FIFA’s chief operating officer said its staff were deceived by their president Gianni Infantino’s World Cup sell-off plan, and suggested on Friday the project must not go ahead.
Zurich-based executive Kevin Lamour all but invited Infantino to fireplace him in a press release to The Associated Press that defended his colleagues amid intense fallout from the FIFA boss’ plan to sell stakes in future World Cup profits to private equity funds.
Lamour wrote that staff were “deceived” by Infantino’s lack of openness in planning the sale over recent months and “deserve higher than contempt and intimidation.”
“It’s the project of 1 person,” Lamour, a long-time colleague of Infantino at each FIFA and European soccer body UEFA, wrote. “Not only must this project not go ahead … however the time has now come for football political leaders to ask themselves the precise questions and make the precise decisions.”
Lamour’s statement got here hours after Infantino’s senior adviser Carlos Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs banker who represented the soccer body on the White House Task Force for the World Cup, resigned and urged other senior FIFA staff to talk out.
“I cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake within the World Cup,” Cordeiro wrote in a press release. The previous U.S. Soccer Federation president said he was not included in talks concerning the plan backed by a Recent York investment fund created by Joshua Kushner.
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“Let me be clear. I had no involvement on this proposal, and I oppose it unequivocally,” Cordeiro said. He called the $20 billion industrial subsidiary “a nasty deal for football.”
Lamour didn’t resign the post he has held since 2024 but said he had an obligation to his colleagues.
“And if which means I lose my job then so be it” the French official said. “I’ll understand and respect that call. No less than I’ll sleep well tonight.”
Lamour got here to soccer from politics twenty years ago as an aide to then-UEFA president Michel Platini. He often had a world role in soccer politics liaising with FIFA member federations in Africa and Asia who’re weighing their very own decisions about Infantino’s offers of $20 million each by a Sept. 19 deadline.
Cordeiro often joined Infantino on working visits to satisfy U.S. President Donald Trump on the White House in recent times.
“Football has been central to my life, and after greater than 35 years in banking I understand each the worth of this asset and the implications of giving a part of it away,” he said. “That’s the reason this proposal needs to be rejected.”
Infantino has proposed spinning off FIFA’s industrial businesses — including World Cups and Club World Cups for men and ladies — right into a $20 billion subsidiary with 20 per cent owned by private investors. The “anchor investor,” described by FIFA, is Kushner, the younger brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
“FIFA already has access to extraordinary financial resources. The organization sits on billions of dollars in reserves and no debt,” Cordeiro said. He noted FIFA’s revenue of $15 billion during the last 4 years tied to the boys’s World Cup just ended.
“Against that backdrop, selling a everlasting stake in football’s most precious asset to boost $4.2 billion makes little sense. It’s mortgaging football’s future with none compelling justification,” he said.
Cordeiro said he shared five years of working for FIFA alongside Infantino with “dedicated, principled individuals who care deeply concerning the game.”
“I hope they, too, will speak up,” he wrote, “because decisions of this magnitude needs to be made within the interests of football, not those that stand to cash in on it.”
Infantino has been president of FIFA for greater than 10 years and seemed sure to be re-elected unopposed next March. FIFA has set a Nov. 18 deadline for challengers to come back forward.
Lamour was a part of Infantino’s inner circle that campaigned for him to develop into the surprise winner of that FIFA presidential election in February 2016.
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