FIFA President Gianni Infantino was forced to make a rare public apology after the controversy sparked by the plan to sell shares of the World Cup to private investors.
in the way the FIFA Forward Enterprise project was presented, stressing that the process was not as it should have been and that FIFA members and national federations should have been more involved.
In a joint statement issued Wednesday evening, it said: "We acknowledge that mistakes were made in the proposed FFE establishment process. It was certainly not intended that the FIFA Council and FIFA member associations should feel excluded from the process, and the matter should have been handled differently. We also acknowledge that mistakes were made after the proposal was leaked to the media. We sincerely apologize for these mistakes and commit to not repeating them. In light of this, we will conduct a necessary review, and a report will be submitted to the FIFA Council at its next scheduled meeting."
The proposal caused a wide division within world football, after it faced strong opposition from European powers, amid threats from some parties to boycott FIFA competitions if the project went ahead.
Despite the plan being scrapped, Infantino managed to get through the crisis meeting after FIFA Council members declared their full support for his presidency, stressing that the next phase would see improvements in work mechanisms and transparency within the organization.
But the criticism didn't stop, as a number of football figures called for his departure, most notably former Real Madrid and Portugal star Luis Figo, who said that solving FIFA's problems requires only three words: "Infantino must go."
