Infantino Calls for an Independent Review of FIFA's Governance After the $4.2 Billion Gamble

On 15 October, a letter left FIFA headquarters in Zurich and landed in the inboxes of the presidents of 211 member associations. Gianni Infantino did not write about a match, did not write about any broadcasting deal, and did not name a single person. He asked the FIFA Council to commission an independent assessment of the current governance structure of the organisation he leads.

Read that slowly and it becomes stranger than it looks. The head of a machine is asking for the machine to be examined from the outside. In 27 years in this trade, I have read enough communiqués to sort them into two kinds: the kind written to explain, and the kind written to clear a path. This letter belongs to the second kind, and I will say why before I finish.

The Athletic and several other outlets reported the contents of the letter. According to those reports, at the FIFA Council meeting on 15 October, Infantino wants the Council itself to formally request the independent assessment. He also wants talks with member associations and other stakeholders about possible improvements inside FIFA.

The scope is spelled out precisely: the role of the FIFA president, the role of the FIFA Council, the role of the FIFA Congress. The Swiss president also wants greater transparency and more input from stakeholders before major decisions.

To understand why such a letter appears now, you have to go back to a wound inside FIFA that has only just closed over: the plan called FIFA Forward Enterprise.

Under that proposal, FIFA wanted to sell 20 per cent of its commercial and organisational activities to outside investors for around $4.2 billion. The plan was withdrawn before it was ever formally presented to the FIFA Council and the member associations. Infantino stresses it was only a proposal and that no final decision was ever taken.

Pressure on the president had been building in the months before. But Infantino himself concedes one thing: the row showed that big plans can only succeed if the decision-making process commands enough trust. Big ideas, he writes, must be developed, tested and communicated through clear and reliable institutions.

Selling a slice of commercial rights to an investment fund is familiar ground in Europe. LaLiga signed with CVC in 2026, trading 10 per cent of a new company for around 2.7 billion euros, and ran into opposition from several big clubs. The Bundesliga's attempt to sell a share of its media rights collapsed amid fan protests in 2026. Serie A negotiated and then walked away.

What is different at FIFA is that no supporter sits in the room. There is no stand, no banner, no whistling. There are member associations, and their fortunes are tied to the money FIFA distributes.

Now the arithmetic, because I do not trust governance debates that arrive without a denominator.

If $4.2 billion buys 20 per cent of the commercial and organisational operation, the implied valuation of that operation is roughly $21 billion. For the four-year cycle from 2026 to 2026, FIFA has projected revenue of about $11 billion. The proposed deal valued that operation at nearly double the total revenue of four years combined.

Numbers do not lie, but those who can read them always know how to make others believe the opposite.

Supporters read that valuation as recognition: the market believes in FIFA more than FIFA believes in itself. Opponents read the same set of figures as a divestment: selling part of the money-printing machine in exchange for one cash injection. Both sides argue from the same numbers, and neither is wrong on the arithmetic. They differ only on where the decimal point belongs.

For me, the numbers were never the main question. The main question is who signs.

Money in football has a smell, and I smelled it long before anyone admitted it out loud.

FIFA has 211 member associations, each with one vote at Congress. Most of them depend on the money flowing downhill through the FIFA Forward programme. By FIFA's own figures, each association can receive up to $8 million in a four-year cycle, with mandatory spending on women's football attached. For a small association in Oceania or the Caribbean, that is a decade of operating budget, not a line of data for a conference slide.

Whoever controls the money flowing downhill controls the votes flowing uphill. Every governance reform at FIFA is, in the end, a negotiation over who presses the button that releases that money.

When everyone looks at the giants, I have already seen the Vikings smiling quietly. There are no Vikings here, only 211 small associations, and they are the ones who decide.

The 2026 reform package, drafted after the criminal cases in the United States, built today's skeleton: independent judicial and audit committees, term limits, and a FIFA Council replacing the old Executive Committee. It was celebrated at the time. A decade on, people still argue about the gap between the blueprint on paper and the real power in the room.

Within that skeleton, the FIFA Congress is the only place where all 211 associations sit together and decide. The Council meets more often, handles more business, and is far more closed. The letter's mention of the Congress's role is not a small detail: push authority over large commercial deals towards Congress and FIFA's decision-making slows down dramatically.

In Vietnam, youth football and women's football projects have long drawn part of their funding from FIFA Forward money. That is the practical reason this story is closer than it looks, whether you read the news from Hanoi or Hai Phong.

Based on my experience of following matches and congresses alike, one pattern repeats: the biggest changes in world football are never announced on the pitch. They are settled in rooms without cameras.

In 2026 I wrote that an esports team in Vietnam was three years ahead of the global meta, and I was called a dreamer, simply because I read the movement data instead of watching highlights. Football works the same way. Rights deals, council seats, voting statutes: that is where the real match is played.

In 2026, when football stopped, I lost money and gained a first lesson in cash flow. The lesson was simple: without cash up front, every tactic is a sheet of paper. An independent review of governance, without broad terms of reference and real access to documents, is also just a handsome sheet of paper.

There is, however, a reading that weakens my argument considerably, and I have to name it before someone else does.

The fact that the $4.2 billion plan was withdrawn before it reached the FIFA Council may be evidence that the system worked: a proposal met enough resistance and withdrew itself, and no resolution was ever forced through. An organisation with no internal opposition mechanism would have sold the 20 per cent long ago.

And if Infantino genuinely hands the review to a credible third party whose remit touches the president's own chair, that is something very few major sports bodies would dare, including the ones most often praised for transparency.

Here is where I lack evidence: I cannot read the terms of reference of the review, because they do not exist yet. Whoever writes the scope writes it before the conclusion. That is why I am not drawing one.

One piece of timing deserves to be placed side by side with the rest. The deadline for presidential candidates to submit their names is 18 November. The vote takes place in March. As things stand, Infantino is the only candidate. The reform letter went out a few weeks before the nomination deadline, and the vote comes roughly four months after that.

I am not saying the letter is fake. I am saying that in an organisation with 211 votes, where most voters receive money from the downhill budget, a public reform pledge is the cheapest and most effective campaign asset available. The crowd is data, and I always read it backwards.

I am betting on a scenario you can check. The terms of reference for the review will be far narrower than the scope described in the letter. The section on the FIFA Congress will be the blurriest, because that is where the real power sits. And the final conclusions will land after March, once the votes are cast.

If I am wrong, and a genuinely broad review is published before the vote, with terms of reference that speak plainly about presidential power, I will write a public correction, without conditions.

If I am right, then in a few years, when another plan to sell a stake is put on the table with a bigger valuation and a new name, someone will remember this letter from October. Football never stopped. It just changed its pace of rotation in rooms with no cameras.