FIFA accused European soccer body UEFA of running a smear campaign against the organization and its president, Gianni Infantino, in a court filing Thursday tied to Infantino’s abandoned plan to sell stakes in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions.
The filing came in response to discovery requests UEFA submitted last week in three separate U.S. courts, seeking testimony and documents from U.S. based entities for use in potential criminal proceedings UEFA is considering pursuing against Infantino in Switzerland. “While these applications are styled as legal pleadings with captions and docket numbers, they are little more than press releases in further support of UEFA’s smear campaign against FIFA and its leadership,” FIFA said in its filing in U.S. District Court in Colorado.
FIFA’s Thursday filing, submitted by FIFA (AMERICAS) Inc. and FWC2026 US, Inc., was a motion to intervene asking the court to defer ruling on UEFA’s discovery request or allow FIFA to formally oppose it.
What We Know So Far
Reports differed on the exact date FIFA withdrew the underlying proposal, known as the FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, which would have sold stakes in commercial rights linked to the men’s and women’s World Cups to private equity investors for $4.2 billion. One account cited the withdrawal date as August 1, while another cited July 31, a discrepancy that had not been resolved as of the latest reporting. Both accounts agreed the proposal was pulled within days of becoming public, following intense pushback from UEFA and other regional confederations.
UEFA’s discovery requests were filed in the Southern District of New York, in Florida, where FIFA had its operational base for the 2026 World Cup, and in Colorado, targeting Infantino adviser Greg Maffei, the former CEO of Liberty Media. The New York filing specifically seeks documents from Josh Kushner and his investment firm, Thrive Capital Management. Kushner, the younger brother of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, had Thrive involved in the FFE proposal. In a statement to Axios, Kushner defended the plan’s motivations but acknowledged he had not anticipated the scale of political pushback it would generate, saying Thrive would not have gotten involved had it foreseen how the situation would unfold.
UEFA has said in court filings that it is preparing a possible criminal complaint against Infantino in Swiss courts over alleged financial mismanagement tied to the proposal, arguing the plan was designed to let Infantino and a small circle around him acquire a permanent stake in and profit from FIFA’s most valuable assets, to the detriment of FIFA’s broader membership. FIFA countered that UEFA’s discovery request rests on a fundamental defect, since it seeks evidence in aid of a foreign criminal proceeding that does not yet exist and that UEFA itself lacks the authority to formally initiate. FIFA also accused UEFA in its filing of pressuring its European member federations to oppose the plan rather than allowing what FIFA characterized as a democratic internal process to play out.
What Authorities Are Saying
FIFA said UEFA’s opposition to the proposal was itself motivated by a desire to preserve European football’s dominant position within the sport, rather than genuine concern about governance or financial mismanagement. UEFA has said the FFE proposal was developed without adequate consultation of FIFA’s governing bodies or its 211 member associations, and has called for a genuinely independent external review of the failed plan, arguing FIFA cannot credibly investigate itself and expect the broader football community to accept its own conclusions.
Why This Matters
The dispute marks a significant escalation in what has become a broader governance crisis for FIFA, with Infantino facing mounting pressure ahead of his bid for a fourth term as president in March 2027. Three confederations, UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF, have pressed Infantino to resign, and several countries have withdrawn their support for his candidacy following the FFE controversy. Regional governing bodies have discussed a potential vote of no confidence, though Infantino retains support from the African and South American confederations and has sought to appeal directly to individual member associations rather than negotiate through the confederations themselves.
UEFA’s decision to provisionally suspend its threatened boycott of FIFA competitions, clearing the way for qualified teams to compete in next month’s Under-20 Women’s World Cup in Poland, suggests the confederation is attempting to balance continued institutional pressure on Infantino with avoiding disruption to actual competitions and the athletes who depend on them. At the same time, UEFA’s members have unanimously mandated the confederation to pursue every available institutional, political and legal avenue to secure governance reforms and restore limits on presidential authority, indicating the underlying conflict remains far from resolved even as the immediate competition boycott threat has eased.
The involvement of Thrive Capital and Josh Kushner adds a notable political dimension to the case, given Kushner’s family ties to the Trump administration and his separate, recent agreement to purchase the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers alongside Bob Iger, a high profile business relationship that places continued public scrutiny on Kushner regardless of how the FIFA dispute resolves.
What Happens Next
The Colorado court will need to rule on FIFA’s motion to intervene and its request to defer or block UEFA’s discovery efforts, a decision that will shape whether UEFA can proceed with gathering evidence for its potential Swiss criminal complaint against Infantino. Similar discovery disputes remain pending in the Southern District of New York and in Florida courts as well.
Infantino’s political standing within FIFA is likely to remain under pressure ahead of the March 2027 presidential election, with continued scrutiny expected from UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF regardless of how the U.S. court proceedings unfold. Whether UEFA ultimately files a formal criminal complaint in Switzerland will likely depend in part on what evidence, if any, it is able to obtain through the ongoing U.S. discovery requests.
Reporting drawn from the Associated Press and Reuters
