The proposal was bad enough. The damage it has done to Gianni Infantino is worse. When a former player of Luís Figo's standing is driven to call on a sitting Fifa president to resign, the crisis is no longer a technical dispute over governance. It is a full-blown verdict on leadership.
Infantino had already come under savage pressure after the plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors was scrapped following fierce backlash led by Uefa. Then came the emergency meeting of Fifa staff on Wednesday, a sign that this is not a president in control of the narrative but one scrambling to steady a structure that is starting to wobble around him.
Figo did not soften his language. Not remotely. The Portugal legend and Fifa adviser to Uefa described the episode as the lowest, most deceitful and cravenly self-interested behaviour he had ever witnessed. He said Infantino had lied, deceived and tried to feather his own nest at the expense of the game he is supposed to serve. That is not the language of a man looking for compromise. That is a public demand for removal.
A political collapse, not just a bad idea
The timing makes the pressure even harder to ignore. On Tuesday, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein accused Fifa of blackmail over financial assistance tied to support for Infantino's re-election bid. On the same day, Arsène Wenger issued a statement distancing himself from the stake-sale plan, calling it absolutely necessary and beyond question only to the extent that he wanted no part of it. By Wednesday, the optics were already toxic. By Wednesday, Figo had effectively delivered the knockout blow.
It is easy to see why this has spread beyond the original proposal itself. The issue is not merely whether selling off World Cup stakes to private investors was a good or bad idea. The issue is what the episode says about the people around it, the process behind it and the appetite for treating football's biggest event as a financial asset to be leveraged at will.
Figo's intervention matters because it strips away the usual protective fog that surrounds a Fifa president under pressure. Infantino has been in charge since 2016, but the old argument that control buys authority is badly weakened when your senior staff, your closest advisers and a vast chunk of football's ecosystem are drifting away from you. If a public figure with 127 caps and enough standing to speak bluntly chooses to say 'Infantino must go', that is not background noise. It is a warning siren.
Figo went further still, arguing that it is too late to save Infantino's dignity but not too late to save football. That is the line that lands hardest. It turns this from a dispute about one abandoned plan into something larger and uglier: a fight over whether the game's institutions are serving football or serving themselves. Once that accusation sticks, every explanation sounds like an excuse.
Infantino may survive this latest storm, of course. Football governance has a habit of rewarding stamina over shame. But the political reality is now brutal. The proposal has been scrapped, the backlash has been fierce, the scrutiny is widening and one of the game's most recognisable former players has now said the quiet part out loud. He should go. Now.
