Three confederations have now put it in writing. In a three-page open letter to the football family, published on Monday and the three bodies that govern football in Europe, in North and Central America and the Caribbean, and in Asia accused a leader of abandoning his duty by breaking trust "through deception". It was signed by their presidents and general secretaries. They did not name Gianni Infantino. Nobody needed them to.
The letter's central charge is not that the plan to sell a stake in the World Cup was botched. It is that Fifa has not conceded the plan was wrong. Fifa Forward Enterprise would have created a company to manage the commercial and ticketing rights of all its competitions, the World Cups included, with 21% sold to a private investment company, and it was abandoned after criticism led by Uefa. The apology that followed, the confederations wrote, "did not acknowledge that the proposal itself was inherently wrong". They went further. "There remains no recognition that attempting to sell an interest in the Fifa World Cup was a profound failure of judgement," the letter said. "Not just a procedural misstep, but a fundamental breach of trust with the very institutions Fifa exists to serve."
What they are asking for, and what they are threatening
Fifa has committed to bringing a report to its council in October. The three confederations rejected that in advance, saying it failed to "recognise that proper governance in the face of such a profound lack of judgement would require that such a review be conducted by a fully independent third party". They also repeated a legal warning that no documents relating to the abandoned plan should be deleted or destroyed, and they were pointed about the management board meeting Infantino called in Rabat last week, at which he summoned Fifa-employed senior staff while council members and member associations were shut out. "There is silence where there should be accountability," the letter said, "distance where there should be openness."