Jordan Receives Arab Cup Prize Money After Delays
Jordan finally has its money. The politics around it are only getting started.
Two days after publicly accusing FIFA of “blackmail”, Jordan Football Association president Prince Ali bin Hussein announced that long-delayed prize money for the national team’s run to the 2025 Arab Cup final had at last landed in the right accounts.
The timing could hardly be more pointed.
Money arrives, eight months late
Jordan reached the final of the FIFA Arab Cup in Qatar last December. The players and coaching staff were due a significant payout for that achievement. According to Prince Ali, they waited. And waited.
On Thursday morning, the funds appeared.
“Thank you to the FIFA administration for suddenly this morning delivering what was owed to our players and coaching staff, for the Jordan National team’s accession to the final of the FIFA Arab Cup in Qatar last December,” he wrote on X.
“This was funding that should have been received eight months ago.”
For the squad and staff, the money represents overdue recognition of a landmark run in regional competition. For their federation president, it has become Exhibit A in a much larger argument about how world football is run.
Accusations of pressure from the top
Prince Ali has gone directly at FIFA President Gianni Infantino this week, accusing him of backing out of a controversial proposal to sell a stake in World Cup commercial rights only after facing fierce resistance from confederations and national associations.
Ali says that during that period, with the plan under scrutiny, FIFA figures raised Jordan’s financial difficulties and verbally suggested that his public backing of Infantino “would go a long way to helping our FA out”.
One of those difficulties, he stressed, was the missing Arab Cup prize money that had been owed since December.
The implication is stark: political loyalty in FIFA’s corridors, he suggests, is being tied to financial relief on the ground.
FIFA has not commented on any of these allegations.
A ‘welcome’ payment, but no change of stance
The arrival of the money has not softened Ali’s public position. If anything, it has sharpened his message.
He called the payment a “welcome development” for Jordan’s players and staff, but immediately framed it as part of a wider pattern he sees around FIFA presidential elections.
“It is symptomatic of those exact difficulties that we all face and that are usually linked to the FIFA presidential elections,” he said.
Then came the clearest line of all.
“And it does not change my clear position concerning the leadership of FIFA: my FA and I will not endorse President Infantino, nor will we vote for him.”
At a moment when many associations typically start lining up behind the incumbent, Jordan’s federation has chosen to plant a flag in opposition.
FIFA closes ranks around Infantino
While Ali was escalating his criticism, FIFA’s leadership was closing ranks.
In Morocco on Wednesday, after a hastily convened crisis meeting over the abandoned World Cup commercial rights proposal, FIFA apologised to its member associations for mistakes made in handling the plan. The organisation’s hierarchy, however, reaffirmed its backing for Infantino.
The president, who has already been in charge for close to a decade, is seeking to extend his tenure into a fourth and final term at elections scheduled for March.
That vote now looms over every exchange, every statement, every show of loyalty or dissent.
Jordan has its Arab Cup prize money at last. The bigger question is whether its very public challenge to Zurich’s leadership remains an isolated act of defiance, or the first crack in a façade of unity ahead of one of the most charged elections in FIFA’s modern history.
