"At Least I'll Sleep Well": The Revolt Against Infantino's Sellout

It is rare for a chief executive to publicly invite his own president to resign. On Friday, FIFA's chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, does exactly that. In a statement, the French executive, who has held the position since 2024, writes that FIFA employees have been deceived, that they deserve better than contempt and intimidation. And if those words cost him his job, he says, so be it. At least he'll sleep well tonight. He has not resigned.

The one who deceived them, Lamour says, was Gianni Infantino, whose plan, prepared over the course of months, to sell a share of future World Cup revenues to private investors has shaken FIFA for weeks. It is, Lamour writes, the project of one man alone. Not only must it never happen, he says, but the people responsible for the future of football must finally start asking the right questions and making the right decisions.

Just hours earlier, Carlos Cordeiro had walked away. Infantino's senior adviser, a former Goldman Sachs banker and former president of U.S. Soccer, who represented FIFA on the White House World Cup task force, announced that he could not stand by while FIFA considered selling a stake in the World Cup. He said he had been excluded from discussions about the proposal, which is backed by a New York investment fund led by Joshua Kushner. He has no involvement in it and rejects it without reservation.

Cordeiro understands the price of what is being negotiated. After 35 years in investment banking, he says he knows the value of an asset like this and the consequences of giving away part of it. The proposed subsidiary, valued at 20 billion dollars, is, in his view, a bad deal for football.

The numbers give weight to his argument. FIFA sits on billions of dollars in reserves and carries no debt. Over the four years surrounding the recently completed Men's World Cup alone, it generated 15 billion dollars in revenue. Against that backdrop, selling a permanent share of football's most valuable asset for 4.2 billion dollars makes little sense. It mortgages the future without any justification.

Infantino wants to move FIFA's commercial business, including the men's and women's World Cups and Club World Cups, into a company valued at 20 billion dollars, with private investors owning 20 percent. The lead investor is Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump's son in law. For years, Cordeiro accompanied Infantino on visits to Trump.

A philosopher writing around the turn of the twentieth century described how money reduces every value to mere quantity, turning everything it touches into something measurable, comparable, and ultimately for sale. That is exactly what is happening here with a game whose value never came from a balance sheet, but from what people themselves invested in it. The World Cup belonged, in a broader sense, to everyone. Now a fifth of its future earnings is supposed to belong to whoever is willing to pay for it. What is being described as an ownership stake is, in reality, the transformation of a shared public good into a commodity whose returns flow to a single name.

Lamour entered football two decades ago after a career in politics, serving as an aide to then UEFA President Michel Platini. He became the key link to football federations across Africa and Asia, the very federations now expected to decide whether to accept Infantino's proposal. Each federation has been offered 20 million dollars before September 19. It is the kind of payment capable of buying approval before anyone even asks why.

Infantino has led FIFA for more than 10 years and appeared headed for re-election without opposition back in March. Challengers may still declare their candidacy until November 18. Ironically, it is Lamour himself, one of the people who helped carry Infantino to his surprise victory in 2016 as part of his inner circle, who is now openly standing against him. European football associations are threatening to boycott the tournament, while opposition is also growing across Asia.

Cordeiro, who spent five years at Infantino's side, says he worked alongside people who genuinely care about the game. He hopes they will now raise their voices as well, because decisions of this magnitude must be made in the interest of football, not in the interest of those who profit from it. The proposal, he says, must be rejected.

On one side stands a legacy that no one created, yet many have been entrusted to protect. On the other stands a plan to turn that legacy into cash. Who sleeps well in the end may be decided by that alone.