FIFA Accuses UEFA of Waging Misinformation Campaign as Presidential Election Looms

FIFA has launched a sharp counterattack against UEFA, accusing European football's governing body of running a deliberate misinformation campaign designed to sway the upcoming race for the FIFA presidency. The allegation, laid out in a legal filing submitted Tuesday in the Southern District of Florida, marks a dramatic escalation in the long-running feud between the two most powerful institutions in world football.

At the center of the dispute is a now-defunct proposal to shift the commercial rights of the World Cup into a separate subsidiary known as FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE. UEFA has been pressing a United States federal court for permission to gather testimony and documents that could support a criminal complaint it plans to file in Switzerland against FIFA president Gianni Infantino. In its filing this week, FIFA urged the court to reject that discovery request outright.

FIFA's legal team argued that UEFA's submission to the court was riddled with false or misleading claims about both the organization and its president. In particular, FIFA rejected any suggestion that Infantino stood to gain personally from the FFE arrangement. The global body stressed that the plan would have required approval from both FIFA's member associations and its ruling Council, and that the subsidiary would have operated under oversight from both groups.

The response also dismissed UEFA's implication that Infantino had broken any law or ethical standard, describing such claims as entirely without merit. The filing represents FIFA's most forceful public rebuttal yet in a governance fight that has steadily intensified over the past year.

UEFA had alleged that Infantino crafted the FFE proposal behind closed doors with a narrow circle of advisers and investors, sidestepping FIFA's established governance channels and failing to consult the FIFA Council, regional confederations, or member associations. According to UEFA's filing, investors were prepared to pay 4.2 billion dollars for a stake in FFE, a transaction that would have valued the business at roughly 20 billion dollars.

The European confederation contended that this figure substantially undervalued FIFA's commercial rights, arguing that the deal had never been subjected to an open auction or assessed by an independent valuer. Those claims form part of the evidentiary basis UEFA hopes to present in Switzerland as it builds a criminal case against Infantino.

FIFA pushed back hard on the valuation argument, accusing UEFA of confusing equity value with enterprise value, whether intentionally or out of ignorance. FIFA explained that the 20 billion dollar figure represented the initial equity valuation, meaning what would remain for shareholders after debts were settled. Materials circulated to FIFA's member associations, according to the filing, showed that FFE's total enterprise value, or the entire worth of the business, exceeded 30 billion dollars.

FIFA further argued that the enterprise value was more than double the equity value, putting it well above what UEFA claims would have constituted a fair price. This technical distinction sits at the heart of the disagreement over whether the abandoned deal shortchanged world football's governing body.

The FFE project was shelved in July after opposition from multiple confederations, including UEFA, the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, and the Asian Football Confederation. Critics objected above all to the lack of consultation surrounding the plan. The controversy has since fueled broader demands for reform of FIFA's governance structures and decision-making processes.

In a bid to respond to that pressure, Infantino wrote last week to all 211 FIFA member associations, proposing an independent review of how the governing body reaches its decisions. The gesture appeared aimed at calming widespread unease among national federations that felt excluded from a proposal with enormous financial implications for the sport.

The political stakes are especially high because Infantino, a Swiss administrator, is standing for re-election in March. FIFA's filing explicitly frames UEFA's legal maneuvering as an attempt to shape that vote. The organization noted that UEFA submitted its application, along with three others, shortly before the election, accusing the European body of spreading misinformation about Infantino at a critical moment.

FIFA told the court that it should reject any effort to influence the presidential election on such grounds. The language underscores how thoroughly the legal battle has become entangled with the electoral calendar, with each side seeking to frame the other's conduct as improper.

Separately, Infantino signaled on Monday that he is open to discussing the disbursement of millions of dollars to FIFA's member associations. The precise amounts allocated to individual nations are expected to appear on the agenda when the FIFA Council convenes on October 15. Such distributions are a sensitive subject within FIFA, since smaller federations often depend heavily on central funding, and promises of increased payouts can carry significant weight in presidential politics.

Taken together, the developments paint a picture of an organization under mounting scrutiny. UEFA's pursuit of testimony and documents in the United States, paired with its planned Swiss criminal complaint, suggests the European body intends to maintain legal pressure on Infantino even after the FFE proposal was withdrawn. FIFA's aggressive court response indicates it has no intention of allowing those efforts to go unchallenged.

The dispute also highlights a deeper structural tension between FIFA and UEFA, whose relationship has frayed repeatedly in recent years over issues ranging from competition calendars to commercial strategy. With an election approaching and a governance review on the table, the outcome of this legal skirmish could shape not only Infantino's political future but also the balance of power between the sport's global headquarters and its wealthiest confederation. For now, both sides appear entrenched, each accusing the other of acting in bad faith while the courts and the campaign trail prepare to render their verdicts.