UEFA, AFC and CONCACAF have said they have lost trust in FIFA and President Gianni Infantino for failing to acknowledge that the now-withdrawn FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal was wrong—a fundamental breach of trust and failure in judgement.

The three continental bodies condemned FIFA for treating the controversial proposal, aimed at selling an interest in the World Cup and its other competitions, as just a procedural misstep and failure in communication.

The organisations disclosed this on Monday in a statement jointly signed by AFC President Salman Bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa; CONCACAF President Victor Montagliani; UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin; AFC General Secretary Datuk Seri Windsor John; CONCACAF General Secretary Philippe Moggio; and UEFA General Secretary Theodore Theodoridis.

The statement reads, “FIFA’s recent letter to its Vice-Presidents and 211 Member Associations acknowledges that mistakes were made in the process. It treats this as a failure of communication, when what football witnessed was a failure of judgement. 

“A proposal advanced on a compressed timeline, without meaningful consultation, and pushed toward a deadline before Member Associations could properly review its terms is not the product of an oversight – it is the product of a design intended to limit scrutiny.

“It did not acknowledge that the proposal itself was inherently wrong. There remains no recognition that attempting to sell an interest in the FIFA World Cup was a profound failure of judgement – not just a procedural misstep, but a fundamental breach of trust with the very institutions FIFA exists to serve.”

They also condemned FIFA for threatening critics, federations and confederations demanding Mr Infantino’s resignation or withdrawal from re-election in March 2027, saying that, “Leadership in football is not a possession. It is not about holding – or demanding – power to be held. It is a duty of service to the football family that entrusts it.

“When trust is broken through deception, when an individual places himself above the collective that entrusted him with authority, that duty has been abandoned.”

The statement also added that “FIFA’s own letter confirms that only one elected official was present at the leadership meeting in Morocco. No FIFA Council members or Member Associations were invited to participate. Only the management committee, composed of FIFA-employed senior staff, was present.

“This recent meeting, where a select number of members of the FIFA management committee – not the full committee – were summoned abroad, rather than leadership going to Zurich to address the heart of FIFA, its staff, only reinforces these concerns and represents a continuation of the very pattern of conduct that brought us to this moment. It is not the conduct of a custodian of the game, but of one who believes the game is answerable to him.

“These are not the qualities football deserves in its leadership. That is why we have taken this stance: not lightly and not alone, but together, and out of duty to the game we serve.”

They berated FIFA’s proposed presentation of a full report of review of the controversial events to the FIFA Council, stating that such a task should be handled by an independent body, and not the global football body, stakeholders or any organisation linked to it.

They noted that “FIFA has also committed to presenting a full report on these events to the FIFA Council, once again failing to recognise that proper governance in the face of such a profound lack of judgement would require that such a review be conducted by a fully independent third party, not by FIFA itself, its staff, or by any stakeholder within football. The FIFA administration should play no role in conducting the review.”