{"id":840303,"date":"2026-08-01T11:53:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T11:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840303\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T11:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T11:53:08","slug":"european-soccer-declares-loss-of-confidence-in-fifa-chief-over-shabby-private-financing-plan-national-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840303\/","title":{"rendered":"European soccer declares loss of confidence in FIFA chief over \u2019shabby\u2019 private financing plan | National Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

(CNN) \u2014 European soccer\u2019s governing body UEFA declared it has lost confidence in FIFA president Gianni Infantino, piling pressure on the beleaguered sporting chief despite the organization dropping a hugely controversial plan<\/a> to sell private stakes in the World Cup and other top tournaments.<\/p>\n

In a blistering statement released Saturday morning, UEFA welcomed the decision by FIFA to withdraw its plan but laid bare its unhappiness with Infantino.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot keep going on like this with secret schemes on fast track timescales, cooked up by faceless individuals and of dubious benefit to the game,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must identify those responsible and hold them to account.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressure has been mounting on Infantino to drop the scheme after UEFA – whose members the winner\u2019s of both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s World Cup Spain – threatened to boycott soccer\u2019s leading tournaments. A senior adviser to Infantino, Carlos Cordeiro, resigned on Friday, saying he opposed the plans \u201cunequivocally.\u201d<\/p>\n

UEFA\u2019s statement, which stopped short of explicitly calling for the FIFA chief\u2019s resignation, said that he had promised to be \u201ctransparent\u201d when he asked FIFA\u2019s Member Associations to vote for him as president in 2016, but he had failed to deliver on this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shabby, back room, opaque deal he hatched and tried to force through were anything but transparent,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

UEFA said that it would now work with partners and stakeholders to make sure such moves cannot be fast tracked without consultation in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the coming days and weeks, UEFA will work with its associations and in close cooperation with other confederations to reflect on how this happened and devise a plan to make sure that it cannot occur again.\u201d<\/p>\n

FIFA and Infantino had announced plans Tuesday to set up a separate subsidiary<\/a> \u2013 involving private equity investment \u2013 that would control the commercial and operational rights to one of the globe\u2019s biggest sporting events.<\/p>\n

The proposal had since come under intense scrutiny and criticism from many around the world, with UEFA saying the \u201csoul and governance\u201d of the game are under threat. FIFA, though, said that the money generated will be reinvested back into the sport.<\/p>\n

After backtracking, Infantino said his goal was now to \u201cbring all interested parties back together in the coming days and weeks in the spirit of shared interest in our game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Infantino is up for re-election next year but there are question marks over his survival with other confederations also having condemned the financing plan.<\/p>\n

This is a developing story and will be updated.<\/p>\n

The-CNN-Wire<\/p>\n

\u2122 & \u00a9 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(CNN) \u2014 European soccer\u2019s governing body UEFA declared it has lost confidence in FIFA president Gianni Infantino, piling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-840303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}