{"id":63198,"date":"2026-07-30T16:53:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T16:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/63198\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T16:53:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T16:53:18","slug":"european-soccer-teams-say-they-will-boycott-fifa-competitions-over-world-cup-sale-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/63198\/","title":{"rendered":"European soccer teams say they will boycott FIFA competitions over World Cup sale plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">GENEVA (AP) \u2014 UEFA member federations agreed Thursday to boycott all FIFA competitions in protest of Gianni Infantino\u2019s plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private equity investors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cUEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions,\u201d the European soccer body said after an urgent online meeting of the 55 members.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cSome things are simply too important to sell,\u201d UEFA said in a statement. \u201cThe FIFA World Cup belongs to football. It always will. And so long as Europe has a voice, it will never be for sale.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"Spain's Rodri (16) lifts the trophy as the team celebrates winning the World Cup final soccer...\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/VAEKVO7V25GJFEZOMT6WWW5JBQ.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"653\" \/>Spain&#8217;s Rodri (16) lifts the trophy as the team celebrates winning the World Cup final soccer match between Spain and Argentina in East Rutherford, N.J., near New York, Sunday, July 19, 2026.(Julio Cortez | AP Photo\/Julio Cortez)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The strategy meeting was called to counter FIFA president Infantino\u2019s offer of $20 million to each of FIFA\u2019s 211 global members that has to be accepted by mid-September.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Infantino\u2019s secret proposal was revealed Tuesday to spin off its commercial operations in a new $20 billion subsidiary 20% owned by private investors. The core investor would be a New York investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThis is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA\u2019s duty as the custodian of world football,\u201d said UEFA, where Infantino was a long-time staffer and its CEO-like general secretary when he was first elected to lead FIFA in 2016.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe moment external investors acquire ownership interests in FIFA competitions, football changes forever,\u201d UEFA said. \u201cCommercial return becomes a permanent obligation. Investor expectations become a daily pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Infantino has presented the private equity offer as a chance to \u201cturbocharge\u201d funding development of soccer across the world, where a majority of the 211 FIFA members rely on its funding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Officials from about 40 UEFA member spoke at the urgent meeting, with anger expressed that FIFA is not using some of its multi-billion reserves to fund extra development programs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The next scheduled FIFA tournament is in Europe \u2014 the Women\u2019s Under-20 World Cup hosted by Poland from Sept. 5.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENEVA (AP) \u2014 UEFA member federations agreed Thursday to boycott all FIFA competitions in protest of Gianni Infantino\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11590,25325,3357,313,1743,25324,17,415,369],"class_list":["post-63198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-boycott","tag-federations","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-soccer","tag-soccer-teams","tag-spain","tag-uefa","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}