Aurelio De Laurentiis does not do subtle. Handed a microphone in Rome to mark his career in football, the Napoli president used it to admit, in public, that he had been talked out of a grudge against Gianni Infantino.

“I wanted to shoot Infantino; but when I saw how he had organised everything, I said: ‘No, I hold my hands up, I have to say well done,'” De Laurentiis told the Foreign Press Association on Wednesday, according to the Reuters wire report of the ceremony.

The plan that lit the fuse

The specific trigger was the proposal Infantino unveiled in the summer to move commercial rights for future World Cups and the Club World Cup into a new subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise, and open it to private investors led by Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital in a structure valued at around $20 billion. UEFA responded by boycotting the FIFA meeting at which the plan was tabled, calling it “irresponsible and indefensible” and warning that member nations would boycott FIFA competitions unless the proposal was abandoned in full.

The plan has since been abandoned, Al Jazeera reported earlier this month, but the diplomatic fallout has not gone with it. UEFA is preparing a criminal complaint against Infantino in Switzerland and has asked a US federal court in Florida for FIFA documents to use in the case.

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De Laurentiis did not row back on the commercial plan itself. What he softened was the personal fury, and only after attending the tournament in the United States.

An awkward compliment

“Infantino is someone who does his job from his point of view. If a once secretary is then allowed, once he becomes president, to do certain things and travel around the world wearing the FIFA badge, meeting Trump, meeting Putin, meeting everyone, what are we supposed to say to him?”

Re-election in Rabat

Infantino has announced he will stand for a further term. The FIFA elective congress is scheduled for 18 March 2027 in Rabat, Morocco, with candidacy declarations due by 18 November. A candidate needs 106 of the 211 member associations’ votes to win.

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