19/08/2026
Premier League’s Richard Masters says FIFA has ‘self destructed’, Infantino must go, and reform is a priority
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Premier League chief executive Richard Masters has added the voice of the world’s leading professional league to the cacophony of criticism of the now seemingly in-hiding FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
Masters echoes many of the comments made by his counterpart at LaLiga, Javier Tebas, the world’s second biggest league.
FIFA has repeatedly refused the World Leagues association a seat at their discussion and negotiating tables when it comes to issues like new competitions and the international calendar.
But without the agreement of the domestic leagues and their clubs, FIFA would not have a men’s World Cup, or a Club World Cup
A total of 857 out of 1,248 players at the World Cup earn their wages at Europe’s clubs, and 164 of them in England’s Premier League. The players’ wages are paid by the clubs, with a relatively tiny contribution made to the clubs for releasing their players who they have trained, honed and prepared for elite competition.
FIFA plays its World Cup every four years for a month and has now expanded to 48 teams playing 104 games. The Premier League plays 380 games a year, 1,520 matches over the four-year period between World Cups – that is more than 14 times the number of competitive elite games that FIFA organises.
As big and beautiful as Infantino thinks the World Cup has become, and as powerful as he may think he is, for FIFA to survive its current crisis Infantino has to be held accountable, is the message from the bigger and generally more beautiful leagues.
Speaking to the BBC, Masters said: “This is a problem of FIFA’s making. This is a self-inflicted wound. The organisation has pressed the self-destruct button, and the consequence of that flow into the solutions that need to be found.”
On the principal of bringing in private equity ownership to FIFA, Masters is unequivocal.
“I don’t think the Fifa should be ever contemplating selling off a stake in the World Cup. They’re a not-for-profit organisation. They should really be holding that competition in trust for the future of football.
“I think it’s a bad idea, and the (English) FA have taken the right position in regards to Gianni [Infantino],” he told the BBC.
Leadership change ultimately requires a new leader. So far no candidate has come forward but the pressure is on for Infantino to go immediately, and increasing number of voices from within FIFA’s member associations, and football’s key stakeholders, making that demand have made Infantino’s position untenable.
An interim FIFA president would come from one of the confederation vice presidents with the AFC’s Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, who Infantino beat to the presidency in February 2016, being the first in line to manage FIFA through to an election. Infantino’s current term runs out in March 2027.
Infantino has fractured FIFA and created regional tension, but his unilateral decision making and his overt courtship of the world’s political leaders – reaching a crescendo with his award of a new FIFA Peace Prize to US president Donald Trump, his acquiescence to Trump’s request to have Folarin Balogun’s red card overturned, and now his attempt to railroad the sell off FIFA’s commercial rights to a private equity company closely linked to Trump’s family via a secretly negotiated agreement – has backfired spectacularly.
In many ways his divide and conquer tactics have in fact the major football playing nations to unite.
“I think an emerging unity candidate should have on his or her agenda reform of Fifa, and perhaps even reform of the president’s role and how it interacts with those things,” said Masters.
But presently the uncharacteristically quiet Infantino, doesn’t look like he intends going quietly or peacefully.
- from Paul Nicholson, Inside World Football
