Football Is Not for Sale: The Trust Broken Open After the 2026 World Cup

It was a September afternoon in Lyon, rain drumming on the tin roof of a small cafe tucked behind Part-Dieu station. The television in the corner was replaying UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin's address to the Portugal Football Summit, muted, with only the subtitles running beneath the picture. The man at the next table, still wearing a wet raincoat, looked up just as the words "Football is not for sale" crossed the screen. He said nothing. He finished his coffee, folded his sports paper, and left.

I wrote that moment into my notebook, because it says what no press release can say. After a battle that lasted months, the ordinary supporter is still sitting there, still drinking coffee, still waiting to see what someone will do next. Trust is not built out of headlines. It is measured by whether a man still bothers to fold his paper and go home.

And if I had to pick one line to sum up the past week in world football, I would pick the line I write in every notebook: the pulse was never in the ball. It was always in the people.

Context: a proposal withdrawn, a fracture unmended

On Wednesday, at the Portugal Football Summit, Aleksander Ceferin spoke publicly on this subject for the first time since Gianni Infantino proposed an independent review of how the governing body makes decisions. He did not name FIFA. He did not name Infantino. He spoke only of a "project" that had "shattered the unity of world football."

"Not everyone places the game above their own ambitions," Ceferin said. "Trust in our sport rests on three pillars: unity, transparency, and governance that serves the many, not the few. In recent times, all three were disregarded by people who had sworn to protect them."

He continued: "The project that shattered the unity of world football may be abolished, but the trust it broke has not returned, and repairing it is our work now."

Some context is needed. After the 2026 World Cup, FIFA proposed selling a 20 percent stake in its commercial rights, including the World Cup itself, to private investors. The plan was opposed by UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and Concacaf. UEFA's 55 member associations warned they would not take part in FIFA competitions if it went ahead. In July, FIFA abandoned the proposal.

"Football is not for sale," Ceferin said. "That is the message UEFA has carried for years, and I am certain this summit will carry it further."

The story has now shifted to a different question: how FIFA makes its biggest decisions. On Monday, Infantino wrote to FIFA's 211 member associations and members of its Council, setting out possible changes in response to the criticism, including how it handles major projects. Infantino said he would put the idea to the FIFA Council rather than announcing a review himself. The Council meets again on October 15.

In parallel, UEFA and Concacaf have called on Infantino to make 10 million dollar payments to every FIFA member association.

For Ceferin, withdrawing the investment proposal has not closed the chapter. "The game will remain safe if those who govern it remember whom they govern it for," he said.

The core: what that 20 percent really is

I have spent most of my career writing about what happens after the scoreline. This is no different. To understand why a figure of 20 percent could shake an entire system, it has to be placed inside its financial frame.

FIFA has targeted 11 billion dollars of revenue for the 2026-2026 cycle, and the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico sits at the heart of it: 48 teams, 104 matches, the first edition at that scale. FIFA's reserves sit around 4 billion dollars. From the outside, this is an organisation that does not lack money. From the inside, this is an organisation whose money arrives once every four years, and every outgoing payment must be calculated before the first ball is kicked.

When FIFA talks about selling 20 percent of an entity holding commercial rights, it is talking about handing part of a future cash flow, not today's, to the people who own the capital. Technically, it is a way of borrowing forward in exchange for giving up decision-making later. In principle, it is the first time world football has faced the question of who owns the future of the sport.

The precedents exist, but at club and league level. In 2026, La Liga sold 10 percent of a new company to CVC Capital Partners for 1.994 billion euros, on a 50-year contract. In 2026, Ligue 1 did something similar: 13 percent of a commercial subsidiary to CVC for 1.5 billion euros. In 2026, Bundesliga clubs voted down a comparable investment deal, and it collapsed amid fan protest.

What is striking is that each time, the argument was about percentages. But the problem was never the percentage. It was who sits in the decision room after the contract is signed.

The point most coverage misses is this: the 20 percent proposal did not die because it was judged illegal or financially unworkable. It died because it did not have the votes to pass the Council. That distinction changes how the whole episode should be read.

