{"id":612086,"date":"2026-07-30T18:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T18:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/612086\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T18:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T18:08:16","slug":"uefa-says-all-european-teams-will-boycott-world-cup-if-infantinos-sell-off-goes-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/612086\/","title":{"rendered":"Uefa says all European teams will boycott World Cup if Infantino&#8217;s sell-off goes ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>UEFA, THE GOVERNING body of football in Europe, has said no European national teams will participate in any Fifa competitions until the proposal to sell off part of the body to investors is scrapped.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Football\u2019s world governing body said on Tuesday it was seeking to create Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE), which it revealed would be responsible for bringing together the sale of Fifa\u2019s commercial rights with the operational delivery of its tournaments.<\/p>\n<p>The move was met with immediate outrage, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/fifa-private-investment-2-7116006-Jul2026\/?utm_source=facebook_short\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">with Uefa leading the way<\/a>, saying it \u201ccrosses a line that football\u2019s governing institutions should never cross\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In a scathing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uefa.com\/news-media\/news\/02a7-213a92896eb0-54dfbf454e3b-1000--statement-on-behalf-of-uefa-and-its-55-national-associations\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">statement <\/a>released today, the association said that \u201cno Uefa national teams will participate in any Fifa competition for so long as these proposals remain alive\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>It said its position would not change \u201cunless 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\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNobody should be in any doubt: Uefa and its national associations will oppose these plans with absolute determination,\u201d it said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Fifa\u2019s president, Gianni Infantino, said that FFE \u201cis actually a proposal, an offer\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s part of a democratic process \u2013 a consultation process \u2013 and, above all, it is an opportunity but not an obligation,\u201d Infantino said in a video released Wednesday evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is a golden opportunity to turbocharge the development of the game globally. But again, it is just an offer, not an obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In its statement today, Uefa rejected the characterisation of the process as \u201cdemocratic\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is both irresponsible and indefensible that a proposal of such significance for football was conceived in secret and brought to the brink of approval without any meaningful consultation with those entrusted with stewarding the game,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA\u2019s duty as the custodian of world football.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With reporting from AFP\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UEFA, THE GOVERNING body of football in Europe, has said no European national teams will participate in any&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,34476,34477,22,74963,19,17,258303,4335,132,19413],"class_list":["post-612086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-eire","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-football","tag-gianni-infantino","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-not-for-sale","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-uefa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}