The Football Association should take the lead in resisting FIFA president Gianni Infantino's plan to sell the World Cup to corporate investors, columnist Jeff Powell argues, calling the proposed financial distributions to member nations a bribe by any other name.
Powell describes Infantino's scheme as an attempt to flog off the World Cup in share lots as if it were a pharmaceutical company or arms manufacturer, warning that corporate greed will trample on the purity of the game if the plan goes ahead.
He draws a contrast with the era of Sir Stanley Rous, the English president of FIFA who Powell says held the good of the game above all else, running the organisation as a family trust rather than a commercial enterprise.
Powell singles out FA chief executive Mark Bullingham as the man who must act, calling on the FA to set an example by declaring it would refuse any multi-million dollar handout should Infantino's plan come to a vote. He describes such payments to poorer and in some cases corrupt football nations as straightforward inducements to back the proposal.
The columnist also warns against leaving opposition solely to UEFA, whose concerns he says reflect those of the wider game but who carry their own rivalry with FIFA into any dispute.
Tournament expansion in the crosshairs
Powell identifies three specific threats he says flow from the Infantino agenda: extinction of the World Cup through a potential European boycott, dilution through staging the tournament every two years, and expansion of the field of finalists from 48 teams at the 2026 edition to 64 next time and potentially 128 in future editions.
He calls on the FA to throw off what he describes as its obsequience to Premier League demands and instead rally believers across every continent behind an organised and concerted protest, arguing that the World Cup must be preserved as a game rather than a plaything of the stock exchanges.
