BREAKING FIFA’s Chief Operating Officer just said staff were “DECEIVED” over Gianni Infantino’s secret plan to sell off the World Cup to anchor investor Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared.
Kevin Lamour, FIFA’s chief operating officer since 2024 and one of the insiders who campaigned to make Infantino president back in 2016, put it in writing on Friday. “It is the project of one person,” he wrote, saying colleagues were deceived by Infantino’s lack of openness over months of secret planning and “deserve better than contempt and intimidation.” He said the plan must not go ahead. He did not quit.
“And if that means I lose my job then so be it,” the French official said. “I will understand and respect that decision. At least I’ll sleep well tonight.
Hours before that, Carlos Cordeiro resigned as Infantino’s senior adviser. Cordeiro is a former Goldman Sachs banker who sat on the White House Task Force for the World Cup and joined Infantino on working visits to Trump’s White House. “I cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup,” he wrote, saying he was never included in the talks and calling the $20 billion commercial spinoff “a bad deal for football.”
The structure: FIFA’s commercial business, including the men’s and women’s World Cups, rolled into a $20 billion company with 20% sold to private investors to raise $4.2 billion. FIFA already sits on billions in reserves with no debt and pulled in $15 billion over the last four years. Cordeiro’s word for it was “mortgaging football’s future without any compelling justification.”
All 211 member associations have until September 19 to sign on, or the one-off $20 million payment on offer to each of them disappears.
European associations have agreed to boycott the World Cup and every other FIFA competition over it.