Infantino Ignores CONCACAF Chief's Request, Shows Up at Caribbean Youth Tournament Anyway

Gianni Infantino was told to stay home. He didn't listen.

The FIFA president showed up Saturday at a Caribbean Football Union Under-14 tournament in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, posting Instagram photos of himself glad-handing local political and soccer officials, according to the Associated Press. He did this one day after Victor Montagliani, the Canadian president of CONCACAF, sent him a letter asking him to reconsider attending.

Montagliani's reasoning was blunt. He wrote that FIFA's ongoing governance crisis would follow Infantino wherever he goes, and that his presence would turn a youth development event into a media circus. "I believe that considering the governance crisis surrounding FIFA as a result of your controversial FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal, the media will focus on this situation," Montagliani wrote, according to a letter obtained by the AP, "which will unfortunately significantly take away from the technical nature of the CFU youth competition."

Infantino went anyway. FIFA declined to comment on the request, though it noted the organization funds regional bodies like the CFU with up to $5 million per four-year World Cup cycle, according to the AP. FIFA money funds these regional programs, and Infantino showing up to claim credit for that funding over the objection of the guy who runs the region's confederation reveals where the power actually sits in this fight.

The backstory: a $20 billion plan nobody signed off on

This didn't come out of nowhere. The British newspaper The Times first reported on July 28 that Infantino had spent roughly a year secretly negotiating a deal to spin off FIFA's commercial operations, worth an estimated $20 billion, into a subsidiary that would be 20% owned by outside investors led by Joshua Kushner, according to the AP.

Three FIFA vice presidents, Montagliani, UEFA's Aleksander Ceferin, and Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, accused Infantino of "deception" for negotiating the deal without proper board disclosure, the AP reported. Infantino pulled the plug on the plan on Aug. 1, but only after the backlash went global and only hours after his own chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, trashed the proposal and Infantino's leadership style in a public statement to the AP. FIFA fired Lamour this week.

CBC Sports noted that soccer fans have since launched a global petition demanding Infantino resign, calling the scrapped deal a "betrayal" of the World Cup.

A power struggle, not just a scheduling dispute

The Caribbean trip isn't really about youth soccer. It's about votes. CONCACAF represents North and Central America and the Caribbean, and Montagliani runs it. But individual Caribbean federations vote independently in FIFA elections, and they're seen as potential Infantino supporters he can peel away from Montagliani's camp, according to the AP.

Meanwhile, South America's CONMEBOL has already backed Infantino, reportedly because it wants a bigger share of games at the 2030 World Cup, which FIFA is looking to expand from 48 teams to 64. Infantino is angling for a fourth and final term through 2031. Showing up in Punta Cana, glad-handing Dominican officials on camera, is retail politics dressed up as youth development outreach.

Infantino still hasn't taken a real question from the press about any of this since the story broke July 28. On Friday in Punta Cana, Sky News reporter James Matthews asked him directly whether he had betrayed the sport and should resign. Infantino's response: "Thank you so much," followed by a joke about both men being bald, according to the AP and separately reported by Local10 and actionnewsjax.

A sitting FIFA president facing a coordinated revolt from three of his own vice presidents, a fired COO publicly trashing him, and a global fan petition demanding he step down chose deflection and small talk over a direct answer. Whether that holds up through FIFA's next presidential election, and whether Caribbean federations actually break from Montagliani's CONCACAF bloc to back Infantino, remains an open question.