On August 1st, UEFA officially issued a statement welcoming FIFA's decision to withdraw its plan to sell its competitions.

UEFA's official statement:

UEFA welcomes FIFA's decision to withdraw its plan to sell stakes in its competitions, including the FIFA World Cup, to private entities.

UEFA member associations, as well as numerous football federations and confederations of various sizes around the world, unanimously opposed this proposal because they bear the responsibility of protecting the sport of football.

UEFA thanks all fans, leagues, clubs, players, individuals, associations, and confederations who opposed this plan, as well as many prime ministers, heads of state, and commentators who clearly expressed to the FIFA President the fact that football is not for sale.

We cannot continue to run football in this way – secretly plotted, rushed through in a very short time, with proposals from individuals whose identities are not publicly known and whose benefits to the sport are questionable. We must identify those responsible and hold them accountable.

In the coming days and weeks, UEFA will work with its member associations and in close cooperation with other confederations to reflect on how this situation came about and develop a plan to ensure that similar situations do not happen again.

This review must be comprehensive and thorough, and no options should be excluded. The current FIFA leadership has not only lost the trust of UEFA but also the trust of many members of the football family.

In 2016, when Gianni Infantino sought the trust and votes of FIFA member associations to be elected FIFA President, he said:

"Of course, we must be transparent. I have been so at UEFA for the past 15 years. You must be involved in the daily running of FIFA."

He then told the stakeholders present: "FIFA's money is your money, not the FIFA President's money. It is your money. You are the national associations, and FIFA's funds must be used for the development of football, not for anything else."

However, he failed to deliver on both of these promises.

The secret, behind-the-scenes, and opaque deal he orchestrated and tried to push through goes against transparency.

Furthermore, FIFA currently has over $5 billion in reserves, but Infantino has also failed to ensure that these funds, which belong to the member associations, are genuinely used for football development.

UEFA will immediately begin working with partners and stakeholders worldwide to propose a new way of allocating resources around the existing FIFA "FIFA Forward" program.

We must start using some of the funds that have long been idle in FIFA's accounts to provide the necessary seed support for grassroots football and the development of the entire sport for FIFA's 211 member associations.

But we don't need to sell football's "family jewels" to achieve this.

This is a victory for the entire football community.

But this should not be the end of the story.

This proposal has been withdrawn, and the task of rebuilding trust in FIFA has only just begun.

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