{"id":36692,"date":"2026-08-10T15:43:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T10:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36692"},"modified":"2026-08-10T15:43:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T10:43:25","slug":"can-fifa-boss-gianni-infantino-survive-growing-calls-to-resign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36692","title":{"rendered":"Can FIFA Boss Gianni Infantino Survive Growing Calls to Resign?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/fifa\/\" id=\"auto-tag_fifa_1\" data-tag=\"fifa\">FIFA<\/a> president Gianni Infantino appears to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tA month after the final of 2026 World Cup, which earned FIFA a record $15 billion in revenues, Infantino is fighting to keep his job. His controversial plan to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/business\/business-news\/fifa-world-cup-unit-sale-plan-backlash-kushner-1236658936\/\">sell off a stake in the World Cup<\/a> to a group of private investors led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of President Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner, sparked a global backlash that shows no signs of abetting. The past week, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/soccer\/\" id=\"auto-tag_soccer_1\" data-tag=\"soccer\">soccer<\/a> legends, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/sports\/\" id=\"auto-tag_sports_1\" data-tag=\"sports\">sports<\/a> authorities and even world leaders have called for Infantino to resign.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cInfantino must go,\u201d wrote Portuguese soccer legend Luis Figo in an op-ed for the <em>Daily Mail<\/em>. \u201cThe Infantino era is over,\u201d added Javier Tebas, president of Italy\u2019s La Liga, an interview with French newspaper <em>Le Monde<\/em>. \u201cIt should be fatal,\u201d said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, on Infantino\u2019s misstep with the sell-off plans. \u201cCertainly I don\u2019t have confidence in Mr. Infantino.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe pile on has continued despite Infantino dropping his plan, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/general-news\/fifa-infantino-scraps-world-cup-sell-off-plans-1236661306\/\">officially ditching the proposal <\/a>on July 31. The deal would have seen FIFA, a 96-year-old nonprofit, spin off its commercial interests into a new division, FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE). Kushner\u2019s private equity group Thrive Capital would then buy a 21 percent stake in FFE for $4.2 billion. FIFA had argued the arrangement would raise billions to fund global sports development.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tEuropean soccer body UEFA called it an attempt to sell \u201cthe soul\u201d of soccer and threatened to boycott future FIFA tournaments if the deal went through. The Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF, which represents national organizations in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. also rejected the proposal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tFIFA quickly backed down. UEFA has not. Last week it said its boycott is still in place. The group reiterated its position that it has \u201clost confidence in Gianni Infantino\u2019s presidency.\u201d UEFA\u2019s boycott will be tested at FIFA\u2019s Under-20 Women\u2019s World Cup, which kicks off in Poland Sept. 5.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tOn Friday, Norwegian soccer association directly called for Infantino to resign. \u201cThe trust is now gone for us,\u201d Norwegian Football Federation president, Lise Klaveness, told T<em>he Guardian<\/em>. \u201cThere is no way back for Infantino.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tAdding to the pile on was a report on Friday that a female employee alleged to have been in a relationship with Infantino when he was general secretary at UEFA, received a six-figure \u201cdeparture payment.\u201d UEFA confirmed the payment but FIFA said the allegations of inappropriate conduct by Infantino are \u201ccategorically untrue\u201d and \u201cdefamatory,\u201d adding that \u201cno employee at UEFA and FIFA has ever raised a complaint regarding Mr Infantino\u2019s behavior because there never was an incident where he was involved.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tFIFA on Saturday fired back at Infantino\u2019s critics, accusing them of trying, \u201cthrough allegation, insinuation or misinformation\u201d to undermine \u201cFIFA\u2019s established democratic processes\u201d by trying to oust Infantino before presidential elections next March.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tUEFA is reportedly seeking support from other soccer confederations to call an emergency FIFA Congress to trigger a vote of no confidence in the president. UEFA, with 55 members, easily meets the threshold of 43 votes to call an emergency meeting. To topple Infantino, however, would require a majority of FIFA members, or 106 of the 211 national associations. The Confederation of African Football and South American confederation CONMEBOL have both publicly announced their backing for Infantino. Last week, Mexico broke with North American confederation CONCACAF to support FIFA\u2019s beleaguered president.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe pressure is mounting on Gianni Infantino, but there is still time on the clock for him to turn this defeat back into a win.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FIFA president Gianni Infantino appears to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. A month after the final of 2026 World Cup, which earned FIFA a record $15 billion in revenues, Infantino is fighting to keep his job. His controversial plan to sell off a stake in the World Cup to a group of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/FotoJet-2026-08-10T112249.375.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}