The global football governing body has officially accused its European counterpart of a coordinated character assassination, claiming UEFA operatives are deliberately ruining the FIFA president’s reputation by reading his proposed private-equity term sheets out loud.
The formal complaint, reportedly circulated to member associations on Tuesday, claims UEFA officials have engaged in relentless and devastating slander by simply providing unedited transcripts of Infantino's own public statements. FIFA lawyers argued that repeatedly bringing up the president's scrapped $25 billion plan to sell minority stakes in the World Cup to a consortium led by SoftBank and the Saudi Public Investment Fund constitutes a direct attack on the integrity of the sport's primary monetisation vehicle.
It is frankly disgusting that our colleagues in Nyon would weaponise the president's own PowerPoint presentations against him," said Julian Chappe, FIFA's Director of Sovereign Wealth Synergies. "To take Gianni's visionary plan to strip-mine the global game for immediate private equity cash, and then just casually tell the public about it? That crosses a sacred line.
The rift between the governing bodies has deepened as UEFA's alleged smears continue to surface, including a bulleted list of Infantino's recent travel itinerary to Riyadh and a verbatim reading of his proposal to host a global Nations League funded entirely by unnamed venture capitalists. FIFA's ethics committee noted that while the information distributed by UEFA is entirely factual, arranging it in chronological order creates an unfairly accurate timeline of the front office's priorities.
The league office confirmed Infantino will spend the remainder of the international break aggressively defending his personal integrity in a closed-door meeting with a Riyadh-based equity firm.