Inside the FIFA–UEFA rift: Ceferin declares war, Infantino still has no rival

That morning I was standing in the corridor of a training centre in Valencia, waiting to note down the time of the bus that takes the U19 squad back to the province after a session. My phone buzzed. A colleague in Copenhagen sent me a recording of Aleksander Ceferin's speech to the European club assembly. I listened to the whole thing, still holding my notebook of training times. What made me stop was not the line "football is not for sale," but the way he spoke to the people in the room: club directors who pay player wages every weekend, who sell broadcast rights, who count every euro. He was not addressing them as an audience. He was addressing them as shareholders.

That was the moment I understood this fight does not begin with a speech. It begins with a set of scales.

Context

The public story is simple. Ceferin, the UEFA president, has bluntly called on Gianni Infantino to leave the FIFA presidency. He borrowed the image of "the Emperor's New Clothes" to describe the fine words FIFA puts out: development, democratisation, consultation. He said football has no need for emperors. He said those who run the game are custodians, not owners. And he said football is not for sale.

Behind those lines sits a proposal to sell a stake in FIFA competitions, including the World Cup, to private investors. The reports frame it as "reportedly." No document has been published, no figure confirmed. But UEFA has acted: it has launched legal action against FIFA, Infantino and the proposed investors named in the plan.

Based on my years watching matches and press conferences in Spain, I have learned one thing: when two sides start talking through lawyers, the question is no longer right or wrong. The question is who controls the calendar and the money.

This is not the first time European football has confronted FIFA. What is different now is that everything is happening ahead of an election. Next March, in Morocco, FIFA will hold its congress. Infantino is seeking a fourth term. And as things stand, he has no opponent.

Here in Valencia, where I live and work, clubs do not talk much about this. They are busy with the transfer window, the wage bill, the broadcast deals. But in private conversations in the corridors of training grounds, the question keeps coming back: if FIFA sells a stake in its competitions, where does the money go, and who sits at the table deciding the calendar for the next ten years.

This confrontation did not erupt in a single day. The relationship between UEFA and FIFA has been deteriorating for a long time, through arguments over the calendar, over the number of teams at the World Cup, over commercial rights. What is new is that it has stepped into the open, with names and concrete legal action. While the conflict stayed behind closed doors, people could negotiate. Once it is on the front pages, each side has committed itself to its audience, and the room for retreat narrows.

Analysis

When I sat down with the documents, the first thing I drew was not a list of parties but a map of blocs. UEFA stands with the Asian and North American confederations. Infantino's FIFA stands with the African and South American confederations. In the middle sit the club directors — the people who just heard Ceferin speak and who must work out where the money goes if FIFA sells a stake in its competitions.

The crux is this: it is not a fight between villains and heroes, but a fight between two understandings of who owns football. UEFA is strong because it controls European club football — where the broadcast money, the brands and the audiences are. FIFA is strong because it controls the congress — one federation, one vote, and those votes are nourished by development programmes and funding.

At the Levante academy, I learned to watch a boy play for three hours just to perfect his touch. I learned something else there too: the money that funds youth football does not come from speeches. It comes from specific budget lines. When an African federation receives money to build a pitch, to build a training centre, it remembers who signed the cheque. That is why the blocs do not divide along pure geography. They divide along interest.

If FIFA sells a stake in its competitions, it is selling part of a future revenue stream. In accounting terms, that is a way to create liquidity. In power terms, it is a way to hand part of the decision-making to outsiders. UEFA objects on grounds of transparency — but also for a reason rarely stated: if World Cup money flows through private investors, UEFA's weight in dividing money and setting the calendar grows lighter.

I do not have FIFA's financial figures in hand. No contract terms, no valuation, no investor identity. So I cannot say whether the proposal is expensive or cheap. But I know one thing about the logic of deals: when an organisation sells an asset that will generate future income, it usually needs money now — or wants to hedge part of its political risk. Both reasons are worth asking about.

There is an angle rarely mentioned in Europe but very close to me: Vietnam sits within the Asian bloc, and on the available information the Asian confederations stand with UEFA. That means the votes of Southeast Asian football, however small, sit on one of the two scales. Asian national teams live off the calendar and the qualification slots set by FIFA and the continental confederations. If part of the power to decide that calendar and those slots is transferred to investors, the consequences will not stop in Europe.

On the legal side, this is what I watch most closely. UEFA is suing FIFA, Infantino and the investor. The central legal question is whether FIFA has the right to sell a stake in its competitions without full council and congress approval. If the internal process is found deficient, UEFA gains leverage. If not, that leverage disappears.

In football, legal battles rarely end with a ruling. They end with a deal struck in the background, once one side realises that continuing to litigate will cost more than conceding. I have seen it on a smaller scale: young players' contract disputes rarely reach court. They end in a meeting room, when one side needs the player on the pitch more than it needs to win a clause.

The counter-intuitive angle

Most European media are telling this story as a moral crusade. Ceferin stands up, points at Infantino, and public opinion backs him. But if you look only at public opinion, you miss a dry fact: the winner of an election is not the one the press loves, but the one with enough votes.

Ceferin is winning the story, but Infantino still holds the structural advantage. He is the incumbent, he has a network of relationships with the federations, and as things stand no one has entered the race. An election with no rival is an election whose result was written before the vote.

I have seen something similar on a smaller scale. At Castellon, in the season without fans, the team survived not because it played more beautifully than anyone else. It survived because it prepared better at set pieces — I recorded 14 corner-training sessions, and they scored six goals from them. In football, beauty saves no one. Preparation does. In football politics it is the same. A good speech does not replace a vote.

There is another story few notice. This fight is being pushed forward before the March congress. If the stake-sale proposal was leaked at just the right moment to stop it before approval, the timing is not accidental. In negotiations, whoever controls when information is released controls half the game.

And there is one more point. Ceferin's reference to US President Donald Trump and a FIFA peace prize shows he is not only attacking the stake-sale proposal. He is attacking Infantino's image as someone caught up in politics and stripped of institutional neutrality. That is a strike at credibility, not at a contract. In an election, credibility is sometimes worth more than money.

Takeaway

What I will watch is not the next statements. I will watch three things. First, who enters the race — because an election with no challenger is an election with no real result. Second, the identity of the investor — because once you know where the money comes from, you know what the money wants. Third, whether the African and South American federations hold their positions — because their votes are what decides, not a speech in Copenhagen.

Survival is not a league position; it is how a provincial town still turns up when no one is watching. And in this fight, the small federations of Africa, Asia and South America are the ones sitting in the row no camera points at. Whoever understands them wins.

A provincial club's defeat does not make the front pages; it is carved into the barriers of its home ground. The power struggle at FIFA is the same — it will not be decided on the front pages. It will be decided in corridors without cameras, by votes no one counts until it is too late.