Infantino pressure mounts from confederations as Tebas and Klaveness join calls for change

Gianni Infantino is facing renewed pressure after three continental confederations jointly accused the FIFA president of breaking football’s trust and rejected his attempt to characterise the collapse of FIFA Forward Enterprise as a communications failure.UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF have demanded an independent investigation into the abandoned US$4.2bn project, arguing that FIFA cannot credibly conduct its own review of decisions taken by its senior leadership.The confederations said: “When trust is broken through deception, when an individual places himself above the collective that entrusted him with authority, that duty has been abandoned.”Their intervention followed Infantino’s apology after FIFA abandoned plans to sell private investors approximately 20% of a commercial entity containing interests linked to competitions including the men’s and women’s World Cups.The confederations said: “FIFA’s recent letter to its Vice-Presidents and 211 Member Associations acknowledges that mistakes were made in the process. It treats this as a failure of communication, when what football witnessed was a failure of judgment.”They also rejected FIFA’s proposal to investigate the episode internally, insisting that a fully independent third party should conduct the review with no involvement from FIFA employees or other football stakeholders.The confederations said: “There remains no recognition that attempting to sell an interest in the FIFA World Cup was a profound failure of judgment, not just a procedural misstep, but a fundamental breach of trust with the very institutions FIFA exists to serve.”Pressure is also growing from individual football leaders, with Norwegian Football Federation president Lise Klaveness saying there can be no reconciliation with Infantino following FIFA’s attempts to repair relationships after the project collapsed.Klaveness said: “There is no way back. We ask him to resign now.”She argued that reforms promised when Infantino took control of FIFA in 2016 had gone backwards and that the current divisions within international football required structural change that could not be delivered under the existing leadership.LaLiga president Javier Tebas has taken a similar position, declaring: “The Infantino era is over.”Tebas has argued that FIFA Forward Enterprise represented only part of a broader governance problem in which leagues and other stakeholders have been excluded from decisions affecting competition expansion, the international calendar and football’s commercial structure.The dispute has also reopened scrutiny of Infantino’s 16 years at UEFA, including his period as general secretary, after confirmation that a female employee alleged to have had a relationship with him received a six-figure departure payment and funding for an MBA.UEFA has confirmed both payments but said they complied with staff regulations in place at the time, while Infantino strongly denies the alleged relationship and any suggestion of wrongdoing.FIFA said: “No employee at UEFA and FIFA has ever raised a complaint regarding Mr Infantino’s behaviour because there never was an incident where he was involved.”The governing body has accused critics of attempting to weaken Infantino ahead of the March 2027 presidential election through allegations rather than challenging him through FIFA’s voting process.FIFA said: “Those who do not have the support of FIFA’s member associations should not seek to achieve through allegation, insinuation or misinformation what they cannot achieve through FIFA’s established democratic processes.”UEFA, the AFC and CONCACAF have also criticised FIFA’s crisis meeting in Morocco, noting that Infantino was the only elected FIFA official present and that no Council members or national associations were involved.They said: “This recent meeting, where a select number of members of the FIFA Management Committee, not the full Committee, were summoned abroad, rather than leadership going to Zurich to address the heart of FIFA, its staff, only reinforces these concerns.”Infantino nevertheless retains important support among individual national associations, creating a significant gap between the positions of confederation leadership and the votes that ultimately determine the FIFA presidency.Mexico and Argentina have publicly backed him, while support remains strong across much of Africa despite the increasingly coordinated challenge emerging elsewhere.The confrontation is therefore developing beyond the abandoned investment proposal into a wider contest over FIFA governance, presidential authority and whether Infantino retains sufficient support among the 211 member associations to survive until the 2027 election.