Gianni Infantino's push for a fourth term as FIFA president has run into serious trouble, with a senior federation leader publicly accusing his administration of "blackmail" and a growing list of European nations pulling their support.

Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, president of the Jordan Football Association, made the accusation in a statement published on X on 4 August. He claimed FIFA threatened to withhold financial assistance from the Jordanian federation unless it backed Infantino's re-election bid (The Guardian).

Prince Ali is no stranger to challenging FIFA's leadership. He ran for the presidency against Infantino in 2016 and finished third. He now heads the West Asian Football Federation, a regional body that includes Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, giving his words weight well beyond Jordan's borders.

His statement went wider than the alleged financial threat. Prince Ali said Jordan's players had not been paid for reaching the final of the Arab Cup in Qatar. He said some Jordanian fans who bought World Cup tickets had not received their visas. And he expressed anger at Jordan being taxed by the United States for being based there — a reference to FIFA's legal headquarters structure that has drawn criticism before.

The accusations land at a bad moment for Infantino. Greece became the latest federation to withdraw its support for his continuation, following England, Wales, Finland and Serbia (The Guardian). With a presidential election scheduled for March, the list of defections is growing rather than shrinking.

At the heart of Infantino's troubles is a plan to create a commercial entity — essentially a joint venture with private equity investors — to run the World Cup and other major tournaments. Reuters reported on 1 August that the proposal backfired, leaving Infantino's FIFA future in jeopardy (Reuters). The idea was to bring in outside money to commercialise the game's biggest events. Instead, it alienated the federations whose votes Infantino needs.

Inside FIFA, senior figures are distancing themselves from the mess. Secretary general Mattias Grafström called the botched Fifa Forward Enterprise project — the internal name for the commercial plan — a "sad and reproachable series of events" in an email to staff. Arsène Wenger, FIFA's chief of global development, said withdrawing the project was "absolutely necessary and beyond question" (The Guardian). When your own secretary general and your chief of global development are using words like "sad" and "necessary" about a failed initiative, the internal mood is not good.

Sky News separately reported Jordan's "blackmail" accusation, confirming it came in a formal statement targeting FIFA's leadership (Sky News).

For football fans, this is another chapter in the familiar tension between FIFA's commercial ambitions and the federations expected to fall in line. Prince Ali's specific grievances — unpaid players, fans without visas, a federation allegedly leveraged for a vote — are the kind that cut through the bureaucracy and land as real consequences for real people. Infantino has survived political storms before. Whether he survives this one, with European support haemorrhaging and an election months away, is the question now hanging over the whole organisation.