European football’s governing body UEFA has formally declared that it has lost confidence in FIFA President Gianni Infantino, marking a sharp institutional escalation that threatens his leadership beyond the collapse of a plan to sell World Cup stakes to private investors.
In a statement issued Saturday from its headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, UEFA said “no option should be off the table” as it pledged to pursue a full review of the abandoned proposal and identify those responsible for advancing it.
“We must identify those responsible and hold them to account,” UEFA stated. “The current FIFA leadership has not only lost UEFA’s confidence but also that of many other members of the football family.”
The rebuke represents one of the most direct challenges to Infantino’s authority since he assumed the FIFA presidency in 2016, and it extends the fallout well past the failed financial scheme itself.
The controversy stems from a proposal to create a $20 billion company that would run the World Cup alongside private equity investors. The plan, unveiled earlier in the week, was scrapped in the early hours of Saturday after drawing intensifying opposition from confederations across the sport.
Infantino was forced to abandon the initiative after a senior adviser who sat on a White House panel resigned, and after Asia’s soccer body joined its European and North American counterparts in opposing it. UEFA had been the plan’s most vocal critic, at one point voting to boycott elements tied to the proposal.
Rather than defusing tensions, the withdrawal appears to have emboldened critics. UEFA’s language suggests European officials view accountability, not merely reversal, as the priority, raising questions about whether senior figures could face formal consequences.
The dispute cuts to a long-running fault line in world football, pitting FIFA’s centralising ambitions against the confederations that supply its most valuable competitions and revenue. Any move to commercialise the World Cup through outside capital struck at the heart of that balance.
Infantino has yet to respond publicly to UEFA’s statement. His standing within FIFA’s broader membership remains unclear, as the confederations that helped sink the plan weigh how far to press their objections.
The coming weeks are expected to test whether the loss of confidence translates into concrete governance action or remains a symbolic reprimand, with a formal review of the proposal now set to examine how it advanced so far before collapsing.