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FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s plans to reorder world soccer are being stymied by a familiar foe: Europe.
Since proposing several major changes to the sport’s calendar last spring, Infantino has spent months traveling the world hosting minisummits with the leaders of FIFA’s 211 member federations. His goal is to win support for a proposal to introduce two new tournaments — an expanded World Cup for clubs and a new league for national teams — that would be underwritten by a $25 billion offer from a group led by the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.
The listening exercise follows repeated failures by Infantino to force the proposals through FIFA’s governing council, but if they are approved they would represent the biggest changes to soccer in a generation, and their adoption — and the multibillion-dollar cash infusion to FIFA — would provide Infantino with a signature success ahead of his bid to secure a second term as FIFA president later this year.