Here's the thing. FIFA spent four days trying to sell a 20 percent stake in FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), a new subsidiary it wanted to create to manage commercial operations and events — including the World Cup — and then watched the whole plan detonate in its face.
After FIFA officially announced it was abandoning the idea, UEFA did not simply declare victory and move on. In a statement reported by EFE on Saturday, UEFA called for accountability for what it described as 'secret plans, fast-tracked' by anonymous individuals of 'dubious benefit to the sport.'
'The current leadership of FIFA has not only lost the confidence of UEFA, but also that of many other members of the football family,' the statement read. 'We cannot continue like this.'
The proposal — to sell 20 percent of FFE to private investors — was rejected unanimously by UEFA's 55 member federations, and by numerous other federations and confederations worldwide, according to UEFA. The body said it was also opposed by 'prime ministers, heads of state, and commentators' who demonstrated to FIFA's president 'that football is not for sale.'
UEFA did not let FIFA president Gianni Infantino off lightly. The statement quoted his own words from when he sought votes to become FIFA president in 2016: 'FIFA's money is your money. It is not the money of the FIFA president.' UEFA's verdict: 'He has not kept either promise.' The body added that FIFA's reserves exceed $5 billion, and that money has not been used to benefit football development.
The plan, UEFA said, was 'a shoddy deal, hatched behind closed doors' — anything but the transparency Infantino promised a decade ago.
UEFA said it would begin working immediately with partners worldwide to propose a new way to distribute resources through the existing FIFA Forward program, arguing that FIFA's idle cash reserves should be deployed to fund grassroots football across all 211 FIFA member countries. 'We do not need to sell the family jewels to finance it,' the statement said.
The body called the outcome 'a victory for all of football' but warned the story is not over: 'The task of restoring confidence in FIFA has only just begun.'
Voltage's read: The swift, unanimous collapse of Infantino's privatization scheme is a textbook case of what happens when governance bodies try to move fast and break things in a sport with deep institutional memory and a global constituency that actually pays attention. UEFA's call for accountability is pointed — and naming Infantino's broken promises by quoting him verbatim is a surgical move. The real question now is whether 'accountability' leads anywhere structural, or whether this ends as a policy retreat with no one answering for the attempt. Football's governing bodies have a long tradition of the former.
