UEFA forms rare united front against FIFA's private investment plan

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Emerging from this week with unity over Fifa’s World Cup sell off was quite an acheivement but Europe cannot rest on its laurels

It was a phrase not always heard when Europe’s football associations discuss a pressing issue. “Touchingly unanimous,” was the assessment of a senior Uefa executive within moments of Thursday afternoon’s seismic decision to boycott Fifa tournaments unless Gianni Infantino scraps his private investment plan. United fronts on this scale are vanishingly rare and there is now a narrow window in which to make it count.

Fifa doubled down on its proposal overnight with “clarifications”, which blamed the media for disrupting the “consultation process” of a scheme that had been constructed under cloak and dagger. There was no suggestion that it will shift from its 19 September deadline to effectively ram the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal through. Anyone would be forgiven for asking what the rush is but Uefa and its allies must not allow the next seven weeks to drag.

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