FIFA COO Kevin Lamour Leaves Amid Infantino Controversy

FIFA’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour has left the organisation, deepening the storm around president Gianni Infantino just weeks after he publicly attacked the governing body’s controversial commercial rights plan.

“FIFA can confirm that the working relationship between FIFA and Kevin Lamour as FIFA’s Chief Operating Officer has ended on 17 August 2026,” a spokesperson said late on Monday, adding only: “FIFA thanks Kevin for his two years of service and wishes him the best of luck for the future. No further comment will be made on the matter.”

No explanation. No detail. Just a clean break at a highly charged moment.

A close ally turns critic

Lamour joined FIFA’s senior leadership in November 2024, stepping into one of the most powerful administrative roles in world football. He was no outsider: the Frenchman had been part of the inner circle that helped drive Infantino’s successful campaign to become FIFA president in 2016.

That makes what followed all the more striking.

Last month, Lamour went public with his opposition to Infantino’s proposal to spin off World Cup and other tournament commercial rights into a new $20bn subsidiary, with up to a 20 percent stake earmarked for private equity investors in exchange for $4.2bn.

He accused FIFA staff of having been “deceived” over the plan and branded it “the project of one person”.

“Our mission … is to serve football, not to serve the personal interests of a person who, unfortunately, believes he embodies FIFA when he is supposed to be at its service,” Lamour said.

Those comments landed just after Carlos Cordeiro, a senior adviser to Infantino, resigned in protest, calling the proposal “a bad deal for football”. Infantino withdrew the plan later the same day, but the damage has lingered.

The backlash to the project has not faded. If anything, it has widened the fault lines around Infantino’s leadership.

Re-election bid under siege

For years, Infantino’s grip on the FIFA presidency looked unshakeable. His bid for a fourth term in March next year once felt like a formality.

Not anymore.

The powerful European confederation UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and CONCACAF, which governs football in North and Central America and the Caribbean, are now ranged in opposition to the 56-year-old Swiss official. He still holds the backing of the African and South American confederations, but the global map is no longer comfortably aligned in his favour.

The term-limit question sits at the heart of the dispute.

FIFA presidents are restricted to three terms. Infantino, however, successfully argued in 2022 that his first spell in office from 2016 to 2019 should not count, as it completed an interrupted mandate following the resignation of Sepp Blatter amid a corruption scandal. Infantino was first elected at an Extraordinary Congress in 2016, then re-elected unopposed in 2019 and 2023.

That interpretation is now being directly challenged.

Human rights in sport organisation FairSquare confirmed on Monday it had written to FIFA’s Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee (GACC), urging that Infantino be ruled ineligible to run again.

“The complaint we have filed provides clear evidence that this is a clear breach of the rules and one that sets a very dangerous precedent,” FairSquare director Nicholas McGeehan told Reuters.

“The rules state clearly that three presidential terms is the maximum allowed. FIFA can’t simply circumvent this rule – which serves as a check on presidential power – by saying that his first term doesn’t count.”

FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Pressure from inside the game

The legal and ethical pressure is mounting from within football’s own institutions.

Last week, UEFA, the AFC and CONCACAF jointly called for an independent review of Infantino’s conduct. Sources with knowledge of the situation said the three confederations saw the move as a chance for Infantino to step aside with his dignity intact, rather than face a drawn-out confrontation over rules and governance.

FairSquare’s letter to the GACC was drafted with help from Miguel Maduro, the former head of FIFA’s independent Governance and Review Committee. Maduro argued that the organisation could not simply bend the regulations to suit its current president.

“The principle of term limits was a fundamental aspect of the 2016 reform aimed at limiting power and the rule introduced is clear: no FIFA President can serve more than three terms of office,” he said in a statement.

“Trying to carve out an exception to such a rule for Mr Infantino reveals both a resistance to the principle of term limits and how some at FIFA conceive of rules not as rules but as obstacles to be circumvented.”

The criticism cuts to the core of FIFA’s post-Blatter reforms, which were sold to the football world as a safeguard against exactly this kind of concentration of power.

Infantino’s wider battles

This is not the first time Infantino’s conduct has been challenged on governance grounds.

FairSquare recently filed a complaint to the International Olympic Committee over his alleged breach of the IOC’s rules on political neutrality, citing his support for United States President Donald Trump. That complaint was rejected last month. Infantino has been an IOC member since 2020.

Yet the accumulation of disputes, resignations and formal challenges paints a picture of a presidency under sustained scrutiny.

Lamour’s exit strips away another figure from the group that once helped propel Infantino to the top of world football. The question now is whether the president can still marshal enough support to survive a fourth-term push in the face of open resistance from three of FIFA’s most influential confederations and a growing chorus demanding that the rules be enforced to the letter.