European football's governing body has announced that no national team from its 55 member associations will take part in FIFA competitions while the world body's plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors remains on the table.
UEFA confirmed the boycott on Thursday after an urgent online meeting of its member federations, called to co-ordinate opposition to FIFA president Gianni Infantino's proposal to spin off the sport's commercial operations into a new subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise, valued at $20 billion, with private investors holding a 20% stake.
"UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions," the organisation said in a statement. "Some things are simply too important to sell. The FIFA World Cup belongs to football. It always will. And so long as Europe has a voice, it will never be for sale."
The plan, revealed earlier this week, would see the core investment come from a New York firm created by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner. Infantino has offered each of FIFA's 211 member associations a payment of $20 million if they back the proposal, more than doubling the basic funding they were promised over the next four years. The offer must be accepted by mid-September.
UEFA's statement was blunt: "This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA's duty as the custodian of world football."
The fallout spread beyond Europe on Thursday. The 41-member CONCACAF confederation rejected the plan, citing 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. The Asian Football Confederation also weighed in with rare criticism, as president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa warned that FIFA's unilateral actions "appear to undermine the very foundations of continental football".
"No UEFA national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for so long as these proposals remain alive," UEFA added, "unless this proposal has been abandoned in its entirety and binding assurances have been given that FIFA will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership."
The next FIFA tournament in Europe is the Women's Under-20 World Cup in Poland, which begins on 5 September, while the four British federations, FIFA's only bidders to host the 2035 Women's World Cup, are due to learn the outcome of that contest on 23 November.
The boycott threat echoes 2021, when European opposition helped scupper Infantino's plan to hold World Cups every two years. With a FIFA presidential election due next March in Rabat, Morocco, and a candidate-declaration deadline of 18 November, the crisis has reopened questions about Infantino's long-held grip on the organisation, which he has led since 2016.
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