UEFA, Concacaf and the AFC have jointly demanded that FIFA president Gianni Infantino step down and not seek re-election at the presidency vote next March.
The confederation presidents, Aleksander Ceferin, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa and Victor Montagliani, co-signed a strongly worded letter to FIFA calling on Infantino to leave the role, while offering him the chance to depart with dignity.
The FIFA Forward Enterprise plan
The dispute centers on the FIFA Forward Enterprise plan, which would have allowed private capital into interests linked to the World Cup. Although FIFA withdrew the proposal, the three confederations say the matter is not closed.
In their joint statement, they argue the problem goes beyond a single business initiative and touches how global football is governed. They criticized the process behind the plan, saying it was pushed forward on an extremely tight timeline without meaningful consultation with national federations and other stakeholders.
Call for an independent inquiry
The three confederations rejected an internal FIFA investigation as insufficient. FIFA has said it will compile a full report on what happened and present it to its Council.
UEFA, the AFC and Concacaf said that process would not guarantee the necessary independence, and called for the investigation to be handed to a fully independent third party with no involvement from FIFA's leadership, staff or anyone directly connected to football.
The letter states that the attempt to hand private interests a stake linked to the World Cup was not a simple procedural mistake but a serious error of judgment that has damaged trust in FIFA's leadership. Leadership in football is not ownership, the letter states, but a duty owed to the football family that entrusts that responsibility. The confederations added that trust breaks down when a person places themselves above the collective body that granted them authority.
