European nations vow FIFA World Cup boycott over Infantino private equity plan as opposition spreads

Eu­ro­pean na­tions agreed Thurs­day to boy­cott the World Cup and all oth­er FI­FA com­pe­ti­tions to protest Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no’s plan to sell stakes in soc­cer’s biggest tour­na­ment to pri­vate eq­ui­ty in­vestors. The North Amer­i­can soc­cer body re­ject­ed his plan lat­er the same day.

“UE­FA and its na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions will not par­tic­i­pate in FI­FA com­pe­ti­tions,” the Eu­ro­pean soc­cer body said af­ter an ur­gent on­line meet­ing of its 55 mem­ber na­tions.

The next sched­uled FI­FA tour­na­ment is with­in weeks in Eu­rope — the Women’s Un­der-20 World Cup host­ed by Poland from Sept. 5 — and the four British fed­er­a­tions com­prise FI­FA’s on­ly bid­der to host the 2035 Women’s World Cup. That de­ci­sion is due Nov. 23.

“Some things are sim­ply too im­por­tant to sell,” UE­FA said in a state­ment. “The FI­FA World Cup be­longs to foot­ball. It al­ways will. And so long as Eu­rope has a voice, it will nev­er be for sale.”

The strat­e­gy meet­ing was called to counter FI­FA Pres­i­dent In­fan­ti­no’s of­fer of $20 mil­lion to each of FI­FA’s 211 glob­al mem­bers that has to be ac­cept­ed by mid-Sep­tem­ber.

Lat­er Thurs­day, the 41-mem­ber Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Foot­ball (CON­CA­CAF) met and an­nounced it re­ject­ed In­fan­ti­no’s plan.

In a state­ment, CON­CA­CAF said mem­bers “ex­pressed deep con­cerns about the lack of due process sur­round­ing the pro­pos­al, the ar­ti­fi­cial­ly short dead­line im­posed, and the ab­sence of any re­view or ap­proval by the rel­e­vant FI­FA gov­er­nance bod­ies.” It al­so ques­tioned the need for out­side in­vest­ment “fol­low­ing the most prof­itable FI­FA World Cup in his­to­ry.”

In­fan­ti­no’s se­cret project was re­vealed Tues­day to spin off its com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions in a new $20 bil­lion sub­sidiary called FI­FA For­ward En­ter­prise (FFE) 20% owned by pri­vate in­vestors. The core in­vestor would be a New York in­vest­ment firm cre­at­ed by Joshua Kush­n­er, the broth­er of U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kush­n­er.

In­fan­ti­no wrote Tues­day to the 211 mem­bers — al­ready the ef­fec­tive own­ers of FI­FA as a non-prof­it as­so­ci­a­tion un­der Swiss law — that if they ap­prove FFE their promised $10 mil­lion ba­sic fund­ing for the next four years will dou­ble to $20 mil­lion. He pro­ject­ed their FI­FA fund­ing through 2038 would be $86 mil­lion each, in­stead of about $36 mil­lion.

“This is not mere­ly a pro­found fail­ure of lead­er­ship, but an ab­di­ca­tion of FI­FA’s du­ty as the cus­to­di­an of world foot­ball,” said UE­FA, where In­fan­ti­no was a long-time staffer and its CEO-like gen­er­al sec­re­tary when he was first elect­ed to lead FI­FA in 2016.

In­fan­ti­no’s pres­i­den­cy at risk?

In­fan­ti­no’s high-stakes fi­nan­cial gam­bit now could threat­en his pre­vi­ous­ly se­cure 11-year pres­i­den­cy of FI­FA as anger and frus­tra­tion with him ris­es among soc­cer stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing three of the six con­ti­nen­tal bod­ies.

FI­FA has set a Nov. 18 dead­line for po­ten­tial can­di­dates to de­clare in a pres­i­den­tial vote of the 211 mem­bers sched­uled next March in Ra­bat, Mo­roc­co.

In­fan­ti­no had seemed — 11 days ago af­ter the World Cup fi­nal in East Ruther­ford, New Jer­sey — to have a clear path to be­ing re-elect­ed un­op­posed for a fourth and fi­nal term in of­fice through 2031, de­spite a furor over let­ting Unit­ed States for­ward Fo­lar­in Ba­lo­gun play against Bel­gium de­spite a red card in his pre­vi­ous game.

Soc­cer of­fi­cials have said pri­vate­ly In­fan­ti­no has eyed a lu­cra­tive com­mis­sion­er-like role at the FFE spin­off be­yond 2031.

“Game over, Gi­an­ni #In­fan­ti­nOUT,” the Foot­ball Sup­port­ers Eu­rope group, which ad­vis­es UE­FA on fan is­sues such as tick­et prices, post­ed af­ter the boy­cott threat.

