Infantino apologises after shelving plan to open World Cup to private investors

Gianni Infantino apologised after shelving his plan to open the World Cup to private investors. Before the Fifa Council in Zurich, the president acknowledged mistakes in the proposal’s handling and communication while defending its purpose. Council members nevertheless said they had not received satisfactory answers to their questions.

“We apologise for the mistakes made in the way this project was handled and communicated,” Infantino said in a video shared on Fifa’s website. He added that those mistakes had had “many consequences”. He also described the discussion as constructive and stressed that bringing in private investors had been a proposal, not a final decision. Its aim, he said, was to enable Fifa to invest more in its member associations without replacing their existing resources.

The remarks came at the first Council meeting at which the Italo-Swiss had spoken before its 37 members. It was also the first meeting since the scandal that had nearly brought him down at the end of the summer. Infantino said he was ready to receive members’ questions in writing and respond to them later.

The reactions showed that the apology had not resolved the disagreement. Debbie Hewitt, president of the English Football Association and a Fifa vice-president, regretted that none of the specific requests had received an answer. She said the real reason for the apology was that the proposal had not been put to the Council. On the request for written questions, she warned that Infantino had to answer them and that, if he did not, he was not fit to be Fifa president.

Bernd Neuendorf, president of the German Football Association, also criticised the lack of satisfactory answers after critical questions had been raised. Others were more supportive: Ahmed Yahya, president of the Mauritanian Football Federation, said the proposal was in “the interest of football” and that it was the way it had been handled that had failed.

Infantino also defended the planned financial impact. He said each of Fifa’s 211 member associations would receive 25 million dollars if the proposal were approved at the Fifa Congress in December. He compared that figure with the one million dollars per member association cited for the time he took over the presidency, ten years earlier. During the Council meeting, he also shook hands with UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, despite their open opposition.