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Fifa president Gianni Infantino has abandoned plans to sell off stakes in the World Cup and other international events in the face of fierce backlash, boycott threats and the resignation of a high profile advisor.

The enormously controversial plan would have seen a new commercial subsidiary, part owned by an investment company tied to the younger brother of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, run Fifa’s main events.

It prompted outrage from global football associations, who said they had been blindsided by the proposal.

Uefa, Concacaf, which governs football in North, Central America and the Caribbean, and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) all released statements condemning the move, with the European governing body also declaring its members would boycott all future Fifa events if the plan went ahead.

Carlos Cordeiro, who had been serving as Infantino’s senior adviser on global strategy and governance, resigned in protest and issued a statement branding the proposal a “bad deal for football”.

Facing overwhelming criticism from others in the game and beyond, Infantino on Saturday morning confirmed he was abandoning the proposal.

“It has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” he said in a statement.

“As a result, this proposal will not proceed.”

Statement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 National Associations

— UEFA (@UEFA) July 30, 2026

The admission of defeat came despite Fifa having, just a day earlier, issued a statement declaring it would press ahead with the plan, even after Uefa laid down its boycott threat and Concacaf said its members had “rejected” the move.

However, the decision of the AFC to stand against the proposal meant securing the 106 votes from Fifa’s 211 member nations needed to implement it was likely to be a long-shot.

In pitching the plan, Infantino appeared to have been relying on the promise of a hefty financial incentive for member nations, particularly those outside Europe.

An offer of an initial $20m (£15m) to all members, while not insignificant for the likes of England, France and Spain, represented a major funding boost for many smaller footballing nations and drew accusations Fifa’s president was trying to buy votes.

Critics have also suggested Infantino had one eye on Fifa’s upcoming presidential election, in which he had been expected to run unopposed, and was using the offer of more funding to consolidate his hold over football’s governing body.

Fifa’s chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, gave weight to those claims when he issued a scathing assessment of the proposal to the Associated Press, calling it “the project of one person”.

“A president must bring people together, unite them, and inspire them,” he added, before claiming Infantino had done “the opposite”.

For his part, Fifa’s president continues to insist: “Our purpose has always been – and will always be – to unite and improve”.

“Moving forward, my intent is to bring all interested parties back together in the coming days and weeks in the spirit of shared interest in our game, and with the objective to continue growing football everywhere, particularly in those countries that mostly need our support,” Infantino said in his Saturday statement.

Despite his insistence on plotting a path forward, Infantino’s future now appears in real doubt.

Having served as president since 2016, Fifa’s boss was largely viewed as unassailable due to his work to boost funding for member nations through commercial deals and the revamp of the Club World Cup.

The expansion of this year’s World Cup, from 32 teams to 48, was also aimed at increasing revenues, both through increasing the number of matches and through a new controversial ticketing system.

Despite criticism of both the expanded format and ticketing, as well as Infantino’s apparent role in overturning the ban handed to US striker Folarin Balogun, the Fifa boss still appeared set to remain in his post.

Even in the face of a widening rift between Fifa and Uefa, Infantino’s hold over the majority of world football’s 211 member nations and a lack of viable alternative candidates meant an actual race for the presidency had long since been ruled out.

However, Infantino’s own actions appear to have shifted the dial.

While it remains to be seen whether opposition to the World Cup privatisation plan will translate into all three of Uefa, Concacaf and the AFC formally withdrawing their support during the election next March, the severity of the backlash against Infantino’s leadership has suddenly presented an opening for would-be challengers.

One of those, North American football chief Victor Montagliani, is already “making moves” in an effort to oust Infantino, sources told The i Paper.

While many in European football were hoping Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser al-Khelaifi would put his name forward, the chairman of European Football Clubs (previously known as the European Club Association) has ruled himself out of contention.

Other candidates, potentially including Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin, have until 18 November to put their name forward.

Until then, Infantino will will be focused on winning back support from member nations left angry by his effort to further commercialise football.

AFC members in particular will likely prove crucial in his effort to remain in charge of the world game.

While the Asian federation ultimately sided with Uefa and Concacaf to down the privatisation plan, it took time to consider its response and notably suggested its decision in part hinged on the fact Infantino could not “realistically achieve the necessary broad consensus and unity required to move forward”.

