Kevin Lamour Leaves FIFA Amid Controversy
Kevin Lamour has left FIFA. The governing body confirmed late on Monday that its chief operating officer’s “working relationship” with the organisation ended on 17 August 2026.
The timing is impossible to ignore.
Only weeks ago, Lamour publicly attacked Gianni Infantino’s controversial plan to sell a stake in the commercial rights of the World Cup and other FIFA competitions. He accused the leadership of having “deceived” staff over the proposal, calling it “the project of one person”.
“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 in a brief statement. “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.
Lamour, a Frenchman, joined FIFA’s senior leadership in November 2024. Before that, he had been part of the inner circle that helped drive Infantino’s successful bid for the presidency in 2016. From campaign ally to outspoken critic, the relationship has unravelled in public.
Last month, Lamour went on the record with a stinging rebuke of the commercial rights plan, insisting FIFA’s 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”.
His intervention came on the heels of another high-profile departure. Carlos Cordeiro, a senior adviser to Infantino and former U.S. Soccer president, resigned in protest, branding the proposal “a bad deal for football”. Infantino pulled the plan later that same day.
The retreat has not calmed the storm.
The blueprint at the heart of the row envisaged a $20bn subsidiary, with up to 20 percent sold to private equity investors to raise around $4.2bn. The backlash from within the game has been fierce and sustained, and it has bled directly into the politics around Infantino’s future.
Once seen as a near-certainty, his bid for a fourth term as FIFA president at elections next March is now under real pressure. Three powerful confederations — UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and CONCACAF — are lined up against the 56-year-old Swiss official. He still counts on strong backing from Africa and South America, but the global map is no longer comfortably in his favour.
On Monday, human rights in sport organisation FairSquare confirmed it had written to FIFA’s Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee (GACC), urging that Infantino be ruled ineligible to stand again.
The challenge goes to the heart of FIFA’s own reforms.
Under the 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 because he was completing an interrupted mandate after Sepp Blatter’s resignation amid a corruption scandal. He was elected at an Extraordinary Congress that year, then re-elected unopposed in 2019 and again in 2023.
FairSquare says that carve-out cannot stand.
“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.
The pressure is not only coming from NGOs. Last week, UEFA, the AFC and CONCACAF jointly called for an independent review of Infantino’s conduct. According to sources familiar with the discussions, the three confederations see that move as a way to give Infantino an exit route with his dignity intact.
FairSquare’s letter to the GACC was drafted with the help of Miguel Maduro, the former head of FIFA’s independent Governance and Review Committee. Maduro, who was central to the post-Blatter reform process, insists the organisation cannot simply bend its own rules around one man.
“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.”
FairSquare has already tested Infantino’s standing in another arena. Its complaint to the International Olympic Committee over his alleged breach of the IOC’s political neutrality rules — linked to his support for United States President Donald Trump — was rejected last month. Infantino has been an IOC member since 2020.
Now, though, the battle is back on home turf, inside FIFA’s own statutes and committees.
With a senior lieutenant in Lamour gone, a key adviser in Cordeiro already out, and three major confederations openly challenging his authority, Infantino faces a stark question in the months ahead: can he still bend FIFA to his will, or will the organisation finally enforce the limits it wrote for exactly this moment?
