resigned his senior post<\/a> over Infantino’s private equity plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Carlos Cordeiro is someone I’ve known for more than three decades,” Carney said. “Very high integrity individual and he was [Infantino’s] adviser and had expertise in all the aspects of what was proposed and he was not consulted.”<\/p>\n
“This is not how you run any business, a small business, let alone something that is a global responsibility like football.”<\/p>\n
Following the pushback, Infantino said FIFA would scrap the proposal.<\/p>\n
Throughout this year’s tournament \u2014 which Canada co-hosted alongside the U.S. and Mexico \u2014 Carney rubbed shoulders with Infantino, even helping the FIFA president hand out awards at the World Cup final with Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.<\/p>\n
“I’ve run a few organizations in my time,” Carney said. “The idea that proper governance is not to disclose to your closest advisors, your chief operating officer, your fellow board members, something of consequence that you’re even considering let alone proposing, that should be fatal and you lose confidence in that individual.”<\/p>\n
Infantino courting Trump’s favour<\/p>\n
In December 2025, Infantino awarded Trump the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, a distinction the association introduced a month prior.<\/p>\n
“You can always count, Mr. President, on my support, on the support of the entire football community, or ‘soccer’ community, to help you make peace and make the world prosper,” Infantino said while presenting Trump with the award in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
After the 2026 World Cup kicked off, Infantino sparked controversy when FIFA lifted U.S. star forward Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension following a phone call from Trump.<\/p>\n
Trump confirmed he asked Infantino for a review of the suspension, saying “I didn’t think it was a foul.”<\/p>\n
“I didn’t tell him what to do, I can’t tell him what to do,” Trump said.<\/p>\n
What’s next for FIFA?<\/p>\n
Carney was asked who else he would support to take on the mantle of FIFA president, and whether it should be Victor Montagliani, a Canadian and the current president of CONCACAF.<\/p>\n
While Carney said the decision is not his to make and that he would “defer to governance,” he described Montagliani as “an exceptional individual” and “a credit to Canada.”<\/p>\n
“He’s someone I know well and have tremendous respect for and loves the game,” he said.<\/p>\n
In a release, FIFA said its secretary general and management board “reaffirmed their full support” for Infantino at a meeting in Rabat, Morocco.<\/p>\n
It also said the meeting addressed the FFE proposal, “where mistakes made were acknowledged,” and that an apology letter was sent to the FIFA council and member associations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only weeks after the 2026 FIFA World Cup came to a close, Prime Minister Mark Carney criticized Gianni…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[26575,50643,50642,1314,12337,111,202],"class_list":["post-157360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-andy-burnham","tag-caribbean-association-football","tag-ffe","tag-fifa","tag-gianni-infantino","tag-mark-carney","tag-president-donald-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}