FIFA dismisses COO Kevin Lamour after he publicly criticises Infantino’s World Cup commercialisation proposal

FIFA has officially sacked Chief Operating Officer Kevin Lamour following his public condemnation of President Gianni Infantino's controversial $20 billion tournament commercialisation scheme. In an internal announcement, FIFA confirmed that the working relationship with Lamour ended on August 17, 2026, marking a dramatic escalation in the internal civil war rocking global football governance. The high-profile firing stems from explosive comments Lamour made to the press on July 31, 2026. The former UEFA deputy secretary general broke ranks to fiercely criticize a proposal known as FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE). Infantino secretly engineered a plan to spin off FIFA's tournament operations—including the lucrative men's World Cup—into a private subsidiary, intending to sell a 20% stake to external private equity investors to raise roughly $4.2 billion. Lamour publicly asserted that FIFA administration and stakeholders had been "deceived" by a "lie of omission" and a unilateral exercise of power. He openly called FFE "the project of one person" who erroneously believed he embodied the entire organization. Anticipating corporate retaliation, Lamour explicitly stated at the time, "If that means I lose my job, then so be it". Lamour is not the only high-ranking official to exit over the debacle. Carlos Cordeiro, the former U.S. Soccer president serving as Infantino's senior adviser, resigned in protest just hours before Lamour's public comments, calling the privatization scheme "a bad deal for football". While intense backlash from UEFA, CONCACAF, and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC)—who threatened total tournament boycotts—forced Infantino to completely scrap the investment project in early August, the political damage remains severe. Three major continental confederations issued a joint open letter accusing Infantino of a "fundamental breach of trust," throwing a massive wrench into his campaign for a fourth presidential term.