Gianni Infantino forced to scrap World Cup sell-off plan, senior Fifa adviser quits

Fifa president Gianni Infantino has scrapped his divisive plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup, hours after a senior adviser quit over the “bad deal for football”.

In a statement released early on Saturday, Infantino acknowledged that his Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) move to raise US$4.2 billion in private funding had “created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place”.

Infantino had proposed creating a US$20 billion subsidiary to run the World Cup and other events, with a stake of up to 20 per cent to be offered to private investors.

The lead investor would be a New York-based firm created by Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Earlier, Carlos Cordeiro, a top adviser to the Fifa boss and a former Goldman Sachs banker who served on the White House World Cup Task Force, resigned, the latest show of opposition to a plan that had been widely condemned throughout the game.

“Let me be clear,” Cordeiro said in a statement. “I had no involvement in this proposal, and I oppose it unequivocally. It is a bad deal for Fifa’s member associations, a bad deal for football and a bad deal for the long-term future of the game.