The arithmetic of a single vote

Do the count. UEFA has 55 member associations, all publicly opposed. AFC has 47. Concacaf has 41. That is 143 votes, more than two thirds of FIFA's 211 members. In a body where each association holds one vote, such a coalition can stop anything, even without a single ballot from Africa, South America or Oceania.

This is where supporters usually look in the wrong direction. Mainstream coverage tells this story as a clash of two men: Ceferin against Infantino, UEFA against FIFA. When I look at the numbers, I see something else: a collective defensive system that worked exactly as designed.

The more frightening question is whether it will work next time.

The only protective mechanism in this system is the vote of the member associations. To steer a 143-vote coalition elsewhere, all you need to change is how the money is distributed. That is why the proposed 10 million dollars per member association, 2.11 billion dollars in total, matters so much. It turns a debate about governance into a debate about where the cash flows.

I want to be clear about what I believe, and I believe it after years sitting at Groupama Stadium watching arguments between a coaching staff and a stand: most smaller member associations have no stake in defending "unity" as an abstract concept. They care about having money to pay referees, to fund the women's team, to build training pitches, to run youth competitions. When UEFA says football is not for sale, many people in Africa, Asia and Oceania hear a moral message. They also hear an unanswered question: then where does the money come from?

Three pillars, and which one actually fell

Ceferin named three pillars: unity, transparency, and governance that serves the many.

On unity, this affair has left a crack that anyone in the industry can see, including those who would rather not say it out loud. World football has split into two blocs with two different views of outside capital. One treats private money as a tool for scaling up. The other treats it as a door through which strangers walk into the living room.

On transparency, this is the pillar most damaged in the public eye. How long was the 20 percent proposal discussed before it leaked? How many FIFA Council members knew before it appeared in the press? These are questions with no public answer, and the silence itself feeds suspicion.

On governance that serves the many, this is where Ceferin is most persuasive and least verifiable. Because "the many" in world football is not a single bloc. It is 211 countries and territories with 211 different income levels, 211 different levels of infrastructure, and 211 different needs.

At this point I think back to a meeting in 2026. In Lyon, I organised a face-to-face dialogue at Groupama Stadium between 120 members of the "Lyon 2026" supporters group and the Olympique Lyonnais coaching staff, at a time when head coach Bruno Genesio was surrounded by criticism on social media. I stood in the middle, translating for both sides. What I learned that night, and have carried for years, is this: you cannot heal an institution by explaining the numbers again. You can only heal it by letting people speak.

I came to Lyon to find a media wave, and I stayed to learn how to listen.

The layer that pays

A deal selling commercial equity does not happen in a closed room with a few men in suits. It happens everywhere, and the people who pay are not the people at the negotiating table.

Look at the bottom layer. Clubs that release players for the World Cup receive money from FIFA's Club Benefits Programme. For the 2026 World Cup, the total distributed was 209 million dollars. That money is life support for small clubs in Europe's second and third tiers, for teams in Africa and South America, where a season of gate receipts does not cover wages.

Look at the women's game. Since 2026, FIFA has sharply increased its investment in women's football, and the 2027 Women's World Cup in Brazil is the next milestone. Every financial restructuring at the top carries consequences down here, whether or not anyone says so.

And look at the supporters. At a match at Groupama Stadium this season, I sat in row twelve, among men and women who have held season tickets for thirty years. They do not care who owns 20 percent. They care what next season's ticket costs, whether kick-off gets moved to a slot that suits a television audience on another continent, and whether their club's name is still spelled correctly on the scoreboard.

That is why I believe the debate over football governance will always be hard to close. It is not a debate about the rules of the game. It is a debate about who gets a seat at the table.

Every transfer contract is a turn in someone's fate, not a line in a spreadsheet. A deal selling 20 percent of world football's commercial rights is the same thing, only many times larger.

Lyon as a test case

I live in Lyon, and this city has already lived that story, at the scale of a single club.

OL Groupe, the parent company of Olympique Lyonnais, entered the orbit of foreign capital when John Textor's Eagle Football Holdings took control in 2026 and then consolidated its position as majority shareholder in the years that followed. For Lyon supporters, that was a long stretch in which emotion ran ahead of reason: hope for new resources, worry about an old identity.

I have spoken to people on both sides. For an accountant at a small firm near the stadium, what matters is that the club is not sold off piece by piece. For a young supporter in the south stand, what matters is that the club has money to buy players. Both are right. And neither was consulted in the negotiating room.

