African football journalists have delivered a blunt message to FIFA President Gianni Infantino and CAF President Patrice Motsepe: carry your own cross. This comes after a desperate, last-ditch push to enlist them in defending Infantino’s botched scheme to spin off FIFA’s commercial assets into a private equity vehicle tied to the Kushner orbit – specifically Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Eternal fund, brother of Jared Kushner.
For years, African football media has been treated as disposable cannon fodder in the endless war of attrition that defines football power politics. Officials cultivate journalists when they need propaganda engines to climb the ladder, then discard them the moment the objective is secured. Infantino perfected this model. Before seizing the FIFA presidency, he carefully weaponized media narratives that painted football middlemen as inherently corrupt.
The goal was never systemic clean-up. It was consolidation: sweeping tournament organization, media rights, and the smaller deals that keep intermediaries alive – player transfers included – into a centralized machine under his control.
Motsepe arrived on a manufactured wave of optimism. Corrupt or opportunistic journalists hyped his business acumen and Forbes credentials as a potential windfall that would finally deliver prosperity to the people who actually keep African football afloat.
Instead, under his watch CAF has become a basket case of foreign capture and selective xenophobia. Preferential treatment flows to foreigners who cut their teeth with Infantino in Zurich or to South African networks that appear to benefit from his presidency – directly contradicting the cheap Afrocentric rhetoric peddled during the campaigns.
Infantino long peddled the myth that because he could reliably secure the bloc of roughly 54 African FA votes, he was untouchable, the supreme object of worship in world football. The events of the past three days have shredded that aura.
Other confederations have been emboldened to stop bowing to the charade and reassert themselves as stakeholders rather than flower girls in the Infantino–Trump spectacle.
The underlying reality is uglier still. Infantino is a lawyer who maneuvered into the presidency with the effective assistance of U.S. and Swiss prosecutorial pressure that helped clear the path after the downfall of the man who once mentored him, Michel Platini. He has steadily hollowed out the soul of the game by deliberately sidelining genuine football expertise in favor of joyriders, bootlickers, and sycophants.
The endgame was always this: deeper commercialization that prioritizes personal and political networks over the sport’s custodianship.
FIFA and CAF have developed a toxic habit of turning on the very operatives who built the game in Africa – the activists and journalists whose pressure helped create the conditions for Infantino and Motsepe’s elevations. They malign them, besmirch their reputations, and ensure they remain financially precarious out of pure spite and the arrogance of power.
This week’s shameless attempt to foist the controversial proposal onto African journalists – belatedly supplying documents so they could “dissect” and perform civic education on FIFA’s behalf – fits the colonial pattern perfectly. When it is time for glamour and fame, FIFA and CAF court non-football influencers. When it is time for the hard, unglamorous work of policy and governance, they suddenly remember the experts they have spent years trying to destroy.
Appeals from FIFA and CAF staff for solidarity with Infantino in his hour of need have been met with contempt.
Here is a man on the brink, suddenly rediscovering the cluster of specialists he actively sought to marginalize.
African journalists have told him, in effect, to call Shakira, Burna Boy, Jennifer Hudson, and iShowSpeed; the high-profile beneficiaries of the football economy that those same experts labor to sustain.
African journalists routinely denied World Cup accreditations that are handed out to big names like Fabrizio Romano have finally drawn a line. A system that systematically starves opportunities at the base while funneling massive visibility and resources upward has no claim on their loyalty when the pyramid is under threat.
African football operatives have declined to participate in the charade. Every man for himself. Let the process play out.
If UEFA, CONCACAF, and the AFC choose to convene emergency measures or pursue suspension of Infantino, they should understand they have the backing of the real football family in Africa – not the silent FA presidents who watched as privatization of a public asset was floated, but the isolated builders of the game who have been deliberately locked out of the structures they helped create.
This is also a direct message to those three confederations that stood against the plan: cease treating African football associations as reliable interlocutors. They have too often functioned as the weak link and the surveillance channel. Move with speed. Finish what you started. The broader football world is watching.
The nonsense Infantino has inflicted is unforgivable. Allowing him an extra eight months – or any further extension of his grip – would be an atrocity. Impeach him immediately so the rebuilding can begin. Too much time has already been wasted on spin, PR, and the cultivation of political relationships at the expense of the game itself.
The proposal itself was straightforward in its ambition and toxic in its execution. FIFA sought to create FIFA Forward Enterprise, a commercial subsidiary housing media rights, sponsorships, ticketing, hospitality, and event operations for the men’s and women’s World Cups, Club World Cup, and related competitions.
Valued at roughly $20 billion, it would have sold an approximately 20 percent minority stake for up to $4.2 billion, with Thrive Eternal – launched by Joshua Kushner – positioned as the expected lead investor.
Member associations were dangled one-off payments of $20 million each (with further increased annual funding promised) as the sweetener. UEFA responded that the World Cup “is not FIFA’s to sell.” CONCACAF and the AFC joined the rejection. Internal FIFA figures publicly stated staff had been deceived. Within days the plan was abandoned amid boycott threats and open revolt.
The episode has exposed the limits of Infantino’s transactional model and the hollowness of Motsepe’s claimed continental solidarity. African journalists and genuine football people have refused to serve as the cleanup crew.
The cross is Infantino’s and Motsepe’s to carry.
