Burnham becomes the highest-profile political leader yet to demand Gianni Infantino’s resignation as opposition to FIFA’s controversial commercial proposal intensifies across world football.
Calls for FIFA President Gianni Infantino to step down have intensified after UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham publicly declared that the football governing body needs new leadership amid growing controversy over plans to introduce private investment into the commercial rights of the FIFA World Cup.
Speaking as global opposition to FIFA’s proposed FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) continues to gather momentum, Burnham described the proposal as fundamentally unacceptable and questioned Infantino’s suitability to remain at the helm of world football.
“The idea that it could even be brought forward, in my view, shows that the FIFA general secretary is the wrong man to lead the organisation,” Burnham said, adding to mounting criticism over the governance of football’s global governing body.
Burnham’s intervention marks the first time a serving head of government has explicitly called for Infantino’s resignation since details of the FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal emerged. The plan would place FIFA’s commercial and event-delivery operations into a new subsidiary while seeking external investment, a move FIFA insists would generate additional revenues for its 211 member associations without relinquishing control of the organisation.
However, the proposal has triggered an unprecedented backlash across world football.
UEFA has unanimously opposed the initiative and warned it would boycott FIFA competitions should the proposal proceed in its current form. Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) have also rejected or expressed serious reservations about the plan, arguing that football’s governance must remain transparent and that the World Cup should never become a commercial asset for private investors.
The controversy has also claimed its first high-profile casualty. Carlos Cordeiro, one of Infantino’s senior advisers and a former president of U.S. Soccer, resigned from his advisory role, describing the proposal as “a bad deal for football” and warning that it risks mortgaging the sport’s future.
Critics argue that the proposal was developed without adequate consultation with FIFA’s confederations and member associations, raising concerns about governance, transparency and the long-term independence of football’s flagship competitions. Several football bodies have also questioned why external investment is required after FIFA reported record revenues from the expanded 2026 FIFA World Cup.
FIFA has rejected suggestions that it is attempting to privatise football, insisting that “nobody is selling football” and maintaining that any decision on FIFA Forward Enterprise will ultimately rest with its member associations through a democratic consultation process. The governing body also says the proposal is designed to increase development funding worldwide rather than alter its governance structure.
Despite those assurances, Burnham insisted football’s greatest competition must remain beyond commercial ownership.
His comments add significant political weight to a dispute that has rapidly evolved from an internal governance debate into one of the biggest institutional crises faced by FIFA during Infantino’s presidency, with the future structure of the World Cup now at the centre of an increasingly global power struggle over the governance of the sport.
Leave feedback about this