve better than contempt and intimidation.”
Lamour did not resign the post he held since 2024 but said he had a duty to his colleagues.
“And if that means I lose my job, then so be it,” the French official said. “I will understand and respect that decision. At least I’ll sleep well tonight.”
A day earlier, European nations agreed to boycott the World Cup and all other FIFA competitions to protest the proposal, saying “some things are simply too important to sell.”
“This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA’s duty as the custodian of world football,” UEFA said. Infantino was a longtime UEFA staffer and its CEO-like general secretary when he was first elected to lead FIFA in 2016.
Subsequently, the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf) and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) also opposed the proposal.
“Moving forward, my intent is to bring all interested parties back together in the coming days and weeks in the spirit of shared interest in our game, and with the objective to continue growing football everywhere, particularly in those countries that mostly need our support,” Infantino added in his statement Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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