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Mohamed Mansi

Translated by

A fresh blow strikes at the heart of FIFA and Infantino

World Cup

FIFPRO have launched a broadside at FIFA officials, insisting that scrapping the World Cup privatisation project does nothing to end the crisis. If anything, it exposes a deep flaw in governance.

In a statement published on its official website, FIFPRO argued that the U-turn was inevitable. Yet it does not erase the fact that football's world governing body had drawn up a plan that would have permanently changed the ownership and governance of the World Cup.

What happened, the federation said, amounts to more than a governance failure. It represents a serious misuse of the FIFA president's powers.

The statement issued after the FIFA meeting in Rabat also drew criticism. FIFPRO felt it dodged the heart of the crisis, reducing it instead to "procedures and means of communication" that need improving, even as FIFA admitted mistakes had been made.

FIFA's claim that everything was done "in accordance with the international federation's regulatory framework" offers no defence, the statement went on. It reads as a direct indictment of the current governance system, one that allows projects of this scale to be cooked up in complete secrecy and hidden from those they affect until they are leaked.

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    FIFPRO rejects FIFA's warning and demands reform

    FIFPRO also rejected FIFA's warning that it "will not tolerate any attacks on its integrity", stressing that oversight of football governance is no attack but a responsibility shared by all who help protect the game.

    Any internal review whose findings go back to the very council that was bypassed here cannot count as a genuine solution, the body added, calling for players, their representatives and professional football stakeholders to be part of any future review process.

    The memorandum of understanding signed with FIFA weeks earlier had been a positive step, FIFPRO affirmed. But the crisis over the FFE project had shown it was not enough to protect players and the game from unilateral decisions.

    FIFPRO called for a raft of reforms. Chief among them: making the global social dialogue platform a permanent, binding part of FIFA's governance system, and legally obliging FIFA to consult stakeholders on major decisions such as the international match calendar and tournament expansion.

    Professional football representatives should also be granted voting rights within the FIFA Council, the body argued, with FIFPRO formally recognised as the global representative of players.

    The international federation of professional players revealed it had sent an official letter to FIFA's administration setting out these demands. The president of FIFPRO signed it, alongside the presidents of all its regional federations in Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, South America and Central and North America.

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