GENEVA (AP) — European nations agreed Thursday to boycott the World Cup and all other FIFA competitions to protest Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell stakes in soccer’s biggest tournament to private equity investors.
Infantino’s secret project was revealed Tuesday to spin off its commercial operations in a new $20 billion subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) 20% owned by private investors. The core investor would be a New York investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Infantino wrote Tuesday to the 211 members — already the effective owners of FIFA as a non-profit association under Swiss law — that if they approve FFE their promised $10 million basic funding for the next four years will double to $20 million. He projected their FIFA funding through 2038 would be $86 million each, instead of about $36 million.
“This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA’s duty as the custodian of world football,” said UEFA, where Infantino was a long-time staffer and its CEO-like general secretary when he was first elected to lead FIFA in 2016.
So what exactly are you arguing against here?
Europeans are boycotting plans that would clearly be bad for all soccer fans around the world. Shouldn’t they do that just because they participated in the World Cups in Qatar and North America? As if to say: Since you didn’t protest back then, it doesn’t matter now… let the despots of this world have their way!
Of course it’s hypocritical, but that doesn’t change the fact that, as it happens, this time they’re also acting in the interest of the majority.