Football industry reacts to UEFA promise to boycott FIFA tournaments over World Cup investors' plan

My reaction is, first of all, this was a totally unacceptable deal. I'm delighted that UEFA have taken the stance and that we're part of that. This is another example of terrible governance within FIFA, but I think this time Infantino and FIFA have gone a step too far. I'm very pleased to see that this is a real eyeball-to-eyeball situation between UEFA and FIFA. It's time this happened and I'm very pleased and very supportive of it. The real anger was about the process. What we heard today though was no, this isn't just the process, it's the principle. This was UEFA, Europe, finding its backbone after years and years of moaning to people like me about how autocratic Gianni Infantino is and how relentless he is and what a ridiculous idea this is, but then not doing anything about it publicly because they don't want to upset FIFA because they might want to host the World Cup one day or you know, look we've tried that in the past and everyone hated us for it. No, this was Europe showing a bit of unity and realising that whilst it might only have 55 of 211 votes at FIFA where it's one member, one vote, it has six of the eight-quarter finalists at this summer's World Cup, five of the eight-quarter finalists at the Club World Cup last year, five of the eight-quarter finalists at the Women's World Cup and those numbers are consistent by the way and this is where the big leagues are, this is where the stars play. Europe has a disproportionate significance in global football and this was Europe finding its voice and saying enough.