AFC member nations hold a total of 46 votes within Fifa’s decision making process, while Uefa and Concacaf combined hold 90 – short of the 106 needed to prevent the proposal from passing.

The AFC has otherwise been broadly supportive of Infantino’s presidency and Fifa’s boss has previously sought to foster closer cooperation between the governing body and some member nations, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

It is not immediately clear how Infantino might go about mending ties with the Asian association, although one option already being investigated by Fifa could provide a handy solution as well as meet the president’s aims of further boosting commercialisation.

A “research brief” seen by the Guardian reportedly revealed plans for a consultation process to again increase the size of the World Cup, this time to 64 teams.

The successful party commissioned to carry out the brief will be given just four weeks to assess the proposal and Fifa expects to receive any conclusions by 11 September.

If the analysis proceeds as reported, it could allow Fifa to make a determination on whether to expand the tournament before the end of this year.

Infantino addressed rumours Fifa was contemplating further expansion in July, saying it was “an issue that will be looked at and discussed in the relevant committees after this World Cup”, after the head of South America’s football association raised the prospect.

The move to expand the 2026 edition of the tournament to 48 teams had already drawn pushback, primarily from Uefa and the global players’ union, due to concerns over fixture congestion.

However, Infantino has repeatedly claimed the expansion was a major success and it has enjoyed broad support from other football associations, including the AFC, as it has allowed more teams to qualify and increased Fifa’s revenues.

A 64-team tournament would likely draw even harsher criticism from some groups, but it is unlikely to spark the same intense backlash as the privatisation plan.

The promise of having more member nations involved, as well as the additional revenue on offer, could be enough to sure up the support Infantino needs to continue his now controversial reign.

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North American football chief Victor Montagliani is “making moves” to run for the Fifa presidency against Gianni Infantino.

Having looked immovable only a few days ago, Infantino faces the first real threat to his reign with a credible candidate to oppose the under-fire supremo preparing to step forward.

Two sources close to the matter have told The i Paper that Canadian Montagliani – president of the North American, Central American and Caribbean association (Concacaf) – is set to challenge Infantino in the elections next March.

Infantino was planning to run for the presidency unopposed, as is often the case in Fifa elections. He did so in 2019 and 2023.

But the extraordinary reaction to plans to raise over $4bn (£3bn) by selling off part of the World Cup to private investors, including Uefa’s proposed boycott of football’s showpiece event, has caused a major shift in support.

Concacaf became the latest association to unanimously reject Infantino’s plan on Thursday, before the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) followed suit.

A source with knowledge of Concacaf’s meeting told The i Paper that not only was there blanket condemnation for the proposal, “the sentiment and discussion expressed among the vast majority of Concacaf members is that they are losing confidence, or have lost confidence, in the ability of Gianni Infantino as Fifa president moving forward”.

PSG president has ‘no interest in Fifa role’

Several influential figures within European football had hoped that Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi would stand against Infantino.

The Qatari government official and businessman is already embroiled in the world of football governance, as the chairman of European Football Clubs (EFC, previously known as the European Club Association) and an executive committee member of Uefa.

The i Paper has been told, however, that the 52-year-old is not interested in the role: “Mr Al-Khelaifi has absolutely no ambition, no intention and no interest in the Fifa role and all this media noise, and instead will continue to quietly and constructively support all the institutions of world and European football,” a spokesperson for Al-Khelaifi said.

Another not understood to be interested is the man who quickly kicked off the condemnation, Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin. It is also unclear whether the Slovenian would have the supporter to mount a presidential challenge.

Who is Montagliani? And can he win?

Sources familiar with the matter insisted Montagliani retains much more backing across the world.

Montagliani is a long-standing ally of Infantino and is one of eight current Fifa Vice-Presidents. He became the first non-Caribbean Concacaf president since 1969 to be appointed in the aftermath of the corruption scandal in 2015.

It was not thought candidacy for the next election was on the 60-year-old’s radar, with Infantino described as “home and dry” for another term. It was more likely Montagliani would target the following campaign in 2031 and run for re-election in his region instead.

