All 55 European football associations have voted to boycott every FIFA competition — including the World Cup — if Gianni Infantino's proposals to sell off football's biggest tournament to private interests go ahead.

The decision came at an emergency UEFA meeting on Thursday, lasting just under two hours. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin opened proceedings, with executive committee members and the organisation's FIFA council representatives also addressing delegates. Around 20 federation heads spoke from the floor, with multiple sources describing an atmosphere of "unity" (The Guardian).

Debbie Hewitt, president of the English FA, delivered what one attendee called a "very tough" case in favour of the boycott. An FA spokesperson later said: "We stand shoulder to shoulder with our European colleagues and fully support the collective view. We oppose FIFA's plans — the FIFA World Cup belongs to football and always will."

The threat is serious and immediate. The proposed boycott would begin with next year's Women's World Cup. Before that, the first age-group tournament likely to be affected is the Under-20 Women's World Cup, due to start in Poland on 5 September — with six UEFA nations among the 24 competitors, including England. England's senior women's team also has a two-legged World Cup qualifying playoff against Greece scheduled for October.

UEFA issued a blunt statement declaring that its members "unanimously and unequivocally reject" Infantino's proposals. The statement was explicit about the consequences: "no UEFA national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for so long as these proposals remain alive, unless this proposal has been abandoned in its entirety and binding assurances have been given that FIFA will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership."

At the heart of the dispute is Infantino's plan to open up FIFA's competitions — the World Cup chief among them — to private ownership, a move that would allow outside investors to buy into the running of tournaments that have always belonged to the football family. Countries have been given until 19 September to sign up. UEFA framed the deadline as coercion: "National associations around the world are now presented with an ultimatum: accept the irreversible capture of football's greatest competitions or bear the consequences. This is not a democratic decision, but governance by intimidation."

European FAs were expected to send a formal notification letter to FIFA this week laying out the boycott threat. UEFA also invited other confederations to follow its lead and was understood to be confident that several Asian countries share its position.

The standoff carries a layer of political irony. The majority of European FAs had previously submitted letters supporting Infantino's re-election as FIFA president next March. Those endorsements now sit alongside a unanimous resolution to pull their teams from his tournaments.

For fans, the immediate question is simple and stark: whether the next World Cup — women's or men's — will feature any European teams at all. If neither side blinks, the most watched sporting event on the planet could go ahead without the continent that has won more than half of all men's World Cups and dominated the women's game for a decade.

That is the price of the impasse. Both sides now have weeks, not months, to find a way out.