UEFA has reacted furiously to FIFA's proposals to seek private investment in its competitions, including the World Cup, with the European governing body declaring that the sport's biggest tournament is "not Fifa's to sell."

The plans, first reported by the Financial Times and the Times, would see FIFA open the door to private capital — outside investors putting money into football's showpiece events in exchange for a financial stake or return. The scale of the potential deals has not been disclosed, but the response from UEFA, which runs football in Europe, was immediate and blunt.

"This crosses a line that football's governing institutions should never cross," UEFA said in a statement. "None of us are the owners of football." The message was aimed squarely at FIFA, the global governing body, and its president Gianni Infantino. The Times reported that the plans could potentially earn Infantino tens of millions of pounds — a claim FIFA has not publicly addressed.

For fans, the dispute is less about boardroom mechanics and more about who the World Cup belongs to. The tournament is football's crown jewel, staged every four years, watched by billions, and understood by fans as a shared inheritance rather than a commercial asset. The idea that it could be partly sold to private investors strikes at something the game has always told itself about its own soul.

FIFA, for its part, has framed its ambitions differently. The organisation said it intends to expand football development funding to more than $10 billion (£7.5 billion), claiming the investment is designed to grow the game worldwide. That figure would represent a major increase in FIFA's spending on grassroots and development programmes, though any expansion would be subject to approval by its member associations — the national federations that vote on FIFA's budget and direction.

The tension between FIFA and UEFA is not new. The two bodies have clashed repeatedly over the shape of the football calendar, the expansion of club competitions, and the balance of power between the global game and its European heartland. But this particular fight touches something rawer: the question of whether football's most prized tournament can be treated, at least in part, as a commercial product open to investors.

UEFA's statement drew a clear line between stewardship and ownership. Its argument is that FIFA administers the World Cup on behalf of the game's wider community — players, fans, federations — rather than owning it outright. Private investment, in UEFA's view, would blur that distinction in ways the sport cannot accept.

FIFA has not yet responded publicly to UEFA's statement. Whether member associations will back the funding expansion, and whether the private investment proposals advance beyond the reporting stage, remains unresolved. What is clear is that the two most powerful bodies in world football are now publicly at odds over the future of the tournament that defines the sport.