Having delivered a largely successful North American World Cup this summer, however, the Canadian is now at the peak of his powers, in an ideal position to overthrow a figure who is doing his best to dissuade the entire footballing world of his legitimacy.

Read more

Kevin Garside: It’s over for Gianni Infantino

Explained: Seven outrageous ways Infantino’s grubby plan will ruin the World Cup

Fifa and Infantino have doubled down on their plans in a convoluted statement on Friday, vowing to press ahead with an “open and democratic” consultation on the proposals.

“Nobody is selling football,” the world governing body said. “This is not something FIFA would ever entertain. We respect the feedback and concern aired in public and reaffirm our commitment to an open and democratic consultation.”

The AFC, who are crucial for Infantino if he is to stay on for another four years after the next election, expressed concern that the Fifa proposal was made public before all 211 member associations were fully consulted. Infantino’s senior adviser Carlos Cordeiro has also resigned in protest.

The next Fifa presidential election will take place in Morocco. Currently Infantino is the only declared candidate. The deadline for others to come forward is November 18.

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Whenever the cameras panned towards Gianni Infantino during the World Cup, you would see Arsene Wenger alongside the Fifa president or just behind, usually in dark glasses looking inscrutably cool.

Whatever excesses Infantino committed, however much he embarrassed himself, there was always Wenger to make sure everything did not get too much out of hand.

Now that everything in Fifa has got completely out of hand with the World Cup up for sale, maybe the man who in his years at Arsenal railed against the “financial doping” practised by Manchester City ought to say something.

Perhaps it might be time for Fifa’s director of global development to make a stand.

You might have a long wait. Rather like discovering that John Cleese thinks Rupert Lowe is his preferred politician, there is something profoundly depressing about finding Wenger in Infantino’s corner as Fifa prepares to flog the greatest competition in sport.

Wenger’s silence will feel like a betrayal to those who thought he was a guardian of the beautiful game.

But Wenger is a man who has, shall we say, always known his own value, a quality he shares with his old adversary Sir Alex Ferguson who until recently charged Manchester United £2m a year for being a club ambassador.

Being director of development for world football is rather more exacting than standing in a room and being Ferguson but it pays much more than £2m a year.

As Arsenal manager, Wenger was not against money in football, he was against the government of Abu Dhabi giving a lot of it to a club that were one of his direct opponents.

The president of the German Football Association, Bernd Neuendorf, said that the details of the project to sell stakes in the World Cup are so comprehensive that “it must have been discussed within Fifa for months, a year or even longer”.

Neuendorf did not know about it until he read it in the press, and he is on the Fifa Council, the organisation’s supreme decision-making body.

This was something that only those close to Infantino seemed to have been aware of and he and Wenger are very close.

Wenger was appointed directly by Infantino, and has long been part of his inner circle. He accompanied Infantino to Davos for the World Economic Forum as if he were the chief of staff to a head of state, which seems to be how Infantino sees himself.

When Infantino celebrated 10 years with Fifa, Wenger led the adulation.

Even when you thought he might speak out against a World Cup staged in Qatar in the middle of a European season by a regime that flagrantly abused human rights, Wenger said very little, noting only how teams like Germany, who had made political statements during the tournament, had not performed well.

Wenger enthusiastically welcomed the 48-team tournament. He has explicitly argued for a World Cup every two years, which the new venture capitalist stakeholders will surely press for because every time the money men become involved, the solution is always the same – more games.

At Arsenal, Wenger put player welfare at the heart of his management. Arsenal were the last major club to succumb to the idea of vast pre-season tours across America and Asia because sitting on planes for countless hours and playing matches in aching humidity while engaging in marketing stunts is no kind of preparation for an English winter. Obviously.

There is one part of selling the World Cup that he would also support. As head of global development, Wenger is one of the principal deliverers of Infantino’s vision to spread football around the world.

The aims are laudable. There will be $200m of direct investment and every one of Fifa’s 211 members will have an elite academy ultimately overseen by Wenger.

Young footballers across the globe, aged between 12 and 15, will be given training, equipment and, most importantly, an education. Who would argue against that? It also fits in very neatly with Infantino’s politics.

