The Football Association's chair, Debbie Hewitt, has written to Gianni Infantino demanding that Fifa releases all documents relating to his abandoned World Cup sell-off plan and the decision to lift USA striker Folarin Balogun's suspension during last summer's tournament. The Guardian revealed last month that Hewitt and other members of the Fifa council were lobbying for an independent review of the proposed Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) sell-off and the Balogun controversy. Their requests have now been formalised in a letter sent to the Fifa president and his deputy, Mattias Grafström. The letter, first reported by the Times, has been sent in advance of the Fifa council meeting in Zurich on October 15 — due to be the first time since the FFE plan emerged in July that Infantino will meet the other 36 members of the group that acts as Fifa's board of directors. ## A Rebel Bloc That Ran Out of Votes A number of council members — a group comprising 28 representatives of the six confederations, eight vice-presidents and Infantino himself — attempted last month to call an extraordinary general meeting to hold the president to account over FFE and Balogun. The rebels were unable to get the 19 votes required to trigger such a meeting, however, and Hewitt's call for the release of documents and an independent review is also likely to fail. Infantino has not had any contact with the Fifa council since writing to it to withdraw FFE at the start of August, and has instead been lobbying for support before next year's presidential election, making visits to the Caribbean, South America, Morocco and Qatar. ## The Balogun Case at the Centre Balogun's ban was lifted after a phone call from Donald Trump to Infantino, despite the player being shown a straight red card for serious foul play in the USA's World Cup last-32 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. That allowed him to play against Belgium in the last 16, a match the USA lost 4-1. Fifa has said it followed due process, with the decision taken independently by its ethics committee, but has yet to publish a written report on the hearing. A request from the Royal Belgian FA for an explanation went unanswered — the fact that underpins the demand for full document disclosure. Hewitt's letter is understood to make reference to other governance issues at Fifa, particularly its response to the crisis caused by the FFE controversy this summer. ## The Risk and the Election Clock The FA's willingness to take the lead in holding Infantino to task comes with risk: the UK is currently the sole bidder for the 2035 Women's World Cup, with a decision on the hosts of that tournament and the 2031 edition due at an extraordinary Fifa congress on November 23. The deadline for candidates to stand in March's presidential election is five days earlier. Infantino is the only candidate to publicly reveal his intention to stand, with Uefa and Concacaf working to find someone to stand against him. The FA sent a letter of endorsement for Infantino's fourth term as president before the World Cup but, along with several other European countries, has since withdrawn its backing — a reversal that gives Hewitt's letter the weight of an organisation that once counted itself among his supporters. Uefa and Concacaf's joint search for a challenger adds a second dimension to the timing: every week Infantino spends answering governance questions — or refusing to — is a week his potential rivals have to build a campaign. The council meeting on October 15 now sits exactly one month before the congress that awards the 2031 and 2035 tournaments and five weeks before the presidential candidacy deadline, compressing the governance fight, the hosting bids and the election into a single autumn sequence in which no participant can defer the others. The confrontation sets up an awkward October: a council meeting where the president faces 36 members who include documented critics, a disclosure demand the leadership can refuse but not easily answer, and a presidential race in which the only declared candidate must campaign while refusing to publish the paperwork of his two biggest controversies. For the FA, the calculation is equally stark — pressing for governance reform while bidding to host the 2035 Women's World Cup means Hewitt has chosen principle over favour, at least until November's congress decides who wins what. The FFE dispute itself — an attempt to sell off or restructure Fifa's commercial development programme — set off the summer's crisis when council members learned of the plan's scale and implications after it had already advanced, and the president's subsequent withdrawal letter did nothing to answer their underlying questions about who authorised it and what it would have transferred. The Balogun affair compounds the distrust: whatever the ethics committee's reasoning, the absence of a written report, combined with Belgium's unanswered request for explanation, leaves the council's document demand with a simple test Fifa has so far failed — publish the record, or let the questions stand.