World game at war: why some European nations have threatened a World Cup boycott

Just over a week after the World Cup final, as The Conversation reports, world soccer faces a governance crisis. FIFA president Gianni Infantino is proposing a twenty billion dollar commercial subsidiary called the FIFA Forward Enterprise to run major competitions like the World Cups. UEFA, European football's governing body, says it crosses a line by trading football's soul and governance for corporate interest — and has threatened a World Cup boycott. Infantino's applying sharp financial pressure: each of FIFA's two hundred eleven national associations gets forty million dollars if they approve by September nineteenth, but faces a nearly seventy-five percent funding cut if they don't. The UK's new Prime Minister is also opposed. With alliances he's cultivated in the US and Middle East, Infantino is counting on the global majority to back his plan when FIFA votes.

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