Kevin Lamour Leaves FIFA Amidst Infantino's Presidency Turmoil

FIFA’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour has left the organisation, deepening the turmoil around Gianni Infantino’s embattled presidency just weeks after he publicly attacked the FIFA president’s flagship commercial plan.

“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 late on Monday, adding only: “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 the door closing on a senior executive who had turned on the man at the top.

A close ally turned critic

Lamour was no fringe figure. The French administrator joined FIFA’s senior leadership in November 2024, having previously been part of the inner circle that helped engineer Infantino’s election as president in 2016.

That history made his recent intervention all the more explosive.

Last month, Lamour went public with his opposition to Infantino’s proposal to create a $20bn subsidiary and sell up to 20 percent of its stake to private equity investors in a bid to raise $4.2bn from the World Cup and other tournaments. He accused the organisation of misleading its own staff over the project 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.

The words landed like a direct challenge to Infantino’s authority.

They came hot on the heels of another high-profile departure. Carlos Cordeiro, a senior adviser to Infantino and former U.S. Soccer president, had already resigned in protest, calling the proposal “a bad deal for football”. Under growing fire, Infantino scrapped the plan later that same day.

The withdrawal did not cool the anger.

Re-election bid under siege

The fallout from the abandoned commercial deal has bled straight into the politics of Zurich.

Infantino’s push for a fourth term as FIFA president at elections scheduled for March next year, once viewed as a formality, now looks anything but secure. The powerful European confederation UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and CONCACAF, which governs football in North and Central America and the Caribbean, are now lined up against the 56-year-old Swiss.

He still holds the backing of the African and South American confederations. For now, that support keeps him in the race. But the global map of alliances has rarely looked so fractured in the Infantino era.

Human rights in sport organisation FairSquare has moved to raise the stakes even higher. On Monday, it confirmed it had written to FIFA’s Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee (GACC), urging that Infantino be ruled ineligible to stand again.

Their argument goes to the heart of FIFA’s own reform era.

Term limits under the microscope

FIFA statutes limit presidents to three terms. Infantino, though, successfully argued in 2022 that his first spell in office, from 2016 to 2019, should not count because he was completing an interrupted mandate following Sepp Blatter’s resignation amid a corruption scandal.

That interpretation cleared the way for him to seek what he presents as a third term, after being re-elected unopposed in 2019 and 2023.

FairSquare says the maths is simple: three terms is three terms.

“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 challenge is backed by heavyweight legal and governance expertise. 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, who was central to the post-Blatter reform process.

“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.”

Pressure from the confederations

The legal arguments land at a moment when Infantino’s political capital is already eroding.

Last week, UEFA, the AFC and CONCACAF jointly called for an independent review of the FIFA president’s conduct. Sources familiar with the discussions say those confederations see the move as a potential off-ramp: a way for Infantino to step aside with some dignity preserved rather than face a bruising election battle and governance fight.

The optics are stark. The man who came to power promising transparency and reform now faces coordinated resistance from three of the game’s major confederations, a governance complaint over term limits, and the departure of a senior executive who once helped him into office and now accuses him of personalising the institution.

FairSquare, meanwhile, has already tested Infantino’s standing in another arena. Its complaint to the International Olympic Committee over his alleged breach of IOC rules on political neutrality, related to his support for United States President Donald Trump, was rejected last month. Infantino has been an IOC member since 2020.

That setback has not slowed the organisation’s pursuit of FIFA’s leadership.

With Lamour gone, the World Cup rights plan shelved but not forgotten, and the term-limit battle now squarely on the table, the question hanging over Zurich is blunt: can Infantino ride out a storm that, this time, is coming from inside football’s own power structure?