Fifa keeps Gianni Infantino after Rabat crisis meeting
Abandoned plan to sell stake in commercial rights triggers Uefa and Concacaf governance demands, apology letters substitute for accountability
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The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino (right), and secretary general, Mattias Grafström, appeared together at the Malawi v Zambia Wafcon group game as a show of solidarity. Photograph: CAF TV/YouTube
theguardian.com
Fifa convened senior executives in Rabat for a late-night crisis meeting and then issued a statement insisting Gianni Infantino would remain as president, according to the Guardian. Infantino sent written apologies to the Fifa council and the organisation’s 211 member associations for failing to consult them over an abandoned proposal to sell a minority stake in Fifa’s commercial rights.
The dispute is about process, but the numbers explain the stakes. The plan—known as Fifa Forward Enterprise—would have sold 21% of Fifa’s commercial rights to private investors, the Guardian reports, effectively locking in a long-term claim on future tournament revenue. Once a slice of those rights is sold, the buyer’s priority becomes protecting cashflows, and internal governance arguments turn into contract enforcement.
Infantino’s problem is that Fifa is built to make leadership hard to remove. The organisation’s statement framed him as “the only official elected by the 211 Fifa member associations,” while reaffirming support from the secretary general and management board. That structure rewards coalition maintenance across a large membership, even when Uefa and Concacaf—two of the most powerful confederations—call for a governance review. A president can lose elite support yet survive if the wider membership sees more risk in disruption than in continuity.
The Guardian reports that Infantino spent the day in talks with secretary general Mattias Grafström and chief legal officer Emilio García Silvero, then appeared publicly with Grafström at a women’s Africa Cup of Nations match, a staged display of internal unity. Fifa also warned it would not tolerate further criticisms of its governance, a line that sits awkwardly alongside an admission that “mistakes were made” and that council members “should not have felt excluded” from the process.
A review is now promised, with a report due at the next scheduled Fifa council meeting. Uefa is searching for a challenger for the presidential election planned for next March in Rabat, the Guardian adds.
Fifa’s immediate response to a governance revolt was to publish an apology letter and keep the presidency unchanged.