The selections of Europe, out of the World Cup: UEFA agrees to an unprecedented boycott

BarcelonaThe 55 UEFA member countries have voted in favour of supporting a boycott of the World Cup in protest against FIFA's proposal to sell stakes to private investors. The announcement comes after the member federations of the European football governing body met remotely. In this way, next year's Women's World Cup, to be held in Brazil, and the men's, which is to be held in 2030 jointly between Spain, Portugal and Morocco, would not include teams from Europe.

From this Tuesday, UEFA began to consider launching a boycott of FIFA competitions in response to its general secretary, Gianni Infantino's, plan to release a percentage of the World Cup and Club World Cup onto the market to attract private investment to generate more money. When Infantino's plans became known following a publication by the British newspaper The Times and, consequently, FIFA issued a statement outlining its president's intentions, the European football governing body was quick to express its rejection. "A red line has been crossed," they warned.

This Thursday they have materialized their threat. "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions. UEFA and its 55 member associations stand united. We unanimously and unequivocally reject FIFA's proposal to transfer ownership stakes in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions to private investors," states the organization in a new release, asserting that it will not change its stance until FIFA "withdraws these proposals entirely and guarantees that it will never again open its governance or its competitions to private ownership."

When consulted by ARA, the Royal Spanish Football Federation and the Spanish government, the country set to co-host the 2030 World Cup with Portugal and Morocco, have opted to remain silent and aligned with UEFA's position.

Infantino defends himself against the wave of criticism

From Wednesday night to Thursday morning, hours before the UEFA decision to boycott FIFA competitions became known, Infantino had released a video of almost five minutes in which he assured that the project of selling part of the World Cup and the Club World Cup "is not an obligation, but an opportunity".

"The FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, is actually a proposal, an offer. It is part of a democratic process – a consultation process – and, above all, it is an opportunity, not an obligation. As I have already said, it initiates the consultation process. If, and only if, it is approved by the majority of our 211 member associations and by the FIFA Council, it would become a subsidiary owned and controlled by FIFA, which would consolidate FIFA's commercial and event operations. Its function would be to market and organise all FIFA-owned competitions, along with sponsorship, broadcasting, licensing and new projects for the benefit of FIFA's 211 member associations, and would also release commercial value that had not previously been leveraged," stated the FIFA president.

UEFA brands Infantino's proposal "intimidation"

Infantino's privatization initiative foresaw allocating approximately 20 million dollars (around 17,600,000 euros) per federation in exceptional funding for special projects of the new FIFA Fast-Forward program (FFFP), as well as an additional 20 million dollars through the Forward program for the 2027-2030 period (currently budgeted at around 7 million euros). Each federation would receive 20 million dollars (around 17,600,000 euros) starting from the cycle that would begin on January 1, 2027.

Furthermore, these amounts would increase in each cycle. In this way, they would be 22 million dollars for the 2031-2034 period, 24 million for 2035-2038, and so on. Additionally, each member federation that sells a portion of its quota to the FFF to external investors would earn an additional 20 million dollars starting from January 1, 2027. This would represent an injection as early as 2027 of up to 40 million dollars for state football associations, and in a 12-year cycle – which would involve the staging of three World Cups – the final figure would approach a total injection of around 90 million dollars, according to FIFA.

Thus, Infantino wanted to convince the federations that, before the threat of a UEFA boycott, they had until September 19 to evaluate the initiative, vote for his proposal, and, of course, be re-elected as president of the institution in 2027. "National federations worldwide now face an ultimatum: accept the irreversible appropriation of football's most important competitions or face the consequences. This is not a "democratic decision" but rather governance based on intimidation: an act of coercion unworthy of an institution entrusted with the management of world football," UEFA criticized.

Before submitting the proposal to the federations, Infantino had already received the outright rejection of UEFA and public figures such as British Prime Minister Andy Burnham or the European Commissioner for Sport, Glenn Micallef. As the governing body of European football, they were not at all pleased with FIFA's intention to increase funding to over 10 billion dollars through the privatization of competitions to private investors.