‘The emperor is naked’: UEFA’s Aleksander Ceferin takes aim at FIFA boss Gianni Infantino

Addressing the European Football Clubs General Assembly in Copenhagen, Ceferin invoked Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” as he criticised the language FIFA had used ‌to defend Infantino’s shelved FIFA Forward Enterprise project. | Photo Credit: REUTERS

UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said ‘the emperor is naked’ on ‌Tuesday in a blistering attack on FIFA President Gianni Infantino and ​his failed plan to sell a stake in the governing ⁠body’s commercial rights to private investors.

Addressing the European Football Clubs General Assembly in Copenhagen, Ceferin invoked Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” as he criticised the language FIFA had used ‌to defend Infantino’s shelved FIFA Forward Enterprise project.

“Almost 200 years ago, he wrote The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Ceferin said.

“We all know the ‌story. An emperor is persuaded that he is wearing magnificent clothes, clothes ‌which ⁠he is told only the foolish or unfit cannot see. His court ⁠goes along with it until a child simply says aloud what everybody can see. The emperor is naked,” he added.

Infantino’s FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal would have created a FIFA-controlled commercial subsidiary ​holding rights to competitions including ‌the men’s and women’s World Cups and the Club World Cup and allowed private investors to acquire up to 20% of the entity.

Infantino had promoted the proposal as a way to generate more money for football development and said ‌it was subject to a democratic consultation with FIFA’s 211 member associations ​before it was abandoned following widespread opposition.

Ceferin directly challenged that language. “Perhaps the moral of the story is convenient words cannot change ⁠uncomfortable realities,” he said.

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“Now, world football has heard some very convenient words recently. Development, democratisation, consultation- words used, in fact, to describe the opposite. Selling part of football’s future ‌does not become development because you say it’s development. Putting a fait accompli in front of national associations does not mean democratisation, even if you call it democratisation. However big the check is. And secrecy does not become consultation because you call it consultation,” Ceferin noted.

Ceferin then asked club executives to imagine one of their senior officials secretly negotiating away control of their “crown jewels” without the knowledge of their board, ‌players or supporters, with the deal almost completed by the time they learned of it.

“What ​would your board do?” he asked.

He went on to refer to a hypothetical situation in which the same person created an award ⁠for a politician and, soon afterwards, the politician made a phone call after which “the ⁠rules are not the same anymore.”

“How many times would this have to happen at your clubs before the world says ‘enough’? Well, my friends, ‌I think it’s time to say enough,” Ceferin said.

He ended the passage by accusing unnamed decision-makers of bending rules when they became inconvenient, excluding those who ​were supposed to have a say and treating football’s future as “just another bargaining chip.”