UEFA has doubled down on its threat to boycott future men’s and women’s World Cups, despite FIFA president Gianni Infantino receiving “full support” from senior leadership at a crisis meeting in Morocco on Wednesday, The Athletic reports.
The original boycott threat, issued last week, came in response to Infantino’s now-abandoned FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal, which would have opened stakes in football’s commercial and event operations, including the World Cup itself, to private investment.
Despite Infantino’s apology on Wednesday, UEFA says the threat remains live.
“UEFA’s associations were very clear about the conditions attached to the non-participation in FIFA competitions,” a UEFA spokesperson said. “First, the proposals to sell off the major competitions had to be withdrawn and secondly, assurances have to be made that such attempts to disfigure the game in this way will never be made again. These conditions have not been met.”
Infantino, in a statement following the Morocco meeting, said FIFA “will not tolerate any attacks on its integrity and will take all necessary measures to defend its reputation.”
UEFA isn’t alone in its criticism, though the reaction elsewhere has been mixed. CONMEBOL expressed “concern about the repeated unilateral actions” taken without dialogue, while urging “unity of the football family” ahead of March’s presidential election.
CAF, by contrast, “unanimously reconfirmed its support” for Infantino. Support has also eroded closer to home, with the English, Welsh and Serbian football associations all withdrawing their backing in recent days, even as Infantino has claimed over 200 letters of support from FIFA’s 211 members.
FIFPro, the global players’ union, was among the harshest critics, calling the scrapped proposal “a profound abuse of presidential power” and warning that trust “cannot be rebuilt through carefully drafted statements” alone.
Photo: Reuters/Mark J Rebilas
