"Had we known what this would devolve into, we would not have gotten involved." That's Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, breaking his silence on one of the most chaotic governance collapses in FIFA's recent history.
Kushner's Thrive Eternal fund was the lead investor in FIFA President Gianni Infantino's grand privatisation scheme — a $4.2 billion plan dubbed FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) that would have sold roughly 20 percent of FIFA's commercial and event operations to private investors. The whole thing unravelled spectacularly, and now UEFA is circling with legal threats and documentation requests directed at Thrive, demanding communications, valuation models, financial projections, term sheets, and the identities of any prospective co-investors.
Kushner was quick to clarify: UEFA hasn't accused him or Thrive of wrongdoing. But the request alone is enough to make clear how seriously European football's governing body is treating this.
What the FFE was supposed to be — and why it fell apart
The pitch, at least in Kushner's telling, was idealistic. He framed the FFE as a mechanism to spread capital more evenly across all 211 FIFA member associations, funnelling investment into underdeveloped footballing nations rather than concentrating wealth at the top. "Money in football has historically been concentrated amongst a small group of countries," he said. Hard to argue with that diagnosis.
The execution, though, was a disaster. UEFA, CONCACAF, and the AFC came out swinging almost immediately. At least 22 national associations — Germany, Italy, and England among them — have withdrawn support for Infantino. Figures like Luis Figo, Robert Pires, and Juan Sebastián Verón publicly condemned the plans. Infantino issued an apology, but his political base has been visibly eroding ahead of the FIFA presidential election in March 2027.
UEFA's position hasn't softened one degree: "Whether it is the World Cup or an Under-15 tournament, FIFA's competitions are not for sale. Neither is the governance of our game."
What this means for FIFA's future leadership
Infantino had been widely expected to run for a fourth term in 2027. That now looks considerably less certain. The FFE fiasco has handed UEFA a legitimate platform to push for what they're calling "fundamental reform" — and with legal action potentially incoming, the pressure on Infantino isn't fading anytime soon.
For anyone with a stake in football governance — or in how FIFA distributes its development funds — the structure of the next election just became a lot more interesting. The door Kushner says he wishes he'd never walked through may end up being the one that shows Infantino the exit.