Every Fifa president wins power by promising to expand the World Cup. Sixteen teams under Stanley Rous, 24 under Joao Havelange, 32 under Sepp Blatter, 48 under Infantino. If you offer more places at the party, more countries will vote for you because next time it might just be them.

And every country has a vote. The Seychelles and Spain each have one. Cape Verde earned $23.2m from a World Cup they may not have qualified for unless Infantino expanded the tournament. Since this is many, many times their annual turnover, you can be sure where their vote will go at the next election.

Not every country can qualify even for the 64-team tournament which most assuredly is coming but every member country can be given an elite youth academy. Every Fifa member will be given a stake worth $40m if they vote for the proposal.

Read more

• Comment: The World Cup’s very existence hangs by a thread

• Explained: Seven outrageous ways Infantino’s grubby plan will ruin the World Cup

If $40m is enough to clear the debts of the Football Association of Ireland, how many academies would that fund across the developing football world – assuming the money finds its way to the academies. It is an offer they cannot refuse.

To continue the theme of The Godfather, it might have been tempting to view Wenger as a kind of consigliere, gently reining in the excesses of the man at the top with a tap on the shoulder, Robert Duvall to Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone.

Until he speaks out, Wenger can be regarded as no such thing. He is an employee, a supremely well-paid employee but an employee for all that and one that can be relied on not to criticise his boss – not even after a few drinks at the Christmas party.

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Eddie Howe‘s departure leaves Newcastle United at their biggest point of the peril since PIF took over the club.

Howe’s departure is set to be announced imminently by Newcastle, with The i Paper told the club had been working on a replacement for more than a fortnight.

Having originally told the club at the end of last season that he had the energy to lead them into a new era, Howe changed his mind two weeks ago.

The decision is said to be amicable and Howe will take a break from football. Mathias Jaissle will be confirmed as his replacement in time for the start of Newcastle’s La Manga training camp at the end of the week.

It is an orderly transition and Newcastle point out Jaissle’s imminent coronation shows they have been working on succession planning for weeks. But from the outside it feels like the project has been rocked by a second successive summer of turmoil.

It is possible to make make a convincing case that Howe’s exit makes sense – last season was an alarming, retrograde step after a tenure marked by stunning progress and his modus operandi does not tally with the recruitment pivot to young, European stars that is taking place – but the timing is terrible and raises huge questions about what exactly the scope of the project is.

This is a club that has sold two of its best players and looks set to flog a third in Bruno Guimaraes, who The i Paper understands expects to move to Arsenal in a move that will strip Newcastle of another crown jewel.

His successor will be Matthias Jaissle, the progressive German coach recently at Al Ahli but who has experience of the Red Bull model with Salzburg. At 38 he has energy, a passion for high press, front-foot football and a clean slate but his CV is fairly thin for such a big job. There is real promise there but Newcastle are taking a gamble.

The rumblings of a schism with Howe have been in the background for a while. At least one senior figure was lukewarm about Howe’s performance last season and at the meeting of the club’s hierarchy at Matfen Hall not all of the analytics presented were favourable to the manager.

In-game management was mentioned. The minimum target for the year was to finish in the European places and that was missed – which came with big consequences for the club. Financially they are in a worse position and some players – not just ones who have left already – expressed a desire to move on without Europe. There was a general consensus that a repeat could not be tolerated this season.

But Howe had also assured Newcastle he was energised and ready for the challenge of a new era, new team and new ambitions. 

Newcastle still firmly backed him too but a few weeks later he has taken the decision to step aside. Sources insist he was on board with the recruitment plans but he is unsure it the profile of player and possible further sales would give him a chance to recover his reputation with fans.

But Howe has also assured Newcastle he was energised and ready for the challenge of a new era, new team and new ambitions. Newcastle felt his history of performing well when the club had a full week to prepare for games made him the right man and his history suggested he would succeed again.

A few months later he has taken the decision to step aside, seemingly unsure if the profile of player and possible further sales would give him a chance to recover his reputation with fans.

Clearly the sales of Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali – who were both key Howe lieutenants – have impacted his thinking. The fact Guimaraes and Lewis Hall are both unsettled will not help – but the sort of player Newcastle are signing has also played on his mind.

The i Paper had been told of internal tensions at the club of the summer, particularly in the way the club missed out on Spain winger Victor Munoz.

