North America’s soccer body on Thursday rejected FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private equity investors, joining European nations in opposition.
The 41-member Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football held an urgent meeting Thursday after UEFA, the European soccer body, had agreed to boycott the World Cup and all other FIFA competitions to protest Infantino’s plan.
“During the meeting,” CONCACAF said in a statement, “the membership expressed deep concerns about the lack of due process surrounding the proposal, the artificially short deadline imposed, and the absence of any review or approval by the relevant FIFA governance bodies.
“In addition, the need for private equity investment to fund new and existing FIFA Forward programs following the most profitable FIFA World Cup in history was questioned.”
Infantino’s secret project was revealed Tuesday to spin off its commercial operations in a new $20 billion subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, that would be 20% owned by private investors. The core investor would be a New York investment firm, Thrive Capital, created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
“CONCACAF is a confederation united by the love of our game, where football comes first. Guided by this philosophy over the past ten years we have built, from the ground up, an organization founded on service, transparent governance, and the long-term stewardship of football,” CONCACAF said in its statement. “History has shown FIFA and the football family what happens when the custodians of the game lose sight of these values.”
And on a seismic day in soccer politics, a traditional bedrock of support in Asia for FIFA and Infantino had earlier Thursday been shaken.
“FIFA’s unilateral actions appear to undermine the very foundations of continental football,” the Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa warned in a letter Thursday to member federations that was seen by The Associated Press.
Sheikh Salman, an ally to Infantino since losing the FIFA presidential election to him in 2016, wrote that “such an initiative will not succeed without the support of all the confederations, which is not the case now.”
Infantino wrote Tuesday to the 211 members — already the effective owners of FIFA as a non-profit association under Swiss law — that if they approve FFE, their promised $10 million basic funding for the next four years would double to $20 million. He projected their FIFA funding through 2038 would be $86 million each, instead of about $36 million. Infantino has given the 211 members until mid-September to accept the plan.
“This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA’s duty as the custodian of world football,” said UEFA, where Infantino was a long-time staffer and its CEO-like general secretary when he was first elected to lead FIFA in 2016.
A source close to Joshua Kushner’s company, Thrive Capital, dismissed criticism over the firm’s involvement in the FFE investment plan to CBS News on Thursday.
“I think the first assumption is that Trump was involved in FFE in any capacity, which is just not accurate,” the source told CBS News. “Josh himself does not have any links with the administration, he does not have any political roles, he has not donated to them, he is not involved in any capacity. If you look at his donation record, all of the causes he has donated to are Democrat … it’s kind of unfair to assume a lot about somebody just because of what their brother does.”
“Thrive is a pretty big investment firm. Thrive now has $60 billion assets under management,” the source told CBS News when pressed about whether the Kushner family name had carried weight in getting the deal with FIFA done, adding that Joshua Kushner is “a pretty successful business person in his own right.”
The next scheduled FIFA tournament is within weeks in Europe — the Women’s Under-20 World Cup hosted by Poland from Sept. 5 — and the four British federations comprise FIFA’s only bidder to host the 2035 Women’s World Cup. That decision is due Nov. 23.