Soc­cer’s con­cern at in­vestor pres­sure

UE­FA de­tailed Thurs­day why soc­cer of­fi­cials fear ex­ter­nal in­vestors own­ing a stake of the glob­al game’s biggest events, in­clud­ing World Cups and Club World Cups for men and women.

“The mo­ment ex­ter­nal in­vestors ac­quire own­er­ship in­ter­ests in FI­FA com­pe­ti­tions, foot­ball changes for­ev­er,” UE­FA said. “Com­mer­cial re­turn be­comes a per­ma­nent oblig­a­tion. In­vestor ex­pec­ta­tions be­come a dai­ly pres­sure.”

In­fan­ti­no has pre­sent­ed the pri­vate eq­ui­ty of­fer as a chance to “tur­bocharge” fund­ing de­vel­op­ment of soc­cer across the world, where a ma­jor­i­ty of the 211 FI­FA mem­bers re­ly on its fund­ing.

Of­fi­cials from about 40 UE­FA mem­ber spoke at the ur­gent meet­ing, with anger ex­pressed that FI­FA is not us­ing some of its mul­ti-bil­lion re­serves to fund ex­tra de­vel­op­ment pro­grams.

“As a re­sult of to­day’s dis­cus­sion, no UE­FA na­tion­al teams will par­tic­i­pate in any FI­FA com­pe­ti­tion for so long as these pro­pos­als re­main alive,” the Eu­ro­pean soc­cer body said, “un­less this pro­pos­al has been aban­doned in its en­tire­ty and bind­ing as­sur­ances have been giv­en that FI­FA will nev­er again open its gov­er­nance or com­pe­ti­tions to pri­vate own­er­ship.”

Asia adds rare crit­i­cism of In­fan­ti­no

On a seis­mic day in soc­cer pol­i­tics, a tra­di­tion­al bedrock of sup­port in Asia for FI­FA and In­fan­ti­no had ear­li­er Thurs­day been shak­en.

“FI­FA’s uni­lat­er­al ac­tions ap­pear to un­der­mine the very foun­da­tions of con­ti­nen­tal foot­ball,” the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion Pres­i­dent Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khal­i­fa said in a let­ter to its 46 mem­bers of FI­FA, warn­ing of risks to their own com­pe­ti­tions.

Sheikh Salman, an al­ly to In­fan­ti­no since los­ing the FI­FA pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to him in 2016, wrote “such an ini­tia­tive will not suc­ceed with­out the sup­port of all the con­fed­er­a­tions, which is not the case now.”

In a video mes­sage pub­lished Wednes­day by FI­FA, In­fan­ti­no in­sist­ed spin­ning off its mon­ey-mak­ing op­er­a­tions was “an of­fer, not an oblig­a­tion.”

A FI­FA pre­sen­ta­tion for its mem­bers, co-writ­ten with its bank­ing ad­vi­sors from J.P. Mor­gan and seen by the AP, set a goal for FFE as “com­mer­cial rig­or and ex­per­tise to bet­ter cap­i­tal­ize on broad­cast rights, spon­sor­ships and a grow­ing tour­na­ment port­fo­lio.”

FI­FA squeeze on con­ti­nen­tal games

That grow­ing port­fo­lio like­ly would in­clude adding more teams to FI­FA com­pe­ti­tions like the World Cup and Club World Cup for men and women, and po­ten­tial­ly stag­ing them more of­ten than every four years, in­clud­ing in the U.S.

FI­FA adding teams, games and com­pe­ti­tions would squeeze the val­ue, sta­tus and space in the con­gest­ed glob­al fix­ture cal­en­dar for those that fund and are or­ga­nized by the six con­ti­nen­tal soc­cer bod­ies like UE­FA and the AFC. Those in­clude World Cup qual­i­fy­ing games, con­ti­nen­tal tour­na­ments and Cham­pi­ons Leagues.

“It is im­por­tant that the AFC fam­i­ly has a com­plete un­der­stand­ing,” Sheikh Salman wrote, “of how such an ini­tia­tive may af­fect key ar­eas of glob­al and Asian foot­ball, in­clud­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of con­fed­er­a­tion and (do­mes­tic) com­pe­ti­tions, as well as the or­ga­ni­za­tion and com­mer­cial land­scape sur­round­ing the AFC’s ac­tiv­i­ties.”

UE­FA’s pre­vi­ous boy­cott threat

A threat­ened World Cup boy­cott from Eu­rope helped de­rail In­fan­ti­no’s plan in 2021 to play World Cups every two years in­stead of four. — GENE­VA (AP)

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Sto­ry by GRA­HAM DUN­BAR | The As­so­ci­at­ed Press