While a group of ten former internationals put their names to an open call for reform at FIFA on Monday, Samuel Eto’o pulled in the opposite direction on the same day.

Speaking to CNN, the Cameroonian Football Federation president brushed off the criticism engulfing Gianni Infantino.

“I don’t think that President Gianni Infantino has done anything wrong,” Eto’o told CNN. “I think the timing of all of that is because there’s an election coming out.”

Infantino faces re-election at the FIFA Congress in Rabat in March 2027. His scrapped attempt to sell a roughly 20 percent stake in a new commercial entity, FIFA Forward Enterprise, a plan that valued the vehicle at $20bn and would have raised $4.2bn from investors, has cost him allies inside three of the game’s biggest confederations.

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Eto’o built his defence on what Infantino has done for smaller federations. The former Barcelona, Inter Milan and Chelsea striker credited the Swiss with opening the World Cup to countries that had long been shut out.

“President Gianni Infantino has changed football. He’s given opportunities to nations that didn’t have those opportunities to take part in the most beautiful tournament, the World Cup,” he said.

“He enabled smaller nations to get seats at these competitions. He has helped our continent. He’s helped our federations to develop much more quickly, and we need to acknowledge that.”

“We need to accept and recognise what he’s done, and we should support him for everything he’s done up to now.”

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Eto’o also defended the withdrawn commercial plan itself.

“I remain convinced that for us as Africans, this project was something that could have been incredible,” he told CNN.

Legends line up on the other side

The same day, ten former internationals put their names to a joint statement demanding reform at the top of the world governing body.

France’s 1998 World Cup winners Emmanuel Petit, Bixente Lizarazu and Robert Pirès signed, alongside Didier Drogba, Argentina’s Juan Sebastián Verón, Peru’s Claudio Pizarro, former Togo captain Emmanuel Adebayor, former England international Lucy Bronze, former United States goalkeeper Briana Scurry and former England goalkeeper David James.

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“Power has blurred the current leadership’s ability to distinguish between its own interests and what is best for football,” the group said.

“We share the exact same concerns as the millions of fans around the world. Like them, we have watched the game we love drift away from its core values under FIFA’s current leadership.”

They called for a “structural change” that would give players and fans a “real, direct say” in how the game is run.

The confederations broke first

The legends’ letter followed a much heavier blow two weeks earlier. On 10 August, the presidents of UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF put out a joint open letter accusing Infantino of a “fundamental breach of trust” over the aborted FIFA Forward Enterprise plan.

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UEFA’s Aleksander Čeferin, AFC’s Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa and CONCACAF’s Victor Montagliani co-signed the letter, along with the three general secretaries.

“Attempting to sell an interest in the FIFA World Cup was a profound failure of judgment, not just a procedural misstep, but a fundamental breach of trust,” they wrote.

The project itself had already collapsed. FIFA announced on 1 August that the private-investment plan would not proceed, conceding it had “created divisions” inside the organisation. UEFA had voted days earlier to boycott all FIFA competitions if the proposal went ahead.

CAF got there first

Eto’o’s stance mirrors that of his own confederation. On 7 August, the CAF Executive Committee said it had “unanimously reconfirmed its support for FIFA President Gianni Infantino and thanked him for his support for African football over the years”.

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CAF is made up of 54 of FIFA’s 211 member associations, and UEFA of 55. Confederations do not control how their members vote at the FIFA Congress, though: each association casts its own ballot in the presidential election, and past FIFA campaigns have often cut across confederation lines.

That vote is scheduled for the FIFA Congress in Rabat in March 2027.