On the night of Wednesday, 5 August, 2026, under-fire FIFA president Gianni Infantino escaped calls to resign from office after receiving the backing of the governing body’s leaders, though apologised for “mistakes” in his botched attempts to sell off a stake in the World Cup.
The world football governing body through a statement released after seven hours of crisis talks in Morocco on Wednesday, 5 August, 2026, said its management board had re-affirmed their “full support” for Infantino – including secretary general Mattias Grafstrom, only days after he had labelled the World Cup plans “a sad and reproachable series of events”.
In a letter sent to national associations and signed by Infantino and Grafstrom, the pair wrote that they “sincerely apologised for the errors” around the proposals, which were withdrawn on Saturday after days of criticism from around world football.
Infantino had faced mounting calls to resign following the leak of previously undiscussed plans to sell off a stake in the World Cup, which a number of associations said they had not been consulted on – with a deadline to back the proposals barely a month away in mid-September, with a £30.1 million incentive to accept.
In a second statement released on FIFA.com, the governing body said it had “not been the intention… for member associations to feel excluded from the process” and admitted it should have been “handled differently”.