There have been “honest” conversations for weeks, we are told. That is why a move for Jaissle is so far along and why they will be able to coronate him imminently, with three weeks to work on the training ground and integrate several new players into the squad.

That Howe is off in these circumstances is hugely sad. He has been the most successful and influential manager at Newcastle since Kevin Keegan, who became a friend. He created a team that gave the elite a bloody nose and won Newcastle’s first silverware for more than 50 years.

There is Paris Saint-Germain, Wembley, two Champions League campaigns, numerous brilliant, exhilarating Premier League wins at a feverish St James’ Park and a man who “gets” Newcastle. He will never, ever be forgotten.

For the hierarchy there are now big, big questions. The message remains that this is a club with ambition, that the PIF is still committed and ready to invest big in infrastructure projects (the training ground announcement could come in September) but the timing of this is off.

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If a change was coming, why not at the end of the season when Howe could have got his send off and a new man could have been fully invested in the recruitment pivot? Why was no one prepared to make that call then?

Newcastle currently look like a soft touch in the transfer market – great sellers but unable to bring in experienced replacements. Guimaraes will become the fourth big name to demand and be granted a move if it happens – Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest seem more resolute in their stance with star players.

Communication from the top is desperately needed. Ross Wilson and David Hopkinson are doing what they can in difficult circumstances but where is the PIF?

Is the idea in the face of suffocating financial rules just to become another Brighton or Bournemouth? Or will they take control at some point and show they mean business off-the-field? It has been a while since that happened.

Howe’s departure plunges them into deep waters. Whether they sink or swim feels uncertain at this point.

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Eddie Howe has resigned as Newcastle United manager and is set to be replaced by Al Ahli’s Matthias Jaissle.

Howe informed the club at the end of last season that he intended to remain in charge but has since had a change of heart and now wants a break from football, according to The Athletic.

The shock development, which comes just three weeks before the start of the new season, ends a turbulent final year in charge for the Englishman.

Howe took over at St James’ Park shortly after the takeover by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and initially enjoyed significant success, saving the club from relegation, qualifying for the Champions League and then taking them to a first trophy in 70 years with success in the Carabao Cup in 2025.

However, the messy departure of Alexander Isak to Liverpool last summer followed by a disappointing 12th-placed finish heaped pressure on the 48-year-old.

On the back of that the Magpies have had a difficult summer with stars Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali departing, while speculation continues over the future of captain Bruno Guimaraes.

Howe was in charge for a 4-1 pre-season friendly defeat at Bristol City on Wednesday night.

Analysis: Big questions for Newcastle hierarchy

By Mark Douglas, northern football correspondent

I think this is the right decision, on balance, but the timing is hugely problematic. It’s a lot for a new manager with no experience of English football to cope with as Newcastle change direction completely.

There are big questions for the ownership and hierarchy too about whether this should have been done sooner. Howe looked very downbeat at the pre-season friendly against Gateshead on Saturday.

He’s been a brilliant manager for Newcastle but this new project – young, inexperienced players – didn’t feel the right fit for me. Still, a lot for successor to live up to.

Who is Matthias Jaissle?

Newcastle are reportedly in advanced talks with Jaissle, a relatively unknown 38-year-old who has been in charge of the PIF-owned Al Ahli in the Saudi Pro League since 2023.

The German enjoyed a limited professional playing career as a centre-back at Stuttgart and Hoffenheim.

He turned to coaching in Austria with second-tier Liefering before joining sister club Red Bull Salzburg in 2021 where he won two league titles and enjoyed successful runs in Europe.

Appointed as Al Ahli head coach in 2023, Jaissle led the club to back-to-back AFC Champions League titles.

Additional reporting by Press Association

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Fifa presents… the 128-team Coca-Cola 2036 World Cup, powered by Aramco and co-hosted by the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Genuinely: maybe.

Football should not be Gianni Infantino’s to sell and yet the Fifa president has set about seismic plans to change the game as we know it.

On Tuesday it emerged Fifa intends to “expand football development” by selling a minority stake in a new company – Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) – that would run events including the World Cup and Club World Cup.

The sell-off would supposedly increase funding for every Fifa nation, with associations warned they will be denied a slice of the pie if they oppose the plans.

