Jordan's Prince Ali Thanks FIFA for Delayed Arab Cup Payment
The money finally arrived. The mistrust remains.
Jordan’s players and staff have at last received their prize money for reaching the 2025 Arab Cup final, a payment the Jordan Football Association says was eight months overdue and only landed days after its president, Prince Ali bin Hussein, publicly accused FIFA of blackmail.
On Thursday morning, Prince Ali confirmed that the funds had been transferred, rewarding the Jordan squad and coaching team for their run to the final in Qatar. The timing, though, could hardly be more loaded.
“Thank you to the FIFA administration for suddenly this morning delivering what was owed to our players and coaching staff, for the Jordan National team’s accession to the final of the FIFA Arab Cup in Qatar last December,” Ali wrote on X. “This was funding that should have been received eight months ago.”
The word “suddenly” did a lot of work.
Ali had gone public earlier in the week with a blistering attack on FIFA President Gianni Infantino, accusing world football’s governing body of effectively tying support for Infantino to help with Jordan’s financial issues. According to Ali, FIFA officials verbally indicated during the World Cup that backing the president “would go a long way to helping our FA out” at a time when the association was still waiting on its Arab Cup prize money.
The allegation cut straight to the heart of the storm swirling around Infantino. His plan to sell a stake in World Cup commercial rights triggered a backlash from confederations and national associations, leaving him under intense pressure and forcing FIFA to abandon the proposal. Ali, who had opposed the plan, said Infantino had initially retreated from his own proposal once the resistance grew.
FIFA has not responded to requests for comment on Ali’s claims. Silence off the pitch, noise everywhere else.
For Jordan’s players, the payment closes a long and unnecessary wait for money they had earned on the field. For Ali, it opens a wider argument about how global football is run. He welcomed the overdue funds, but made it clear the transfer does nothing to soften his view of FIFA’s leadership or the politics surrounding the presidency.
“It is symptomatic of those exact difficulties that we all face and that are usually linked to the FIFA presidential elections,” he said, framing the episode as part of a broader pattern, not an isolated grievance.
Then came the line that will echo into March.
“And it does not change my clear position concerning the leadership of FIFA: my FA and I will not endorse President Infantino, nor will we vote for him.”
That stance lands just as FIFA attempts to steady itself. The organisation has already apologised to its members for “mistakes” made over the abandoned World Cup commercial rights plan, but its leadership closed ranks around Infantino at a crisis meeting in Morocco on Wednesday, reaffirming support for the Swiss-Italian president.
Infantino, in power for nearly a decade, is now pushing to extend his presidency into a fourth and final term in elections scheduled for March.
The money dispute with Jordan may be resolved on paper. The political bill, for FIFA and its president, is still very much outstanding.
