Football power struggle caused FIFA World Cup plan fallout, says Kushner

Investor Joshua Kushner blames football’s ‘political dynamics’ for FIFA’s leadership crisis involving Gianni Infantino.United States businessman Joshua Kushner has blamed power struggles within global football for the outrage over FIFA’s plan to sell stakes in the World Cup, admitting his firm “would not have got involved” if it had anticipated the backlash.Venture capitalist Kushner, the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, commented on the ongoing row for the first time on Monday as European governing body UEFA prepares a criminal case against FIFA President Gianni Infantino.“While we stand behind the motivations of FFE, we failed to appreciate the political dynamics of global football, and the lengths some would go to,” Kushner said of the FIFA Forward Enterprise, the proposed commercial subsidiary of FIFA that would have managed the commercial and operational rights of FIFA competitions in the now-scrapped plan.“Had we known what this would devolve into, we would not have got involved,” added Kushner, whose firm Thrive Capital worked on the deal in private for months and would have spearheaded the investment process.FFE was a plan to bring private investment into FIFA events, including the World Cup, by selling stakes in a new $20bn commercial subsidiary.FIFA said the proposal would have raised $4.2bn to benefit poorer football-playing nations, and that member associations could have voted to reject it.Critics said the plan had been hatched in secret to profit its investors, with UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin dubbing the proposal a “shady, opaque backroom deal”.