Infantino’s FIFA has offered Football Australia $40m. Can it afford to say no?

July 30, 2026 — 5:52pm

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For decades, Australian soccer has lived a hand-to-mouth existence, cursed by the enormous gap between the grand ambitions of its constituents and its capacity to bring them to life.

Now, suddenly, there is a man at the door with a big smile and a novelty cheque.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino is offering $40 million in bonus funding to Football Australia to back his plan for a $US20 billion ($28.7 billion) company to run the World Cup with private investors. And even better, he’s saying there are no strings attached, if you could just sign here, please, and don’t worry about the fine print.

How many of your problems would be solved by a cash injection of that significance?

For Football Australia, it would amount to one of the biggest single financial windfalls in the history of the sport in this country: increased distributions from FIFA of a little more than $28 million for the next World Cup cycle, up from $11.5 million (figures are in Australian dollars), through to 2030, plus access to an additional one-off payment of up to $28 million.

It’s not enough to make the AFL and NRL – with their multibillion-dollar broadcast deals – sweat about the established order of Australian sport, but it would help FA address more than a few pressing issues.

This is, after all, a code that is in commercial turmoil at domestic level, and an organisation that just laid off 20 per cent of its workforce before announcing a record $15.3 million loss, which topped the previous record of $8.5 million the year before.

This is the same FA that, within hours of the Socceroos’ elimination from the World Cup, had its executives standing in front of cameras, cap in........

© The Sydney Morning Herald