As it stands, that could include Uefa nations after European football’s governing body said the proposals “crossed a line”, but that may not deter Infantino, who has seen the dollar signs and reportedly taken counsel from Donald Trump’s administration regarding the plan.

Here’s how it could change football for the worse…

A World Cup every two years

An idea first touted in 2021 and championed by former Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger, the possibility of holding a men’s World Cup every two years would only increase if this plan goes ahead.

Private capital demands growth, and with JP Morgan working alongside Fifa, those hoping for a healthy return on their investment will want to explore ways of making greater profits.

So why have a World Cup every four years when it could be two? It is a horrendous idea that vastly diminishes the prestige of winning the tournament, but hey, it would boost bank balances for those, literally, invested.

64 World Cup teams – and beyond?

The confetti had barely settled at the New York New Jersey Stadium after the World Cup final when Infantino hyped up the prospect of expanding the tournament to 64 teams.

“If you don’t give smaller countries the chance to participate in the World Cup, they also lose the incentive to keep improving,” he said.

But who is to say Infantino will stop at 64? More nations, more money, right?

Make it a 128-team bonanza? Heck, there are 211 member associations, so let’s go for a four-month World Cup extravaganza and let ChatGPT worry about the format.

No one would rule out Infantino one-day staging an every-nation World Cup, although he does have one major obstacle…

A World Cup without Uefa

The biggest hindrance to Fifa’s plans could be Uefa’s opposition, with European nations set to discuss a World Cup boycott should the spin-off venture go ahead.

Five of the past six World Cup winners have been European. The final has only ever been contested by European or South American nations.

So, obviously, a World Cup without European nations is not a World Cup. Uefa knows that, making for a possible civil war.

Saudi Arabia and the United States share hosting?

Who stages a 64-team, 96-team, 128-team World Cup? The bigger the tournament, the smaller the pool of possible hosts, and if Uefa are out of the equation then options are limited further.

There is every chance it goes to those dancing to Fifa’s tune, or in reality, the nations Infantino has cosied up to, e.g. the US and Saudi Arabia.

Already it appeared that Infantino bowed to Trump’s call to suspend Folarin Balogun’s one-game ban, having already handed the leader of the free world the coveted Fifa Peace Prize in December 2025, a month before the US launched airstrikes on Venezuela – and then Iran in February.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, will host the 2034 World Cup. They were the sole bidders, hinting towards a future where only those with deep pockets can stage the event.

Trust plummets further

The Balogun saga exposed Infantino’s apparent favouritism, while dressing up the ad breaks as hydration breaks fooled few and angered many.

Add to that various unfounded conspiracy theories, including Argentina getting favourable decisions to ensure Lionel Messi went as far as possible, and the latest World Cup was engulfed in deep mistrust.

Throw further commercialisation into the equation and trust will only plummet further.

Future generations blinded

For the older generation, the World Cup was a 16-team tournament featuring the very, very best. Even when it expanded to 32, millennials growing up appreciated a neat format where competition was fierce, mistakes were punished and “groups of death” were a regularity.

Football was front and centre, but the 2026 edition was a window into what is to come, a tournament broken into quarters where Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi get to stat-pad.

Future generations will never get to see the World Cup in its purest form, but while Haaland and Mbappe keep scoring, their thirst will be quenched and younger fans will be blind to what football’s primary principles are meant to be.

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Ticket prices sky rocket

Reports suggest Fifa will announce record revenues from the 2026 World Cup, and ticket prices will have played a huge part. England and Scotland fans forked out thousands to follow the group stages alone, while tickets for the final were around four times the price of the final at Qatar 2022.

It therefore became a tournament for the mega-rich with frequent shots of VIPs in boxes and influencers littered around the stands. That won’t change unless prices come down, but if anything, they are more likely to go up.

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Gianni Infantino came to power because of a man called Chuck Blazer, a big, bouncy, bearded man who sounded as if he should have been Ted Lasso’s chairman at AFC Richmond.

Blazer was Fifa’s most senior North American representative who accepted bribes of $11m to vote for Morocco and South Africa’s bids to stage the 1998 and 2010 World Cup.

