Uefa shattered Gianni Infantino with a harsh message after stopping the project to privatize the World Cup: ‘Fifa’s money is not your money’

Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, “lost the trust” of Uefa and “many other members of the football family,” the European confederation said on Saturday after the withdrawal of the project to open international competitions to private investors.

“We cannot continue like this, with secret maneuvers carried out at a frantic pace, orchestrated by faceless people whose interest in sport is questionable. We must identify those responsible and demand accountability,” Uefa wrote in a statement, celebrating the withdrawal announced hours earlier by Infantino.

This clear stance comes months before the election of the Fifa president, scheduled for March 2027, for which Infantino is currently the only candidate.

Faced with almost unanimous opposition from international federations, the former secretary general of Uefa was forced to abandon his project to create a company – Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) – open to private investors and responsible for managing the organization’s commercial and event activities, including the World Cup.

“After carefully listening to all points of view, it became clear that the project had caused divisions (…) that no longer serve the interest of the initial goal,” Infantino acknowledged.

This proposal, revealed on Tuesday to general surprise, was massively rejected, especially by Uefa, which had threatened on Thursday, “unanimously,” not to participate in upcoming Fifa competitions, including the World Cup, if the association did not abandon the project.

In its statement published on Saturday, the powerful body that brings together 55 European federations calls for a “new method of resource distribution through the existing Fifa Forward program,” using part of Fifa’s reserve funds, estimated at 5 billion dollars.

“We must start using some of that money that remains idle in Fifa’s bank account to give the boost that grassroots football and the whole game need in each of Fifa’s 211 countries. But we don’t need to sell the family silver to pay for it,” Uefa wrote.

“This is a victory for all football. But it must not be the end of the story. The proposal has disappeared. The task of rebuilding trust in Fifa has only just begun,” the statement said.

It also recalled and reproduced the words of Gianni Infantino when he requested the trust and votes of Fifa member federations to be elected president in 2016.

“‘Of course we must be transparent. That has been my approach during the last 15 years of my life at Uefa. You will have to play a role every day in the life of Fifa,’ before telling the stakeholders gathered there: ‘Fifa’s money is your money. It is not the money of the Fifa president. It is your money. You are the national federations and Fifa’s money must serve the development of football and nothing else’.

“In both promises, he has failed. The shabby, behind-closed-doors, opaque deal he devised and tried to impose was anything but transparent. And with reserves exceeding 5 billion dollars, he has also not used the federations’ money for the benefit of football,” it added.

Uefa announced that it “will start working immediately with partners and stakeholders worldwide and from all areas of football to propose a new way to distribute resources through the already existing ‘Fifa Forward’ program.”

SPORTS

With AFP