Europe’s leading clubs threatened not to participate in future Club World Cups unless Gianni Infantino withdrew his Fifa Forward Enterprise scheme, issuing their ultimatum hours before the plan was scrapped.
In a letter to the Fifa secretary general, Mattias Grafström, seen by the Guardian, the influential European Football Clubs (EFC) group warned its cooperation with future tournaments would hinge on Infantino backing down. It said the threat will hold unless a joint venture between EFC and Fifa – a framework for which has already been agreed – is completed before television rights can be sold for the 2028 Women’s Club World Cup.
The letter, dated 31 July and signed by the EFC chief executive, Charlie Marshall, said Infantino’s actions could constitute a “substantial breach” of the bodies’ existing memorandum of understanding (MoU) and suggested this could be grounds for its termination. It floated the idea that EFC and its clubs may push back against the international match calendar and its player release rules, which are crucial to ensuring national team tournaments can function. Infantino shelved the privately backed Football Forward Enterprise (FFE) in the early hours of 1 August after widespread condemnation.
Fundamental to EFC’s complaints was the impression FFE would bring all broadcasting, commercial and sponsorship rights under its own umbrella. The letter asked Fifa to confirm this and said it would take decisive action if these elements were not included in the long-proposed joint venture, whose creation is enshrined in the MoU and intended to involve managing the commercial side of global club competitions. It witheringly wrote that progress on the tie-in had “unlike the FFE proposal, made no meaningful progress over the past year”. EFC already has a similar joint venture with Uefa, named UC3, which was launched in 2025.
A potentially incendiary section read: “Unless a fully operational Fifa-EFC CWC joint venture, with exclusive authority over, among other things, all commercial and operational matters, is established well ahead of the women’s 2028 Fifa CWC rights cycle, EFC will not support – and its member clubs will not participate in – any future edition, including the women’s and men’s 2028 and 2029 Fifa CWC.”
In theory the threat still holds although Fifa, in a response to EFC’s letter since Infantino climbed down, is understood to have promised a swift meeting to keep the joint venture on track. EFC’s position followed concerns raised by a vast number of clubs around Europe, who were angered by the lack of consultation around the design of FFE. One major European club expressed concerns in its own letter, also seen by the Guardian, saying it would support EFC in any “firmer collective action” if necessary and called for “more rigorous and transparent governance processes”.
Any European withdrawal from Club World Cups would in practice mean those tournaments could not run. EFC and Fifa operated last year’s Club World Cup, the first to take place with 32 teams, using a short-term prototype for any future joint venture. No hosts have yet been announced for the new-look Women’s Club World Cup or for the next edition of the men’s tournament in 2029.
EFC’s letter also raised the ongoing delay, first reported by the Guardian in February, in distributing £185m of solidarity money to clubs that did not participate in the Club World Cup. Transparency over the event’s financial performance was also requested.
“We ask that you urgently share the final surplus revenue generated by the 2025 Fifa WC, together with a full profit and loss statement, so that all revenues, expenses and costs can be properly assessed in line with our partnership in this competition,” it said. “The absence of information on this matter, as with the lack of a solution on CWC solidarity for over a year, is also of serious concern and disappointment to EFC and our member clubs.”
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The Guardian understands there is increasing optimism that this issue is on the verge of resolution although a notional average £50,000 windfall for every global top-flight club, if the pot was divided equally, pales in comparison with the £84m reward long since banked by last year’s winners Chelsea.
Referring to clubs releasing players for international duty EFC continued: “Our memorandum of understanding, set to expire on 30 December 2030, includes EFC’s and its member clubs’ acceptance of the international match calendar and the release rules. Both are directly relevant for Fifa’s non-European member associations and to any value FFE may have.” It said Fifa’s apparent commercial vision for FFE constituted a “serious breach of trust” and warned the MoU could be jeopardised.
The letter demonstrates the extraordinary level of leverage EFC, which is chaired by the Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser al-Khelaifi, can claim over Fifa and its increasing influence on football’s future. The organisation, set up in 2008 as a lobby group for clubs around the continent, now has well over 800 members although only a minority hold full voting rights. Some stakeholders elsewhere in football’s ecosystem have expressed fears about the level of power it has assumed. A separate representative body, the Union of European Clubs, was created in 2023 to represent smaller sides but is not recognised by Uefa.
One potential consequence of EFC’s discussions with Fifa could, in the medium term, be its expansion into a group representing clubs around the world. More immediately, last month’s letter demanded that Fifa deliver on a previous promise to fully integrate Al-Khelaifi into the Fifa council, which is purportedly its main decision-making body.