Football Daily | Infantino wields the axe after Lamour breaks rank inside Fifa’s fiefdom

<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/info/2022/nov/14/football-daily-email-sign-up"><strong>Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!</strong></a></p><p>A senior Fifa blazer held in such rare high regard that the prescient synth-pop duo Erasure named a single after him long before he entered the intoxicating world of football administration, Kevin Lamour was a lone dissenting voice inside Fifa’s lair when Gianni Infantino’s plot to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/28/fifa-plan-sell-world-cup-commercial-rights-uefa-hits-out">flog part of the World Cup to private investors</a> – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/aug/06/uefa-gianni-infantino-world-cup-stakes-cheap-valuation-fifa">potentially on the cheap</a> – was rumbled last month. A plan so half-baked it succeeded only in ruining the holidays of Proper Journalists who naively hoped they might enjoy some leisure time after weeks of being studiously ignored by Gianni in the foyers of various luxury hotels dotted across North America, the then chief operating officer of Fifa had witheringly described the sell-off proposal as “the project of one person”. Refusing to sign off on the deal, Lamour said the administration had been “deceived” by Gianni, adding that if speaking up against his boss “means I lose my job, then so be it. I will understand and respect that decision. At least I’ll sleep well tonight.”</p><p>Upon reading the final article in Monday’s missive [full email edition – Football Daily Ed], I noted the final sentence of Memory Lane commenced with “(insert name of whoever is in the news as being on the end of a bad foul, bad behaviour, etc, here)”. I may be doing you a gross disservice but I couldn’t help feeling this was a Wizard of Oz moment where the curtain was momentarily drawn back, revealing (insert witty denouement here)” – Anthony Brady.</