"No, I never spoke to him." That was Donald Trump's answer when asked Friday whether he'd discussed FIFA's now-scrapped plan to sell stakes in its tournaments — a proposal that had his family's orbit written all over it.
Within hours of Trump's denial, FIFA president Gianni Infantino pulled the plug on the FIFA Forward Enterprise initiative (FFE), a scheme that would have created a $20 billion subsidiary allowing outside investors to buy minority stakes in FIFA competitions, including the World Cup itself.
What the FFE actually was — and why it collapsed so fast
The plan, announced earlier this week by Infantino, had earmarked Thrive Eternal — a firm run by Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — to lead the investor group. Jared Kushner, married to Ivanka Trump, has served as an advisor to the Trump administration. That connection turned a controversial financial proposal into a political grenade.
The backlash was immediate and coordinated in a way FIFA clearly didn't anticipate. UEFA declared all 55 of its member associations would boycott FIFA competitions if FFE moved forward. "The World Cup is not for sale," they said — bluntly. CONCACAF's 41 member nations followed with a flat rejection. By Friday, the Asian Football Confederation had joined the opposition too.
Infantino initially dug in, calling FFE "the natural next step" for soccer. FIFA even added: "Nobody is selling football. This is not something FIFA would ever entertain." Then, hours later, Infantino announced it was finished.
"Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place," Infantino said.
A pattern worth noting
This isn't the first time Trump's relationship with Infantino has raised eyebrows. The FIFA chief called Trump "my great friend" back in 2020 and presented him with a newly-created FIFA "peace prize" last December. During this summer's 2026 World Cup, Trump admitted he personally contacted Infantino to request a review of a red card shown to U.S. player Folaron Balogun. FIFA's disciplinary committee subsequently suspended the automatic one-match ban — freeing Balogun to play in the U.S.'s last-16 loss to Belgium.
That episode didn't exactly bolster confidence in FIFA's independence. The FFE collapse, with its Kushner-family ties and Trump denial, adds another chapter to what is becoming a pattern of entanglement between the American presidency and world football's governing body.
Any odds you're calculating on FIFA's long-term commercial strategy just got a lot harder to pin down. The $20bn vision is gone — for now — but the appetite to monetise the World Cup won't disappear with one press release.
