FIFA's Power Struggle Deepens as Carlos Cordeiro Resigns
Carlos Cordeiro has walked away from FIFA – and straight into the heart of the biggest power struggle world football has seen in years.
The senior advisor to FIFA president Gianni Infantino resigned in protest at plans to explore selling a stake in a new World Cup commercial entity to private investors, warning that the deal would be “a bad deal for FIFA's Member Associations, a bad deal for football, and a bad deal for the long-term future of the game.”
For a man who once ran the US Soccer Federation and built a career in banking, the break was clean and brutal.
“I cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup,” he said in a statement to Sky News. “Let me be clear: I had no involvement in this proposal, and I oppose it unequivocally.”
His exit lands just as Infantino is attempting to push ahead with the proposed FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) project – and as resistance hardens across the football map.
FIFA under siege
By the time Cordeiro’s resignation became public, FIFA had already gone on the defensive.
In the early hours of Friday morning, a statement emerged from Zurich insisting “nobody is selling football,” an attempt to calm the storm around the plan to invite private investment into a World Cup commercial vehicle.
The governing body promised an “open and democratic consultation” and blamed “incorrect media reports” for disrupting the process. The message was clear: the consultation would go on, every member association would get its say, and the facts – as FIFA sees them – would eventually cut through.
The language, though, did nothing to soften the backlash.
Within hours, UEFA’s 55 member associations had declared they would not take part in any FIFA tournament while the proposal remained on the table. Their stance: “unanimous and unequivocal.”
“No UEFA national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for so long as these proposals remain alive,” the European body said, unless the project is abandoned “in its entirety” and FIFA gives binding assurances it will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership.
This was no isolated European revolt. CONCACAF – representing 41 nations in North and Central America and the Caribbean – said it “rejected the proposal”. The Asian Football Confederation (AFC), long seen as a crucial Infantino ally, lined up alongside them and called for “an urgent review” of FIFA’s governance.
Add it up and the numbers are stark: confederations representing 143 of FIFA’s 211 member associations have now come out against the plan.
The money, the World Cup – and the missing Europeans
At the heart of the dispute lies FFE, a proposed commercial vehicle that would, in theory, allow FIFA’s member associations to “take meaningful ownership of the commercial opportunity of football in their respective countries,” as FIFA framed it.
“FFE has been proposed solely to ensure that all FIFA Member Associations (MAs) have the opportunity to take meaningful ownership of the commercial opportunity of football in their respective countries,” the statement said, insisting that this would not compromise “the spirit or the governance of FIFA or football itself.”
“Nobody is selling football. This is not something FIFA would ever entertain.”
But the detail that has inflamed opinion is the plan to sell a minority stake in that entity to private investors. An investor group led by Thrive Eternal – founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former US president Donald Trump – is waiting in the wings.
The pitch to national associations has been simple: sign up to FFE and the commercial returns will soar.
Yet the entire financial model starts to look fragile if the men’s and women’s World Cups go ahead without Europe. Without UEFA, the tournament’s value on the global market plunges, no matter how many votes Infantino can muster at Congress.
Leagues across Europe and beyond see another threat. They fear that private money driving FIFA’s commercial arm will mean more tournaments, bigger tournaments, and a heavier international calendar that slices further into domestic schedules.
World and European leagues have already signalled their opposition. They see a future in which commercial imperatives sit in the front seat, with the football calendar and competitive balance crammed into the back.
AFC turns, pressure rises
The AFC’s intervention may prove the most significant twist of all.
For years, the Asian confederation has been one of Infantino’s strongest pillars of support. Its president, Sheikh Salman, lost to Infantino in the 2016 FIFA presidential election. Since then, Asia has largely backed the Swiss-Italian’s vision.
Not this time.
In a pointed statement, the AFC said this moment “must become a catalyst for strengthening institutional reform,” and made it clear that democracy at FIFA cannot simply be a show of hands at the end of the process.
“Meaningful democracy is not measured solely by the opportunity to vote,” the AFC said. “It begins with transparent governance, timely consultation, informed deliberation and genuine participation throughout the decision-making process.”
The confederation called on FIFA to overhaul its governance and decision-making framework to ensure that proposals “of global significance” are shaped with proper consultation, “meaningful engagement” and “appropriate oversight” by FIFA’s statutory bodies.
For a president used to counting Asia in his column, it is a jarring signal. The ground under Infantino is moving.
‘He’s in a hole and he needs to stop digging’
Inside FIFA, the official line is that this is all part of a democratic process. Outside, the tone is far harsher.
Sky Sports News’ Kaveh Solhekol described the late-night FIFA statement as “desperate” and “tone-deaf,” noting that it did not mention Infantino by name.
“The way I read this is that this is a statement from Gianni Infantino; it's not necessarily a FIFA statement,” he said. “How many people inside FIFA actually agree with what he is doing?”
“He's in a hole and he needs to stop digging. He needs to start reading the room. He needs to start accepting the fact his power is starting to ebb away and he needs to start by apologising to football, to football fans all around the world – and he also needs to start apologising and explain himself to the confederations and the presidents of the 211 member associations.”
Solhekol also took aim at Infantino’s habit of blaming the media, comparing it to the approach of Donald Trump and pointing out that detailed reporting by The Times and the Financial Times had been “completely and utterly accurate.”
Without that reporting, he argued, the scale of the controversy would never have been exposed.
His conclusion was blunt: Infantino must “change course,” “wake up” to the scale of the crisis and “start saying sorry” if he wants to save his presidency.
Can Infantino survive this?
Infantino has wriggled out of tight corners before. Ethics complaints, political battles, calendar rows – he has so far emerged intact, often stronger.
This time feels different.
Solhekol called it “the biggest crisis he's faced – and it's all of his own making.” The FIFA president, he suggested, appears to believe he can ride out the storm by framing everything as a simple consultation.
In that scenario, the 211 football associations weigh the proposal, vote it down if they wish, and FIFA moves on. A storm in a teacup. No harm done.
Others see a different path. They argue Infantino should step forward, apologise, step back from the spotlight and try to ride out the fallout, perhaps even aiming to be re-elected unopposed next March.
So far, there is little sign he is ready to do that. The consultation continues. The media remains in the firing line. The rhetoric from Zurich insists that nothing fundamental is being sold.
What has changed is the resistance. UEFA is out. CONCACAF is out. Asia has turned. A senior advisor has resigned on principle. Leagues are alarmed. Investors are watching.
The World Cup, the crown jewel of the global game, sits at the centre of it all.
The question now is not just whether FIFA can push this plan through. It is whether Gianni Infantino can still convince world football that he is the man to be trusted with its most precious asset.