That is what makes the FIFA story feel so close to me. What happens at the very top of world football is not remote from what happens at the very bottom of a city like Lyon. The same question, the same anxiety, only a different bank balance.

The contrarian angle: the deal was beaten by arithmetic, not by ethics

The popular telling right now, and I think most outlets are telling it this way, is that football saved itself. UEFA protected the sport from a corporate takeover. The fans won.

I do not believe that story.

The real version, as I see it, is far barer: the 20 percent proposal was killed because 143 votes stood on the other side, and because FIFA's leadership realised that pushing ahead meant staging a World Cup without the three largest confederations in the world. That is a calculation, not a moral awakening.

And here is the biggest blind spot I can see in this whole affair: the governance review Infantino has floated would run through the very FIFA Council that allowed the project to advance far enough that it had to be beaten back. Infantino says he will put the idea to the Council rather than announce a review himself, and the Council meets on October 15. That is precisely the suspicious part.

If a mechanism produced this outcome, will handing that same mechanism the job of fixing it produce a different one? In medicine, you do not assign the cause of a disease to the task of curing it. In governance, you usually have to separate the people who created a problem from the process of solving it, through independent bodies with clear mandates and hard deadlines. So far, nothing suggests such a mechanism will be built.

I also want to say something that is fair to Ceferin, even though I do not fully trust the way he frames the issue. He spoke publicly on this for the first time in months. He chose not to name his opponent. He talked about "the work to be done" rather than "who should be held responsible." That is the language of a man trying to hold an institution together, not one trying to bring it down.

At the same time, Ceferin is a politician inside a confederation of 55 member associations, and everything he says is read through the eyes of people who will cast votes at future congresses. I do not say this to undermine his speech. I say it because it is part of the picture, and readers are entitled to that part too.

Why this matters for Vietnamese football

I know most of my readers in Vietnam see this news and think: that is their business. FIFA's business, UEFA's business, the business of men in suits in Zurich.

I disagree.

Vietnamese football sits inside the FIFA system, and every structural change in football's top-level finances trickles down here, more slowly and through many middle layers. If FIFA increases development funding to member associations, youth academies and pitch infrastructure in Southeast Asia can benefit. If FIFA has to pay a dividend to private shareholders, that money flows the other way.

There is a wider lesson too. The FIFA story is a story about what happens when a sports institution grows faster than its ability to govern itself. At a smaller scale, the same could happen to a V.League club, a provincial federation, or a youth tournament. The mechanism is identical: money arrives fast, rules arrive slowly, and the people in between absorb the gap.

Based on my experience following matches across many seasons and many countries, I have learned something I believe holds at every level of football: the financial crises of football almost never begin in finance. They begin with decisions made in a hurry by people who assume no one is watching.

Closing: October 15

So what should we watch in the coming weeks?

On October 15, the FIFA Council meets. The most important signal I will look for is the structure of the review. Will it be chaired by an outside body, with a clearly defined mandate and a fixed deadline, or will it be an internal process run by the interested parties themselves? The distance between those two options is bigger than any statement about transparency.

Another signal sits in the 10 million dollar payment per member association. If it appears on the formal agenda, the debate has shifted from governance to redistribution. If it vanishes from every document, the 143-vote coalition still holds its value.

And another signal sits in the language. Statements about "continuing to listen" and "the process" usually mark a tactical retreat. Statements about specific, verifiable provisions usually mark a real reform.

Tactics age. The human story never does.

What I am most certain of, after all of this, is that a withdrawn proposal is not a changed mind. The idea of selling a piece of world football to private investors was written down, discussed behind closed doors, and put on the table. It is still sitting in the drawer, waiting for another moment, another coalition, another mood.

And when it returns, the question in front of everyone will not be who owns what percentage. It will be who gets asked. The supporter in row twelve? Or only the people in the signing room?

That afternoon in Lyon, the man in the raincoat folded his paper and left. I do not know what he was thinking. But I know he will be back at that cafe tomorrow afternoon, in that same seat, and he will look up at the screen every time there is news about football.

Because that is the one thing in this sport that has never been sold, and has never been bought.