UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said “the emperor is naked” in a blistering attack on FIFA President Gianni Infantino and his failed plan to sell a stake in the governing body’s commercial rights to private investors. Addressing the European Football Clubs General Assembly in Copenhagen on Tuesday, Ceferin invoked Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes as he criticised the language FIFA had used to defend Infantino’s shelved FIFA Forward Enterprise project. An emperor is persuaded that he is wearing magnificent clothes, clothes which he is told only the foolish or unfit cannot see.
The emperor is naked.” Infantino’s FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal would have created a FIFA-controlled commercial subsidiary holding rights to competitions including the men’s and women’s World Cups and Club World Cup and allowed private investors to acquire up to 20 percent of the entity. Infantino had promoted the proposal as a way to generate more money for “football development” and said it was subject to “democratic consultation” with FIFA’s 211 member associations before it was abandoned following widespread opposition. Ceferin directly challenged that language.
However big the cheque is. He went on to refer to a hypothetical situation in which the same person created an award for a politician and, soon afterwards, the politician made a phone call after which “the rules are not the same any more.” “How many times would this have to happen at your clubs before the world says ‘enough’?” Ceferin said.
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