Norway’s soccer president Lise Klaveness expressed on Tuesday that FIFA’s decision to dismiss the senior official who alleged Gianni Infantino misled staff regarding his World Cup sell-off initiative was intolerable, urging fellow leaders within the organization to resist any potentially harmful directives.
The dismissal of FIFA’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour occurred late Monday, just 17 days after he publicly criticized Infantino’s $20 billion private equity scheme in a statement to the Associated Press, which subsequently led to the project’s cancellation within hours.
“He has been ousted, and we are expected to just move forward. This is unacceptable; it reflects a culture of management through fear,” Klaveness stated during a phone interview with the AP, praising Lamour as “the finest football administrator I have ever encountered.”
“We must call upon FIFA’s leadership and administration to resist commands that are clearly not in the best interests of football,” she emphasized, specifically addressing FIFA secretary general Mattias Grafström.
Klaveness, a former international player for Norway, a judge in Oslo, and an elected member of the executive committee at UEFA, has built upon her nation’s longstanding reputation for promoting good governance in soccer.
Lamour had a long-standing professional relationship with Infantino, initially working together at UEFA from 2007 to 2015, then as part of Infantino’s campaign team during the 2016 FIFA presidential election, and subsequently moving from UEFA to manage a significant portion of FIFA’s operations in Zurich two years ago.
Infantino in crisis
With a reputation as one of the most trustworthy executives in the often opaque realm of global soccer politics, Lamour’s pointed critiques of Infantino’s leadership have deepened the crisis facing the FIFA president.
A backlash from UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation, and North American soccer organization CONCACAF was triggered by a covert plan to sell future World Cup profits to a group of investors led by Joshua Kushner.
This $4.2 billion investment was intended to secure a 20% share in a FIFA commercial subsidiary, which would subsequently provide $20 million to each of its 211 national member federations. These federations already effectively control the non-profit organization, which possesses multibillion-dollar reserves, and would have faced a mid-September deadline to accept the offer.
In his statement on July 31, Lamour mentioned that FIFA employees had been “misled” by Infantino’s lack of transparency regarding the now-defunct sale, emphasizing that they “deserve better than to be treated with disdain and intimidation.”
The French executive urged soccer leaders globally to “make the right decisions,” concluding with, “If that means I lose my job, then so be it. I will accept and respect that outcome. At least I’ll be able to sleep soundly tonight.”
Fired, not resigned
“This situation constitutes a firing, not a resignation,” Klaveness stated regarding Lamour’s departure, implying that it was orchestrated by Grafström “clearly under pressure from the president.”
FIFA expressed its gratitude in a statement, saying, “We thank Kevin for his two years of service and wish him the best in his future endeavors.”
“His remarks were essential in bringing an end to the project,” Klaveness noted concerning Lamour’s intervention. “He articulated something that was evident; it was crucial for someone from within the staff to reveal the truth so we understood that it was not FIFA as a whole, but rather one individual.”
Infantino convened a meeting with senior management, excluding Lamour, in Rabat, Morocco. Following that meeting on August 5, FIFA released a statement acknowledging mistakes and stated that the managers present “reaffirmed their full support” for Infantino’s presidency.
“We all received reports from Morocco; we understand it is a culture of management through fear,” Klaveness remarked. “This is not in the best interests of football.”
Prior to the uproar surrounding Infantino’s “FIFA Forward Enterprise” initiative, he appeared set to be re-elected unopposed next year in Morocco, with a deadline of November 18 for potential challengers to enter the race.