Last week, we compared Gianni Infantino to a landlord taking a bow for the party happening in a flat he merely owns. It turns out that undersold him. This week, the same landlord tried to sell the building — a $20 billion stake in a new commercial entity built around the World Cup itself, bankrolled by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, and pitched to FIFA’s own member associations as something they should simply accept. They didn’t. UEFA’s full 55 members voted to boycott the World Cup and every other FIFA competition until the plan is dropped. FIFA’s response, delivered with a straight face: “Nobody is selling football.” Someone should tell Infantino that’s exactly what he just tried to do.

The plan, which FIFA calls the FIFA Forward Enterprise, would hand private investors a stake in the commercial rights to the World Cup — broadcasting, sponsorship, the works — reportedly in exchange for roughly $20 billion. UEFA didn’t wait for the consultation process to play out; within a day of the plan going public, its 55 members voted unanimously to boycott the World Cup and every other FIFA competition until it’s withdrawn. CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation followed with their own rejections, stopping short of a boycott but making their opposition just as clear.

UEFA’s statement in response to FIFA’s reported World Cup plans.

Then came the resignation that actually seemed to rattle FIFA. Carlos Cordeiro, a senior advisor to Infantino himself, quit in protest, writing that he “cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup” and calling it “a bad deal for football.” FIFA’s own chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, went further, saying staff had been “deceived” by Infantino’s lack of openness and “deserve better than contempt and intimidation.” This isn’t critics on the outside anymore. It’s the people inside the building.

None of this should come as a great surprise. This isn’t a new Infantino — it’s the same one who treats the World Cup as personal property to claim credit for and now to monetize. It wouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone if he were to install himself atop the new entity, a convenient way to guarantee his own lucrative future once his FIFA presidency ends. This isn’t a behavioural anomaly; it’s the same instinct behind the Balogun reversal, the Peace Prize, and the visa dismissals, just operating at a different scale.

We previously wrote that his re-election was “remarkably safe,” largely because of FIFA’s one-association-one-vote system — England and Montserrat carry identical electoral weight. His ability to shore up support among smaller associations through financial backing has kept his position secure even amid growing backlash. It has been reported that the financial incentives for individual member associations was going to be as much as $40m under the proposed plans. The clearest historical precedent for how a FIFA president actually leaves is his own resignation, as with Sepp Blatter — a man who apparently sees no irony in his recent social media posts about corruption at FIFA. But Cordeiro’s resignation, and a genuine multi-confederation revolt, are a different order of pressure than anything visible just a week ago. Infantino isn’t finished. But there’s a real case that the power base we called immovable is, for the first time, actually shifting.

If his re-election next March goes ahead as planned, it won’t be because none of this happened. It’ll be because FIFA’s own members decided, once again, that it didn’t matter enough. That was the whole point of our last piece, not that Infantino would eventually be held accountable, but that the system built around him was never designed to. This week gave that argument its sharpest test yet. Whether it’s the moment his grip finally slips, or just the loudest instance yet of nothing changing, may be the only question left worth asking about Gianni Infantino.