The withdrawal of FIFA’s plan to open up to private investors was “absolutely necessary”, Arsène Wenger said on Tuesday. The Frenchman is the current director of world football development within the body.
“The decision to withdraw the project was absolutely necessary,” explains Wenger, who has held his position at FIFA since 2019 and who says “firmly believes in an independent FIFA, which serves football with commitment, transparency, and integrity”.
“I was not involved in this project, the existence of which I learned about in the press,” adds the Frenchman, former emblematic coach of Arsenal and who is also a technical advisor within Ifab, the body which governs football laws.
Other voices within FIFA were raised against the project led by its president Gianni Infantino to create an external company to manage its commercial activities and tournaments such as the World Cups, with the arrival of private investors.
Presented to everyone’s surprise last Tuesday after it was revealed by the press, the project was finally withdrawn during the night from Friday to Saturday in the face of opposition from numerous football players, including the European confederation (UEFA).
Fading support
In an email sent Tuesday to FIFA employees and consulted by AFP, the body’s secretary general Mattias Grafström regretted “a series of sad and reprehensible events”, which “fortunately resulted in the permanent abandonment” of the project. Gianni Infantino’s main advisor Carlos Cordeiro had already resigned on Friday, saying he was “categorically” opposed to Infantino’s project.
This protest within FIFA itself comes on top of external pressures, coming in particular from the powerful UEFA but also from Concacaf (North American and Caribbean confederation), which after torpedoing the FFE project, directly criticized Infantino.
Concacaf thus requested last week a “complete review” of the governance of the FIFA president, while UEFA, which had threatened a boycott of the World Cups to win its case, said it had “lost confidence” in Infantino.
In a letter sent to FIFA on Friday and consulted by AFP, UEFA “officially notifies that it is actively considering taking legal action”.
Infantino is currently the only declared candidate for re-election as head of FIFA, during a vote which will take place in March 2027 in Rabat. Four federations, all European, have so far withdrawn their support for the outgoing president: Finland, Wales, Serbia, and Sweden.
