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PRESSURE ON FIFA president Gianni Infantino is continuing after officials within world football’s governing body distanced themselves from him following his since-abandoned proposal to open the World Cup to private investment.

The plans to sell a minority stake in a new company, Fifa Forward Enterprise, to private investors was first reported by The Times of London and the Financial Times last week.

The scheme proposed the commercial subsidiary would run events such as the World Cup and Club World Cup and give one-off payments of $20 million (€17.37 million) to all 211 member associations, who each have one Fifa vote.

Football’s governing body later confirmed that Thrive Eternal – a company founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of US president Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner – had been earmarked as the leader of the investor group.

Following a furious global reaction, Infantino on Saturday shelved the scheme.

Former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, appointed in 2019 by Infantino as Fifa’s chief of global football development, said in a statement today that “the decision to withdraw the project was absolutely necessary and beyond question”.

His remarks followed hot on the heels of an extraordinary internal email to Fifa staff, in which secretary-general Mattias Grafstrom appeared to distance himself from Infantino on the issue.

Previously seen as close to Infantino, Grafstrom describes the fiasco surrounding the plan as “a sad and reproachable series of events”.

He adds: “Individuals, unstable moments and unfortunate episodes come and go. The institution, its mission and its responsibility towards world football continue.”

Meanwhile, the Jordanian Football Association has accused Fifa of “blackmail” in a statement this afternoon, which said the problem “really is with leadership”.

The organisation’s president Prince Ali bin Hussein said Jordan had faced “enormous hurdles” while competing at the World Cup.

He said not all fans were granted US visas even though they had tickets, that Jordan was being taxed by the US government through Fifa for its participation in the tournament, and that the country have been waiting for reward money for its players since December for the Arab cup in Qatar, which is a Fifa event.

Hussein claimed: “For months, FIFA has been refusing to help us on any of these or other matters – until it was verbally communicated to me during the World Cup that if I endorsed Infantino it would go a long way to helping our FA out.”

There is no shortage of issues regarding FIFA. Let me start by clarifying what some of these are from an FA perspective, in particular that of Jordan going into a World Cup for the first time.

— Ali Al Hussein (@AliBinAlHussein) August 4, 2026

We are a small country with a minimal budget for our FA and had to deal with enormous…

He added: “We pride ourselves in Jordan in upholding ethical values. We did not endorse him before and certainly will not now. But the whole situation amounts to blackmail and we refuse to give in to that.”

Fifa has not responded to the claim as of 5pm this evening.

Far from calming the waters or shoring up his presidency, Infantino has been swamped with criticism of his style of leadership and a previously smooth path to being re-elected unopposed to a fourth and final term next March in Rabat now looks a very rocky one indeed.

That is a problem down the road. For now, he has others to confront.

Even though he had withdrawn the scheme, Uefa issued a letter through their lawyers in the US threatening legal action over what they had scathingly described as a “shabby, backroom, opaque deal”.

The organisation was the first to slam the investment plans and confirmed that no European nations would compete in Fifa competitions until they were scrapped.

Both Grafstrom and Wenger as well as chief operating officer Kevin Lamour, who had slammed the plan on Friday, are mentioned in the letter as being knowledgeable about the FFE and instructed to keep all “relevant materials”.

“Dear Mr Infantino. UEFA hereby gives formal notice that it is actively considering legal action, arbitration, and/or regulatory complaints (together, the ‘Proceedings’) arising out of and in connection with the FFE plan proposed by FIFA and all related matters as further described below,” their lawyer Andrew Levander said in the letter sent last Friday and seen by AFP.

“You and FIFA are required to take immediate steps to identify, locate, and preserve all documents and electronically stored information described in this Notice that are in your or FIFA’s possession, custody, or control.

“These obligations arise independently of any internal retention policy you or your organization maintain and supersede any routine document destruction or deletion policies that would otherwise apply.”

Several of Uefa’s member associations – Wales, Finland, Sweden and Serbia – have withdrawn their letters of support for Infantino and the English FA is strongly rumoured to be on the verge of also joining them.

The scant comfort for Infantino came from a handful of supporters, including 2030 World Cup co-hosts Morocco, as well as Kuwait, Qatar, where he has a house, and Lebanon, which granted him honorary citizenship in February.

However, it is the damning remarks by both Wenger and Grafstrom– who shadowed Infantino throughout the World Cup – that will twist the knife further.

Their criticism only adds to the impression that Infantino has lost the confidence of even his closest Fifa collaborators.

One of the most devastating blows to Infantino’s plan was the resignation on Friday of his special adviser Carlos Cordeiro, who is also close to US president Donald Trump.

Despite what Uefa’s lawyer wrote regarding keeping material pertinent to FFE, Wenger claims to have only learned about it through the media.

“I was not involved in this strategic plan,” the 76-year-old Frenchman said.

Grafstrom, for his part, tried to cheer up the staff by congratulating them on their work while admitting it had been “an extraordinary and challenging week”.

For Infantino, the challenge threatens to grow, and his stated purpose when he ditched the plan, to unite football, seems unlikely to be realised while he remains president.

With reporting from AFP 2026

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