LONDON: England FA chair and FIFA vice-president Debbie Hewitt has written to FIFA president Gianni Infantino seeking the release of material related to his abandoned World Cup investment plan and the lifting of US striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension, an FA source confirmed to Reuters on Thursday.
Infantino, 56, has been under mounting pressure since unveiling a proposal to sell a commercial stake in the World Cup to private investors.
The plan sparked fierce opposition, with UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and North America’s CONCACAF among those calling for changes at the top of FIFA.
Balogun was handed a one-match ban at the 2026 World Cup after receiving a red card in his side’s 2-0 roundof-32 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina that would have ruled him out of their last-16 clash with Belgium.
That prompted US President Donald Trump to contact Infantino and urge him to have the punishment reviewed, with the governing body suspending the ban for one year. The next FIFA Council meeting is scheduled for Oct 15.
The Times reported that Hewitt sent the letter this week to Infantino and FIFA secretary general Mattias Grafstrom, calling for an independent review of the selloff plan.
On Wednesday, UEFA vice-president Laura McAllister said the European football body remains on course to find a credible challenger to Infantino and has not allowed its campaign for change to dissolve into wishful thinking.
McAllister said the candidate for next March’s election need not be European but must be capable of defeating Infantino, uniting football’s confederations and delivering lasting governance reform.
Speaking to Reuters at the World Football Summit in Madrid after UEFA’s Executive Committee met in Thessaloniki, she rejected suggestions that opposition to Infantino had lost momentum despite the FIFA president appearing to retain enough support to win another term.
UEFA’s efforts were not about installing a European figurehead to lead a rebellion, she said, but building support for a candidate with a clear reform programme.
‘I don’t think so,’ McAllister said when asked whether Infantino’s opponents had overestimated the damage to his authority. ‘We always knew that things wouldn’t just change overnight. That would be naive. We knew that there would be a resistance to change as well, of course.
‘We’re taking things step by step, both legally in terms of the political context with an alternative candidate and in terms of the programme of governance reforms that we need to see.’-Reuters