{"id":841570,"date":"2026-08-03T09:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T09:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/841570\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T09:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T09:48:08","slug":"gianni-infantino-fa-set-to-withdraw-support-for-fifa-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/841570\/","title":{"rendered":"Gianni Infantino: FA set to withdraw support for Fifa president"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Infantino wrote to all 211 Fifa member associations saying they would receive $40m (\u00a330m) if they backed his controversial proposal, setting a deadline of 19 September if they wanted to access an initial $20m (\u00a315m).<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thrive Eternal was expected to lead the proposed investor group for FFE.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thrive is an American venture capital firm founded by Joshua Kushner &#8211; the brother of US President Donald Trump&#8217;s son-in-law Jared.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Uefa&#8217;s request for all documents regarding the investment plan, included &#8220;email, instant messages (WhatsApp, Signal, Teams, Slack or any other platform), SMS, written correspondence and meeting notes&#8221;, and those which involved &#8220;any Fifa officer, employee, committee member, consultant or agent, or any Fifa member association, confederation, broadcaster, sponsor, or financial institution&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In reference to the 19 September deadline, Uefa added it wanted documents to be retained &#8220;relating to the payment structure for Fifa member associations, including the design, modelling, legal basis, approval and communications to member associations&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Uefa asked Infantino to acknowledge receipt of its letter in writing within five business days, to confirm he had &#8220;received and understood this notice&#8221; and that he has &#8220;taken immediate steps to preserve relevant materials as required&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As the pressure grows on Infantino, Qatar, Lebanon, Kuwait and Sri Lanka have pledged their support for his Fifa leadership to continue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If he holds out until March, he could stand for re-election for a fourth and final term as president and would need 106 votes from Fifa&#8217;s 211 members to win.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Uefa has 55 votes, Africa 54, Asia 46, Concacaf 35, Oceania 11 and Conmebol 10.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Asian Football Federation (AFC) has said it stands in &#8220;solidarity&#8221; with Uefa and Concacaf, while Africa, Conmebol and Oceania have not criticised Infantino&#8217;s plan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, the Fifa Council could try to force Infantino to resign through an emergency meeting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That would be triggered if 19 of the 37 Fifa Council members call for one and the meeting must take place within two weeks. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Uefa has nine members, AFC has seven, Concacaf five, Africa has six, Conmebol five and Oceania three. It is completed by Infantino and secretary general Mattias Grafstrom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Infantino wrote to all 211 Fifa member associations saying they would receive $40m (\u00a330m) if they backed his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-841570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}