Gianni Infantino spent October 2020 negotiating to attach FIFA’s name to the European Super League. Six months later he told a UEFA congress he “strongly disapproved” of the same project.

That is the awkward gap laid out in a Guardian exclusive by Nick Ames that dropped on Wednesday, built on a term sheet dated October 2020.

According to the document, FIFA and the Super League’s founding clubs were prepared to rebrand the breakaway as “WO1 SL”, the working designation for a FIFA-badged competition, with a minimum 12-year partnership giving the governing body a “golden share” and a preferred equity stake covering format, calendar and the appointment of a chief executive.

The blueprint envisaged 15 permanent members and five qualifying places.

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The 12 founding-club names carried in parallel Mirror reporting match the group that briefly launched the Super League in April 2021: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Juventus, Inter, AC Milan, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham.

Six months later, “strongly disapprove”

When the breakaway went public in April 2021, Infantino used a UEFA congress address to distance FIFA from it, saying the governing body could “only strongly disapprove of the creation of a Super League which is a closed shop”.

FIFA has since maintained that its involvement in the earlier talks was limited.

Rabat meeting and Guardian scoop came on the same day

Hours before the Guardian’s disclosures landed, FIFA’s management board gathered in Rabat to reaffirm support for Infantino in the wake of a separate collapse: a plan to sell a 20% stake in a new FIFA commercial-rights entity to private investors, including Thrive Capital, for around $4.2bn.

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The involvement of a company with family ties to US president Donald Trump was among the most-criticised elements of the deal.

Secretary general Mattias Grafstrom described the affair to staff as a “sad and reproachable series of events” and told members the project had been “permanently abandoned”, according to Reuters reporting via Al-Monitor.

Chief operating officer Kevin Lamour told colleagues staff had been “deceived” and called the deal “the project of one person”.

UEFA declared it has lost confidence in Infantino’s leadership; CONCACAF emphatically rejected the stake-sale proposal. Canadian prime minister Mark Carney was blunter.

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“I don’t have confidence in Mr. Infantino,” Carney told reporters.

Confederations do not decide how their member associations vote at a FIFA Congress; each of FIFA’s 211 associations casts its own ballot.

March 2027 in Morocco

Infantino is due to seek re-election at the FIFA Congress in March 2027, also scheduled for Morocco.

An Extraordinary Congress can be triggered earlier if 43 member associations file a formal written request, a threshold no group has publicly claimed.

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No opposing candidate has declared, and Infantino’s base has traditionally been strongest among smaller associations dependent on FIFA development funding.

Former Portugal captain Luis Figo has publicly called for him to resign, while FIFA’s own chief of global football development, Arsène Wenger, called the withdrawal of the stake sale “absolutely necessary”.

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