Infantino's Letter to 211 Member Associations and the Empty Training Ground of Vietnamese Women's Football

On 22 September, a letter left Zurich and travelled to FIFA's 211 member associations. In it, President Gianni Infantino proposed an independent review of FIFA's decision-making process and promised to consult the confederations before any governance change. That same morning, at a training pitch on the outskirts of Hanoi, Vietnam's women's national team began its session at six o'clock sharp. No player there knew the letter existed. None of them was asked about the plan to sell 20 per cent of FIFA's commercial rights, the World Cup included, to private investors.

They did not know they were being forgotten until the payroll was made public.

The 20 per cent plan and the price of a signature

The idea of selling a slice of FIFA's commercial rights was not new; the scale was. The asset on the table was FIFA's own commercial rights, including the World Cup, the single largest revenue source in world football. When the news broke, UEFA, the AFC and CONCACAF objected in unison. The three confederations said there had been no consultation with any continental body at any stage, and that Infantino had acted alone. In July, the plan was shelved.

The damage stayed. UEFA said it had lost faith in the incumbent president and that a change of leadership was now necessary. The FIFA Council, the organisation's main decision-making body, walked into a tense autumn.

The letter of 22 September was Infantino's answer. It softened its tone: independent review, broad consultation, and a commitment that a member association's position on governance proposals would not affect how FIFA treated it, with development and solidarity programmes continuing under existing rules.

Bernd Neuendorf, president of the German Football Association (DFB) and himself a member of the FIFA Council, read the letter the other way round. He called it a transparent ploy to secure re-election, saying FIFA had recognised that change was essential, but that Infantino was not the right person to lead a reform process because he had squandered all credibility.

The election takes place next March. Sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters that Infantino still has enough votes to win. His opponents are therefore shifting target: instead of finding a replacement, they are looking to curb his powers.

For Vietnam, this story does not sit in Zurich. The VFF is one of the 211 member associations. Vietnam belongs to the AFC, one of the three confederations that signed the objection. And the money being argued over in Zurich is the money that funds the programmes Vietnamese women's football currently lives on.

An empty training ground and a forgotten payroll

From my experience covering matches in the Vietnamese women's national championship since 2026, one thing has been steadier than any team's form: the silence of the stands. The 2026 season opener between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City I drew 120 spectators. Around the same period, player Nguyen Thi Lieu, shirt number seven, was buying her own weight-gain milk on an average income of 4.8 million dong a month. A male player at the same club earned 52 million dong a month for the same training session.

That gap was not created in the stands. It was created by a structure: commercial money is allocated by profitability, not by labour. Broadcast and sponsorship money always flows to where the fastest return is, and in football that has never been a women's training pitch.

Look at the plan that caused the row. The version put on the table targeted two products: an expanded Club World Cup and a new global nations league, both men's competitions, both with ready markets for television rights and sponsors. No equivalent proposal was made for women's football. Private investors do not buy equity to give it away; they buy cash flow. A women's league with 120 spectators a match is not in that portfolio. In Vietnam's women's game, names such as Huynh Nhu or Nguyen Thi Lieu are the exception in quality, not in income.

Meanwhile, the only channel delivering money to Vietnamese women's football remains the development and solidarity programmes of FIFA and the AFC, allocated at a fixed rate across 211 member associations. A fixed rate has one feature: it is safe, but it never rises with the value of the World Cup. As the commercial value of world football multiplied over a decade, the money reaching women's training pitches stayed almost flat.

There was one real change in 2026. The 2026 Women's World Cup expands to 32 teams, and Asia gains direct slots. For Vietnam, that is the biggest door in its history. But a World Cup place cannot be bought with ambition. It is bought with full-time contracts so players do not have to sell their medals, with doctors and fitness specialists, with a youth system that has enough pitches and enough coaches. Those things sit in the development budget line, the very line left hanging in a power struggle in Zurich.

The blind spot behind the signature

One thing is easy to miss: opposition to Infantino is not opposition to concentrated commercial power. UEFA and Europe's biggest clubs are the largest beneficiaries of that very model. They objected because the plan moved part of the value to an entity with shareholders outside their system, not because women's football would receive more or less. If fairness is the benchmark, neither the seller nor the blockers have ever produced a convincing allocation table.

People call it the margins. I call it where the real stories are kept.

The letter was sent to 211 association presidents. Not one line was sent to players. Reform proposals always negotiate with power, almost never with labour. An independent review of decision-making is useful, but it forces no one to publish a sponsorship contract, a payroll, a bonus scheme. Replacing a person does not change a structure. If FIFA has a new president next year while women's team payrolls remain something nobody is allowed to see, Vietnamese women's football will not gain a single extra dong.

Closing

Policy does not change from a desk. It changes from voices that refuse to stay quiet.

In November, Vietnam's women's team enters the SEA Games 30. I will not wait for a medal to write about them, and I do not want federations waiting for an election to be transparent. One thing can be done immediately: publish the contracts, salaries and bonus mechanism of the women's national team, side by side with the equivalent figures for the men's team. Once the payroll is on the table, every debate about fairness loses its place to hide.

They do not need the spotlight. They only need people to see them working.