Fifa accused of 'management by fear' after World Cup critic Lamour is sacked

Kevin Lamour’s two-year tenure as Fifa’s chief operating officer ended on Monday, days after he publicly accused president Gianni Infantino of deceiving staff over plans to sell commercial stakes in the World Cup — a move that has drawn sharp criticism from within the global football community.

Fifa confirmed in a statement that “the working relationship between Fifa and Kevin Lamour as Fifa’s chief operating officer has ended”, thanking him for his service without elaborating on the circumstances. The Independent reported that it was Fifa secretary general Mattias Grafstrom, not Infantino directly, who held the final conversation with Lamour and subsequently informed staff of his departure by email.

Lamour had said in a statement on 31 July that Fifa staff had been “deceived” by Infantino’s World Cup commercialisation plans and that they “deserve better than contempt and intimidation”. He added that he was prepared to lose his job by speaking out, saying he would be able to “sleep well tonight” after doing so.

Lise Klaveness, president of the Football Association of Norway and a long-standing critic of Infantino’s leadership, told the Associated Press she was in no doubt about what had happened. “Now he is thrown out and we are supposed to move on. It’s unacceptable, it’s management by fear,” she said. “Now we also have to call upon Fifa leadership and the administration to not submit to orders you know are not in the interests of football.”

Klaveness dismissed the idea that Grafstrom had acted independently, saying he had “obviously been pressured by the president”, and described the situation plainly: “This is a firing situation, it’s not a resignation.”

Despite the controversy, Klaveness credited Lamour’s intervention with helping to kill the World Cup commercialisation project, which was scrapped following widespread uproar. “His statement was necessary to kill the project,” she said. “He said something that was obvious, that was very important — that someone within the staff told us the story so that we knew it was not Fifa, as such, but one person.”

Earlier this month, Grafstrom signed a Fifa statement following an emergency meeting in Rabat in which Infantino apologised for “mistakes” over his World Cup plans, while senior Fifa leaders “reaffirmed their support” for him. Fifa had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.