Infantino Calls Emergency Executive Meeting As Commercial Plan Criticism Rages

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has convened an emergency meeting of the governing body’s top executives in Morocco as mounting opposition threatens his controversial proposal to overhaul FIFA’s commercial and event operations.

The meeting, scheduled for Wednesday in Rabat, comes after another day of intense criticism from senior FIFA officials over Infantino’s proposed FIFA Forward Enterprise, a plan aimed at restructuring the organisation’s commercial activities.

The backlash has deepened after some of football’s most influential figures openly rejected the proposal.

FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development, Arsène Wenger, declared that abandoning the plan was “absolutely necessary and beyond question,” signalling a major blow to Infantino’s efforts.

Adding to the pressure, FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafström reportedly described the past week as “a sad and reproachable series of events” in an internal email circulated to FIFA staff.

Opposition also came from Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, who accused FIFA of creating a situation that “amounts to blackmail” by allegedly linking unpaid prize money and financial support to backing Infantino’s re-election.

Infantino, who has spent the past week in Morocco, is expected to use the Rabat meeting to defuse the growing crisis and seek a way forward as resistance to the proposal intensifies within football’s global governing body.

The controversy marks one of the most significant internal challenges facing Infantino’s leadership, with senior officials publicly questioning a plan that critics fear could fundamentally reshape FIFA’s governance and commercial structure.