Ceferin: World Cup deal may be withdrawn, but trust has not returned

"The contract was signed, but the printer never produces a page." I wrote that sentence years ago for a ghost sponsorship deal in Marseille. It echoed in my head while listening to Aleksander Ceferin at the Portugal Football Summit in Lisbon on Wednesday. He did not mention FIFA by name. He did not mention Gianni Infantino. He only spoke about "a project" that had "shattered the unity of world football." But in a room full of European power brokers, everyone could hear a contract being pulled from the printer and torn apart. The dispute began after the 2026 World Cup, when FIFA tried to sell 20% of its commercial rights, including the World Cup, to private investors. UEFA, AFC and Concacaf opposed it. UEFA's 55 member associations threatened to boycott FIFA competitions. In July, FIFA abandoned the proposal. But Ceferin said: "The project that shattered the unity of world football may be abolished, but the trust it broke has not returned." He pointed to three pillars of trust: unity, transparency and governance that serves the many, not the few. A week later, Infantino wrote to all 211 member associations, promising reform, and will put the plan before the FIFA Council on October 15. On the surface, everything seems back on track. But anyone who has spent long hours waiting for a printer knows this: if the page has not come out, the affair is not over. That 20% stake, if read carefully, tells a much bigger story than finance. On paper, FIFA was selling stakes to attract capital and grow global football. But who was selling? To whom? At what price? No one published the answers. A contract is something that can be read backwards, and sports investigators know that the loudest deals often start with shell companies, windowless meeting rooms and whispers in hotel corridors the night before signing. "The dressing room has no cameras, but it has whispers." In a career built on transfer contracts and slashed paychecks, I learned that whispers are more reliable than press releases. The whisper in this story is that the 20% proposal was never just a financial deal. It was a first step toward turning the power of a global tournament into the private asset of a few investment funds. Ceferin is right to say football is not for sale. But the way he said it matters. He did not call for sanctions. He did not demand an investigation. He simply sent a message that repair must begin with governance. This is a smart move, but also an admission: UEFA cannot force FIFA, it can only build a defensive wall. That wall is "unity", a commodity he knows can crack the moment a federation feels it is being offered a better price. Based on my experience following matches in Europe for nearly two decades, I know that on the pitch a team can hide its intentions with high pressing; in the corridors of power, it hides them with one word: reform. My pen needs no ink, only a crack. The crack here is inside FIFA's decision-making process: who writes the proposal, who approves it, who reads it before it becomes an official paper? The 20% World Cup deal may be dead on the desk, but the mindset of selling part of the soul to buy the market is still alive. But I must also repeat what the press rarely says: Ceferin is no saint. His opposition to the 20% deal may not be rooted only in love for football. It cuts straight into UEFA's dominance in Europe. A world where FIFA receives private capital would shift the balance of power, and UEFA, with its 55 members, could lose its dominant voice in global decisions. In other words, the victory of "unity" is also the victory of one faction in a power game. Selling World Cup shares, if done transparently, could even create fairer revenue for smaller federations. But FIFA's closed-door operation, with no consultation and no public valuation, turned it into the villain. The problem is not selling shares. The problem is selling them without anyone having the right to ask. After October 15, people will no longer ask whether the World Cup was for sale. They will ask how that decision was made. I still remember the rule an old journalist taught me: look into the dressing room when the lights go off. World football just turned off the lights after a collapsed deal. In that darkness, I do not hear crying for lost trust. I hear a safe being opened at the back of the hall. The plan has been withdrawn, but the printer has been cleaned and set to wait for the next contract.