His arrest for this and many other things led to Sepp Blatter’s downfall and Infantino’s arrival as the new reforming president.

There are two interesting things about Blazer. One was that Fifa was and is a not-for-profit organisation.

The other is that he had three sumptuous apartments in Trump Tower. One for his offices, the other for himself and a third for his cats.

Now, with the revelation that Fifa plans to sell stakes in a company that would run the World Cup, the “not-for-profit” bit has been shunted aside and the values of the family that own the Trump Tower are nakedly front of stage.

The money that stands to be made from selling stakes in the World Cup to private investors – with the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital to the fore – would dwarf the cash dear old Chuck was able to pocket before the FBI came knocking.

At the head of this company is likely to be one Infantino who might expect to be paid 200 times more than the $227,000 he would earn as secretary-general of the United Nations, a job President Trump was recently touting him for.

Today, Uefa is presenting itself as the great obstacle to Infantino’s proposal. A boycott of the World Cup would wreck it entirely, but a boycott is unlikely to happen since the next tournament will be staged mostly in Spain, who are world champions.

The Spanish government has estimated the 2030 World Cup would bring between €7-8bn into its economy and create 170,000 jobs directly or indirectly. Unemployment in Spain has been around 2.5m for nearly 20 years. Spain is not going to vote for a boycott.

The best sanction Uefa has is to boycott the Club World Cup, which it instinctively dislikes because it challenges its own overblown Champions League.

If Infantino’s scheme were just a story about millionaires becoming billionaires, it might not carry so much resonance.

However, the only way these millionaires will become richer is by further debasing the greatest sporting show on the planet.

As Infantino pointed out amid complaints about ticket prices for group games being measured in thousands of dollars, the World Cup is virtually the only thing Fifa does.

It is certainly the only thing that makes it money, which the Club World Cup did not.

There are just two routes to ramp up Fifa’s already enormous income. One is by expanding the competition to 64 teams, creating more matches, more advertising, more broadcast rights. The other is by staging it more frequently.

There is a case for expansion. The joy of Cape Verde almost holding their own against the eventual finalists Spain and Argentina this summer would not have been possible without a 48-team tournament.

There were, nevertheless, eight nations who qualified for the 2026 World Cup who would not have done so under the old format. In 29 games they managed a single win– and that was when two of them, DR Congo and Uzbekistan, played each other.

The direness of the entrants for a 64-team tournament can be imagined. Who knows? Even Italy might make it.

The South American federation Conmebol is pushing hardest for expansion, mainly because only one of its 10 members would not qualify. A 64-team tournament would also raise a projected $2.5bn more in broadcast revenue compared to the 32-team affair in Qatar.

The 1970 tournament in Mexico, widely regarded as the greatest ever, had 16 teams. It raised less money yet produced infinitely more memories.

It was Blatter who first proposed a World Cup every couple of years. It would earn the investors in Infantino’s new company astonishing sums, but the price would be enormous.

The allure of the World Cup is its rarity, the thought you might not see the likes of Lionel Messi ever again. Well, hold on a couple of years and here he is once more along with his very marketable chums, Kylian Mbappe, Harry Kane and Lamine Yamal.

The allure of sport is that one mistake, one ill-judged putt, one well-directed punch, one beautifully-timed shot can change everything. It is called jeopardy and what football has done is to remove jeopardy from its contests as much as possible.

The 1970 World Cup had 24 group games. Its distant 2026 cousin ran to 72. Qualification is ever more straightforward, finishing third in your group is not necessarily fatal and if there is a superbly worked goal scored against you, VAR might detect a foul in the build-up play.

As a safeguarding measure, Fifa points out that every member will have a share in the World Cup company, but these shares can be sold.

So, you are Gambia, with perhaps the lowest turnover of any African federation with no chance of qualifying, and you can sell your share to whoever.

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Someone or somebody who might want World Cups staged every two years in nations like Saudi Arabia who will pay dazzling upfront sums or who like the United States can maximise every scrap of economic potential.

In 1962, Chile staged the World Cup two years after being laid waste by an earthquake. The Chilean delegate to Fifa, Carlos Dittborn, promised: “Because we have nothing, we will do everything.”

Countries who have nothing have long been of no interest to Fifa and this proposal makes it official.

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