UEFA says it has lost confidence in current FIFA leadership

UEFA, who were the strongest opponents of FIFA’s plan, slam the Gianni Infantino-led governing body despite standdown.

European football’s governing body UEFA says it has lost confidence in the sport’s global governing body FIFA under its current leadership.

UEFA voted on Thursday to boycott FIFA if it did not withdraw its proposal to sell minority shares in World Cups and other events to private investors.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced late on Friday that he would be scrapping his FIFA Future Enterprise (FFE) plan following widespread backlash.

UEFA has welcomed that move in a statement on Saturday, but has gone on to detail it’s criticism of Infantino.

“We cannot keep going on like this with secret schemes on fast track timescales, cooked up by faceless individuals and of dubious benefit to the game. We must identify those responsible and hold them to account,” UEFA’s statement read.

“The current FIFA leadership has not only lost UEFA’s confidence but also that of many other members of the football family.

“When Gianni Infantino asked for the trust and the votes of FIFA’s member associations to elect him as their president in 2016, he said: ‘Of course we have to be transparent.’

“He told the assembled stakeholders: ‘The money of FIFA is your money. It’s not the money of the FIFA president. You are the national associations and the money of FIFA has to serve for the development of football and not for anything else.’

“On both these promises, he has failed to deliver. The shabby, back room, opaque deal he hatched and tried to force through were anything but transparent.”

UEFA added that it wants to work with partners and stakeholders to propose new ways of distributing resources through the existing FIFA Forward Programme.

More to follow.