Guardian editorial urges Gianni Infantino to quit after leaked World Cup stake proposal
Gianni Infantino faced calls to resign after crisis talks at Fifa’s new African headquarters in Rabat this week over a leaked plan to sell a stake in the World Cup, The Guardian said in an editorial published on 7 August 2026. The paper argued that the episode constituted a betrayal of the game and said Mr Infantino should resign.
The editorial noted that since taking over in 2016 Mr Infantino has repeatedly weathered criticism of a monetising approach to running world football. It said his credibility had rapidly drained away after details emerged of an aborted proposal to sell a stake in the World Cup to the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Following crisis talks in Rabat, Mr Infantino authorised an apology that admitted the project “could have been handled differently”. The piece added that the proposal imperilled governance at an organisation that already sits on billions of pounds worth of reserves.
The Guardian recorded widespread condemnation from senior Fifa figures and from football figures such as Arsène Wenger and Luís Figo, and said Mr Infantino appeared determined to brazen out the storm. The editorial warned that “what happens now looks like becoming increasingly messy.”
It said that over the course of 10 years Mr Infantino had carefully cultivated allies in the global south, and reported that Mexico and Argentina on Friday joined African nations in expressing support for his continued leadership. The paper said much would therefore depend on Uefa’s response.
The editorial recounted that Uefa responded on Thursday witheringly and restated a loss of confidence in his presidency, and that Norway became the first federation on Friday to call directly for Fifa’s president to stand down. It flagged a threatened boycott of Fifa-run competitions as the next step if action was not taken.
The Guardian said the immediate practical consequence could be a boycott starting with the Under-20 Women’s World Cup due to be held in Poland next month, and described the negotiated deal as a serious abuse of power that would have mortgaged the World Cup’s future to speculators. It contrasted the current crisis with previous controversies, citing the “dubious award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar” and Fifa’s “suspension of inconvenient red cards.”
The editorial quoted a statement from Mr Infantino’s Rabat bunker that said the organisation “will no longer tolerate any attacks on its integrity, good governance and due process”. It also recalled Mr Infantino’s earlier remark, “Today I feel gay … today I feel [like] a migrant worker”, and concluded that it would be greatly to the benefit of the sport he professes to love if he could show some self-awareness now.
Unless he resigns, is forced out, or is ousted via an election next March, the editorial warned that the global game risks descending into an ugly civil war; it said those were the remaining routes for his removal and for resolving the crisis.