Gianni Infantino has discovered the value of listening — roughly two months after trying to quietly sell 20% of FIFA's commercial rights to investors fronted by Josh Kushner without asking anyone who mattered.
With his World Cup sell-off plan now dead and a leadership election looming in March, the FIFA president posted from Jeddah this week about building a "culture of dialogue" at the sport's governing body. "This is not about generating positive headlines," he wrote on Instagram. "It is about doing what is right for the game."
It is, at minimum, the right thing to say.
How bad did it get?
Bad enough that three of FIFA's own vice presidents — UEFA's Aleksander Ceferin, CONCACAF's Victor Montagliani, and the AFC's Sheikh Salman — led a coordinated pushback against their own president. That is not a minor internal squabble. That is the governing structure of world football openly rejecting the man running it.
The proposal itself was eyebrow-raising from the start. Infantino wanted to create a commercial spinoff called FIFA Forward Enterprise, sell at least a fifth of it to outside investors, and pay each of the 211 member federations $20 million to approve the deal. UEFA and others pointed out that FIFA already has at least $5 billion in cash reserves — and could simply hand each federation $10 million from existing funds without selling anything to anyone.
The connection to Kushner, whose family ties to Donald Trump are well documented, made the whole thing politically radioactive. FIFA's relationship with Trump has already drawn scrutiny: the governing body created a peace prize to award him last year and allowed U.S. striker Folarin Balogun to escape a mandatory tournament ban following White House intervention.
An election changes the math
Infantino now faces a genuine challenge ahead of the March 18 vote in Morocco — the first real electoral pressure of his presidency. He's offering an independent governance review and an Oct. 15 FIFA Council meeting in Zurich to consult on "how to further strengthen FIFA's decision-making processes."
Whether the 211 member federations buy it depends on how short their memories are. Infantino has been here before — big commercial proposals floated without consultation, continental bodies pushing back, plans quietly shelved. This is the pattern, not an aberration.
- The $4.2 billion Kushner-linked sell-off plan is formally dropped
- An independent review of FIFA governance is now on the table
- All 211 member federations and six continental bodies will be consulted on decision-making reforms
- The FIFA Council meets October 15 in Zurich
- Infantino faces a leadership election on March 18 in Morocco
"I have never been more determined and committed in doing that," he wrote. Coming from a president whose secretive commercial dealings triggered the organization's worst crisis since the 2015 anti-corruption arrests, that's a sentence his critics will be marking carefully.
