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European soccer governing body UEFA has voted to boycott the World Cup to protest plans by global organization FIFA to sell off stakes in the tournament to private investors.
As long as the deal is still on the table, UEFA said in a statement on Thursday, no European national teams will compete in FIFA competitions, including next year's women's World Cup in Brazil in 2027.
Europe is home to some of the world's most successful national sides. Three of the four semi-finalists of this year's men's World Cup were from Europe, including 2026 champion Spain. A World Cup without Europe would be a far more modest, and commercially far less successful event.
The 55 European soccer associations that make up UEFA voted unanimously to reject FIFA's proposal, which would transfer its commercial operations to a new entity, FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) and sell 20 percent of the company to Thrive Capital, an invest group run by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
"No UEFA national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for so long as these proposals remain alive," UEFA said. "The World Cup is not for sale."
UEFA members held an emergency meeting on Thursday after news of FIFA's plans leaked to the media. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has confirmed the plans, calling the proposal a "golden opportunity" to raise money for FIFA members and "to turbocharge the development of the game globally."
A sales deck for the plan, reported in the media, proposed increasing ticket prices, staging more international tournaments and FIFA taking on more debt as means of increasing financial growth. Infantino had previously floated the idea of holding the World Cup every two years instead of every four as a way to boost growth, but that was rejected, with critics saying it would put a huge strain on player workloads.
UEFA's boycott could sink Infantino's plans before they ever get launched.
In its statement, the group called said it was "both irresponsible and indefensible that a proposal of such significance for football was conceived in secret and brought to the brink of approval without any meaningful consultation with those entrusted with stewarding the game. This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA's duty as the custodian of world football."
The FIFA/Infantino plan "has no place in world football," the statement continues. "Football's future cannot be dictated by the expectations of those whose first duty is to maximize financial return…Some things are simply too important to sell. The FIFA World Cup belongs to football. It always will. And so long as Europe has a voice, it will never be for sale."
Europe's soccer associations do not make up a majority of FIFA's 211 voting members but UEFA, as the oldest and richest regional association in the sport, has significant influence. Other regional soccer bodies, including the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and Concacaf, which covers North and Central America as well as the Caribbean confederations, have also criticized FIFA's proposals.
FIFA is coming off its largest, and most commercially successful, World Cup in its history. FIFA is expected to announce that the tournament, held in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, generated more than $15 billion in revenues for the association. But FIFA and Infantino have been sharply criticized for changes seen as an attempt to further commercialize the game, including raising ticket prices and expanding the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams.
UEFA has also accused FIFA of allowing political influnence over the game, pointing to an incident during the World Cup when FIFA intervened to overturn a red card given to USA striker Falorin Balogun after Trump called and asked Infantino to do so.
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