Gianni Infantino has an extraordinary gift. Whenever it feels like football is in danger of becoming just another business, Fifa’s president manages to find a new way to show fans that those running the game are way ahead of them.
His latest money-making scheme, revealed on Tuesday, was his Icarus moment. The plan – which the Sunday Times reports was originally to be launched the day before last month’s World Cup final, a quite staggeringly crass piece of timing if true – was to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors.
It provoked a predictable backlash and his eventual U-turn after nations in the European confederation Uefa announced they would boycott all of Fifa’s competitions until the plan was dropped and barred from being raised again. Uefa’s statement was stinging, attacking what it called a “shabby, back-room, opaque deal”. It added: “The current Fifa leadership has not only lost Uefa’s confidence but also that of many other members of the football family.”
At the start of this week, Infantino’s position at the head of Fifa looked unassailable; now it looks like he’ll be lucky to end the week in a job.
Infantino’s talk about unlocking football’s commercial potential suggests there is always another asset to monetise. But fans responded universally: football isn’t for sale.
It’s an attractive slogan. However, on closer inspection, if football really isn’t for sale, somebody forgot to tell those who’ve been selling it for the last 30 years: television rights, naming rights, sleeve sponsors, betting companies, kick-off times designed for overseas markets, the Club World Cup, pre-season tours, streaming subscriptions and premium hospitality. Shirts at £120 and £8 pies suggest football may not technically have a price tag hanging from it, but plenty of people have been coining it.
That doesn’t mean supporters are wrong. Quite the opposite. We understand something administrators don’t: football’s value isn’t the same as its price. Some things occupy a different place in society. They aren’t merely products, but part of the social fabric. We once thought that about water, energy and public transport. They existed because society needed them, not because shareholders demanded more return on investment. Whether privatisation improved those services is debatable, but the philosophical shift is undeniable. We stopped asking what they were for and started asking what they were worth. Football risks making the same mistake.
It isn’t alone. The arts chase corporate sponsorship rather than public patronage. Universities market themselves like luxury brands. Even parks and public spaces now come with commercial partners attached. Everywhere, there is another opportunity to monetise something that once seemed immune from “markets”. Perhaps nothing is sacred anymore. Except, football insists, football.
Yet, that moral certainty wobbles when our defender from Fifa is Uefa. Many of those same supporters, angry with Infantino, spend thousands following clubs into Champions League competitions where ticket allocations are squeezed, prices are eye-watering and fans are secondary to corporate guests. Uefa speaks movingly about protecting football’s pyramid while charging supporters premium prices to watch its own flagship competition. Fifa talks about growing the global game while expanding tournaments that stretch exhausted players and wallets alike. Does either organisation act solely in football’s best interests?
This isn’t to let Infantino off the hook. If anything, it makes this whole episode even more revealing. It exposes a mindset that sees untapped markets where supporters see memories, traditions and belonging. That is the real divide. Fans don’t object because football generates money. It always has. Gate receipts kept clubs alive long before television executives discovered the Premier League. Fans object when money becomes the point rather than the consequence.
Because football is one of the few remaining institutions that still creates genuine community across class, politics and generations. You inherit it rather than purchase it. And you belong to it as a captive audience. Unlike theatres or cinemas, we are not going to switch from Fulham’s Craven Cottage to Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge just because there is a “better” game on.
Satisfying as the prospect of Infantino’s imminent downfall may be, the truth is that football is not suddenly being sold now; piece by piece it has been slowly parcelled off for decades. But this is at least a reminder to those in charge who may have forgotten that the game was never really theirs to sell in the first place.
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