FIFA crisis deepens: Infantino faces blackmail claims

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FT Desk

Prince Ali bin Hussein, the President of the Jordan Football Association, has accused FIFA of blackmail regarding support for Gianni Infantino.

The Italian has held the presidency of FIFA since 2016 after succeeding Sepp Blatter. He first made his name at UEFA, where he helped run some of Europe's biggest competitions, including the Champions League and the European Championship.

Since taking over at FIFA, he's pushed through several major changes, most notably expanding the men's World Cup to 48 teams and launching a new-look Club World Cup. While he's often spoken about making football more global and accessible, his time in charge has also attracted plenty of criticism, with a number of FIFA's decisions and controversies putting him under the spotlight.

Most recently, he has been forced to scrap plans to sell shares in the World Cup to private equity firms after almost universal criticism from the football world, while his relationship with United States President Donald Trump is facing further scrutiny as FIFA is meant to remain a politically neutral organisation.

Infantino is facing a real fight to hold on to the presidency, with organisations like UEFA pushing for his removal either by resignation or by putting up their own candidate in the next election.

Prince Ali has outlined some recent dealings with FIFA that are a cause for concern, including the Jordan national team's treatment at their first ever World Cup in 2026.

"There is no shortage of issues regarding FIFA. Let me start by clarifying what some of these are from an FA perspective, in particular that of Jordan going into a World Cup for the first time," the Jordanian wrote on X.

"We are a small country with a minimal budget for our FA and had to deal with enormous hurdles. First, getting our fans into the USA: not all were granted VISAS, even though they had tickets -which we also know were sold at exorbitant prices.

"Secondly, we are being taxed by the US govt through FIFA for our participation. Money that should go to players and staff. This was not the case for those who played and set up camp in Canada and Mexico. But we happened to be in the USA so now we face these huge costs in taxes for having participated."

He says that the country is still waiting on prize money from the 2025 Arab Cup in which Jordan lost 3-2 in the final versus Morocco.

"Thirdly, we have been waiting for reward money for our players since December for the Arab cup in Qatar, which is a FIFA event," he continued.

"The money our team should receive for having reached the final has not been delivered yet, while at the same time FIFA brags about how many billions they have in reserve."

"This amounts to blackmail" - Prince Ali of Jordan on pressure exerted for his FA to endorse Infantino https://t.co/Z0QJuYQfDo

— Martyn Ziegler (@martynziegler) August 4, 2026

Prince Ali goes on to suggest that he was pressured into throwing support behind Infantino just so Jordan could be given the money they were already due.

"It is clear the problem really is with leadership. For months, FIFA has been refusing to help us on any of these or other matters- until it was verbally communicated to me during the World Cup that if I endorsed Infantino it would go a long way to helping our FA out," he revealed.

"We pride ourselves in Jordan in upholding ethical values. We did not endorse him before and certainly will not now. But the whole situation amounts to blackmail and we refuse to give in to that."

Several high-profile Football Associations, including England, have now formally withdrawn their support for Infantino for the next election, which is due to take place next year.