Kevin Lamour Leaves FIFA Amid Controversy
Kevin Lamour has left FIFA. The timing could hardly be more explosive.
The governing body confirmed late on Monday that its chief operating officer departed on 17 August 2026, just weeks after he publicly attacked Gianni Infantino’s controversial plan to sell a stake in FIFA’s commercial rights.
“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. “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 on paper, at least.
A close ally turns critic
Lamour was not some distant bureaucrat. The Frenchman joined FIFA’s senior leadership in November 2024 and had previously been part of the inner circle that helped drive Infantino’s successful presidential campaign in 2016.
Then he broke ranks.
Last month, Lamour went public with his opposition to Infantino’s proposal to create a $20bn subsidiary and sell up to a 20 percent stake to private equity investors, a deal designed to raise $4.2bn. He said FIFA staff had 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 hard. They came soon after Carlos Cordeiro, a senior adviser to Infantino, resigned in protest, calling the proposal “a bad deal for football”. Under mounting pressure, Infantino withdrew the plan later the same day.
The withdrawal did not calm the storm. It only underlined how deep the opposition ran.
A presidency under siege
What once looked like a procession to a fourth term for Infantino now resembles a fight for survival.
The backlash to the commercial rights plan has fused with a broader challenge to his grip on power. UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and CONCACAF have lined up against the 56-year-old Swiss president, even as he continues to enjoy the backing of the African and South American confederations.
At the heart of the institutional battle lies a simple question: how long can one man run FIFA?
Under FIFA’s own rules, presidents are limited to three terms. Infantino successfully argued in 2022 that his first spell in office, from 2016 to 2019, should not count towards that limit because he completed an interrupted mandate following Sepp Blatter’s resignation amid a corruption scandal. He was elected at an Extraordinary Congress in 2016, then re-elected unopposed in 2019 and 2023.
Human rights in sport organisation FairSquare now says that carve-out breaches the rules.
“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.”
FairSquare confirmed on Monday it had written to FIFA’s Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee (GACC), urging that Infantino be ruled ineligible to stand again at the election scheduled for March next year. FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pressure from inside the system
The challenge is not coming from the outside alone.
Last week, UEFA, the AFC and CONCACAF jointly called for an independent review of Infantino’s conduct. Sources familiar with the situation said the three confederations saw their letter as a chance for Infantino to step aside with his dignity intact, rather than be forced out.
FairSquare’s complaint to the GACC was drafted with the help of Miguel Maduro, the former head of FIFA’s independent Governance and Review Committee. He argued that the organisation cannot simply ignore the limits it wrote into its own statutes after the Blatter era.
“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,” Maduro 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 language is stark. So is the implication: if FIFA bends its rules for its president, what do those rules really mean?
A wider battle over power
Infantino has already survived one ethics challenge in the Olympic sphere. A FairSquare complaint to the International Olympic Committee, accusing him of breaching the IOC’s political neutrality rules because of his support for United States President Donald Trump, was rejected last month. Infantino has been an IOC member since 2020.
This time, though, the fight is on home turf and cuts to the core of FIFA’s own reforms.
Lamour’s exit strips away another figure from the group that once helped lift Infantino into office. Cordeiro has gone. Key confederations are openly opposed. Human rights campaigners and governance specialists are pressing the case that FIFA’s president has overstepped the limits designed to stop any one man dominating world football.
The question now is blunt and unavoidable: when FIFA’s own rules collide with the ambitions of its most powerful figure, who wins?
