Associated Press<\/a> on July 31 criticising Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, amid the fallout from the abandoned FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal.<\/p>\nLamour told AP that staff had been \u201cdeceived\u201d by Infantino regarding the FFE plan, which would have seen world soccer\u2019s governing body make stakes in the World Cup available for private investment.<\/p>\n
A FIFA spokesperson said in a statement to The Athletic: \u201cFIFA can confirm that the working relationship between FIFA and Kevin Lamour as FIFA\u2019s Chief Operating Officer has ended on 17 August 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cFIFA thanks Kevin for his two years of service and wishes him the best of luck for the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo further comment will be made on the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
The FIFA sell-off scandal, explained<\/p>\n
Hannah Vanbiber and Reuben Pinder<\/p>\n
Lamour, who previously worked with Infantino at UEFA, the governing body for European football, told AP in July: \u201cIt is the project of one person<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only must this project not go ahead \u2026 but the time has now come for football political leaders to ask themselves the right questions and make the right decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lamour also said that he was prepared to lose his job over speaking out publicly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that means I lose my job, then so be it,\u201d his statement to AP added. \u201cI will understand and respect that decision. At least I\u2019ll sleep well tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mattias Grafstrom, FIFA\u2019s secretary general, informed staff at FIFA via email that Lamour would be leaving the organisation and also thanked him for his service.<\/p>\n
Lamour had been in the role since November 2024. He was previously UEFA\u2019s deputy general secretary, having joined the European federation in 2007.<\/p>\n
Lamour\u2019s departure follows that of Infantino\u2019s senior advisor Carlos Cordeiro, who resigned in July due to his opposition to the FFE plans.<\/p>\n
In July, FIFA announced its plans to sell a significant minority stake in a new entity that it, as a non-profit organisation, was planning to set up to run its main events, such as the World Cups and Club World Cups.<\/p>\n
FIFA wanted to sell a fifth of the new entity to an investor group led by Thrive Eternal \u2014 a U.S. investment fund run by Joshua Kushner, the brother of President Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner \u2014 for $4.2billion (\u00a33.1bn).<\/p>\n
The plans were scrapped following significant backlash but have remained a consistent source of criticism as the fallout continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Lamour has left his position as chief operating officer at FIFA. Lamour\u2019s departure comes after the FIFA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[32772,33264,9,11,10,23],"class_list":["post-323430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-fifa-mens-world-cup","tag-international-football","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}