Čeferin attacks FIFA’s abandoned rights plan in Copenhagen speech

UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin told European club executives in Copenhagen on September 29 that it was “time to say enough” to FIFA’s leadership, using a speech at the European Football Clubs assembly to condemn the abandoned FIFA Forward Enterprise plan. The dispute matters to clubs and national associations because the proposal would have opened a stake in a company holding commercial rights tied to major FIFA competitions to private investors.

Čeferin invoked Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes and declared that “the emperor is naked”. Although he did not name FIFA president Gianni Infantino in the address, both the Guardian and Reuters reported the speech as an attack on Infantino’s handling of the project.

What Čeferin said about FIFA Forward Enterprise

“Perhaps the moral of the story is this: convenient words cannot change uncomfortable realities,” Čeferin said, according to the Guardian. He challenged FIFA’s description of the plan as development and its account of how it had consulted football’s governing bodies.

“Selling part of football’s future does not become development because you call it development,” he said. He also argued that presenting national associations with a fait accompli could not be called democratisation, and that secrecy could not be called consultation. Those were Čeferin’s criticisms of FIFA’s process, rather than findings by a court or other adjudicator.

Čeferin also asked them to imagine an official creating a peace prize for a political leader without board input, then taking a call from that leader during a major competition about an on-field decision. The Guardian identified those remarks as references to a FIFA peace prize and the Folarin Balogun affair. Reuters described the example as hypothetical; the speech itself did not establish that a phone call changed a match decision.

“How many times would this have to happen at your club before the board says: ‘enough’?” Čeferin asked in the Guardian’s account. “I think it is time to say ‘enough’.” He added that no office, title or amount of power gave anyone the right to sell football’s future.

How the proposed FIFA rights company would have worked

Reuters reported that FIFA Forward Enterprise would have created a FIFA-controlled subsidiary holding commercial rights connected to competitions including the men’s and women’s World Cups and the Club World Cup. Private investors could have acquired up to 20% of that entity. The plan was abandoned after opposition, so the stake described in the proposal was not sold under that scheme.

Infantino had presented the proposal as a way to generate more money for football development, Reuters reported. He said it would be subject to a democratic consultation with FIFA’s 211 member associations. Čeferin’s speech disputed whether the way the proposal was handled matched that description; it did not dispute that FIFA had put development forward as its stated aim.

The rights at issue explain why the argument reached beyond a disagreement between two presidents. The proposed subsidiary would have dealt with commercial interests attached to FIFA’s biggest tournaments, while the consultation question concerned member associations that form FIFA’s wider governance structure. Reuters’ account establishes the proposed structure and the competing descriptions of its purpose, but does not establish what financial return it would have produced.

Why the club assembly was the venue

Čeferin delivered the address at the European Football Clubs General Assembly in Copenhagen. EFC scheduled its gathering for September 28–30 and says it represents more than 800 member clubs. Its description of the assembly places club representatives together to discuss competitions, financial sustainability and the future of the game.

His analogy asked those representatives to apply the standards they would expect of an executive at their own clubs to FIFA’s proposed commercial deal. It tied the governance dispute to questions about notice and control that clubs themselves would have to confront if a senior official pursued a comparable transaction.

The dispute over records and what remains unresolved

The speech came amid a separate legal dispute over access to documents about the proposal. The Guardian reported on September 3 that UEFA had sought discovery in US courts as it considered criminal proceedings against Infantino in Switzerland. At that stage, the possible proceedings were contemplated, not a filed criminal case established by the reporting.

In the same report, the Guardian said FIFA’s lawyers called UEFA’s efforts a “smear campaign” and sought to oppose a discovery request. FIFA’s filing argued that UEFA had no active Swiss proceedings and lacked authority to initiate them. Those were arguments made on FIFA’s behalf, not court rulings resolving the dispute.

The Guardian reported that FIFA sought permission for FIFA US to oppose one request by September 30. The published account does not establish whether that procedural step occurred or what a court subsequently decided. The September speech and the earlier document dispute therefore remain distinct developments: one is a public criticism of the project, and the other concerns access to records about it.

At the assembly, EFC chair Nasser al-Khelaifi ruled himself out of a run for the FIFA presidency, according to the Guardian. The same report said senior UEFA figures wanted a challenger to Infantino to emerge before the November 18 nomination deadline for the next March election. Neither point means a challenger has been chosen.

For now, the established outcome of the commercial proposal is that it was abandoned. Čeferin’s Copenhagen address sharpened UEFA’s public criticism of how it was developed, while FIFA’s stated development rationale and its objections to UEFA’s legal approach remain part of the record. Any finding about the disputed governance claims would require evidence beyond these speeches and filings.