Aleksander Ceferin has delivered one of his strongest attacks yet on the leadership of world football, declaring that “the emperor is naked” and telling hundreds of European club executives that the time has come to say “enough”.
The UEFA president did not mention Gianni Infantino by name during the most explosive section of his speech at the European Football Clubs General Assembly in Copenhagen. He hardly needed to. Ceferin criticised FIFA's abandoned plan to bring private investors into its commercial business, attacked the way major decisions have been made and used the setting in Denmark to compare the situation at FIFA with Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes.
The timing made the speech even more significant. Only hours earlier, FIFA had accused UEFA of conducting a “misinformation campaign” against Infantino and using legal proceedings in the United States to influence the next FIFA presidential election. What had previously been a bitter institutional disagreement between football's two most powerful governing bodies is increasingly being fought in public.
“The emperor is naked”
Ceferin began his attack with a story particularly appropriate for Copenhagen. Andersen's famous tale describes an emperor persuaded that he is wearing magnificent clothes which supposedly cannot be seen by people who are foolish or unfit for their positions. Everyone around him pretends to see the clothes until a child finally points out the obvious truth.
“The emperor is naked,” Ceferin told the room before turning the analogy towards the current state of world football. His argument was that language such as “development”, “democratisation” and “consultation” could not change the reality of how major decisions had been handled.
At the centre of his criticism was FIFA Forward Enterprise, the controversial project developed under Infantino that would have placed some of FIFA's most valuable commercial rights into a new subsidiary. Those rights would have included competitions such as the men's and women's World Cups and the Club World Cup, with private investors potentially able to acquire a stake of up to 20% in the business.
Infantino presented the project as an opportunity to unlock enormous additional value from FIFA's competitions and generate more money for football development around the world. The proposal collapsed in July after strong opposition from UEFA, CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation, with critics arguing that the process had lacked sufficient consultation and transparency.
Ceferin's interpretation could hardly have been more different from FIFA's. He told the Copenhagen audience that selling part of football's future did not become development simply because those negotiating the deal described it that way, while presenting national associations with something approaching a finished agreement could not reasonably be described as democratisation.
Ceferin asks clubs to imagine the same thing happening to them
Rather than discussing the dispute only in the language of football politics, Ceferin asked the club executives in front of him to imagine a similar situation inside their own organisations. He described a hypothetical senior executive secretly negotiating away control of a club's “crown jewels” without its board, players or supporters knowing what was happening until the deal was almost completed.
“What would your board do?” he asked. The point was obvious: Ceferin wanted European clubs to judge FIFA's governance using the same standards they would apply to their own executives.
He then broadened the attack beyond FIFA Forward Enterprise. Ceferin referred to the creation of a peace prize for a political leader without approval from the relevant governing board, before alluding to a separate episode in which that political leader contacted football officials during a major competition and a decision subsequently changed.
Those references were clearly designed to place the investment controversy within a wider argument about how power is exercised at FIFA. Ceferin's conclusion was that football could no longer treat each controversy as an isolated event and move on.
“How many times would this have to happen at your club before the board says ‘enough’?” Ceferin asked. “I think it is time to say ‘enough’.”
FIFA says UEFA is spreading misinformation
The extraordinary speech came on the same day that FIFA launched its own attack on UEFA in a legal filing in the United States. FIFA accused European football's governing body of making false or misleading statements about Infantino and claimed UEFA's actions were intended partly to interfere with the FIFA presidential election scheduled for March 2027.
The dispute concerns UEFA's attempt to obtain documents and testimony connected to FIFA Forward Enterprise. UEFA has sought evidence through US courts as it considers a potential criminal complaint in Switzerland concerning the way the proposed transaction was developed.
UEFA has alleged that Infantino worked on the project with a limited group of advisers and potential investors without properly involving FIFA's normal governing structures. It has also raised questions about the proposed valuation of the commercial business and whether FIFA's most valuable rights could have been transferred at an inadequate price.
FIFA strongly rejects those allegations. In its US court filing, the organisation said suggestions that Infantino sought to profit personally from the proposal were without foundation and described claims that he had broken laws or ethical rules as “categorically without merit”.
FIFA also disputes UEFA's interpretation of the proposed valuation. UEFA has argued that investors could have paid around $4.2 billion for a stake in a business with an equity valuation of approximately $20 billion, while FIFA says critics are incorrectly comparing equity value with the considerably higher enterprise value of the proposed company.
The disagreement has therefore moved far beyond two football executives exchanging unfriendly comments. Lawyers, courts and potentially criminal authorities are now becoming part of the dispute.
Is UEFA trying to remove Infantino?
The political backdrop is the FIFA presidential election scheduled for March 2027. Infantino is seeking another term, but opposition to his leadership has grown within European football following the Forward Enterprise controversy and a series of disputes over FIFA governance.
Senior figures within UEFA have been discussing the need for an alternative candidate before the nomination deadline on November 18. Finding one may be considerably more difficult than criticising Infantino, however, because FIFA elections are decided by its 211 member associations and every association has one vote regardless of its commercial importance.
Europe's richest federations and clubs may generate an enormous proportion of football's global revenue, but UEFA cannot determine a FIFA election by itself. Infantino has historically enjoyed substantial support among associations outside Europe, particularly where FIFA development funding represents a significant part of the resources available to national football bodies.
One prominent name can already be removed from speculation. Paris Saint-Germain president and European Football Clubs chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who was speaking at the same Copenhagen gathering, categorically ruled himself out of running for the FIFA presidency.
That leaves UEFA with a significant political challenge. If opposition to Infantino is going to become an actual electoral challenge rather than simply a campaign for governance reform, European officials will need to identify a candidate capable of building support far beyond UEFA.
The FIFA–UEFA dispute is becoming an open war
Relations between FIFA and UEFA have been strained before, particularly over the international calendar, expanded competitions and the balance of power between club and international football. The current dispute feels different because it increasingly concerns the legitimacy of the decision-making structures themselves.
Infantino has already proposed an independent review of FIFA's governance and decision-making following the collapse of Forward Enterprise. He has also ordered an assessment of proposals from UEFA and CONCACAF to distribute substantially more of FIFA's reserves to national associations, with preliminary recommendations expected to reach the FIFA Council in October.
Those moves have not ended the confrontation. FIFA now portrays UEFA's campaign as politically motivated and connected to the upcoming presidential election, while UEFA is questioning whether major commercial decisions were taken transparently and in football's best interests.
Ceferin's Copenhagen speech removed much of the diplomatic language that normally surrounds disputes between governing bodies. By invoking an emperor surrounded by people unwilling to state the obvious, he was not merely criticising one abandoned commercial project. He was questioning the culture surrounding the most powerful position in world football.
The next few months will show whether UEFA can turn that anger into meaningful institutional change or a genuine challenge to Infantino's presidency. What is already clear is that the disagreement is no longer being conducted quietly behind the doors of FIFA and UEFA headquarters: both sides are now openly accusing the other of acting improperly, and Ceferin has effectively invited the biggest clubs in European football to decide which version of events they believe.
Published by Patrick Jane
29.09.2026