Gianni Infantino's Fall from Grace: The King of Football Under Siege
Less than a fortnight ago, Gianni Infantino sat beside Donald Trump in a luxury box at MetLife Stadium, basking in the glow of a World Cup final that had gone exactly to plan. The US president calls him the “King of Football”. On that July night, he looked the part.
A record 104 matches. A global TV audience in the billions. A tournament widely hailed as a success on the pitch and a financial windfall off it. Infantino left New York with letters of support from around 200 of FIFA’s 211 member federations, his re-election next March in Rabat looking like a coronation rather than a contest.
That scene already feels like ancient history.
In the space of a few days, the FIFA president has gone from untouchable to embattled, his authority shredded by a revolt that has united almost every corner of the game against him.
The Plan That Blew Up the Room
The spark was Infantino’s bold – and, to many, brazen – attempt to invite private investors into football’s most sacred space: the World Cup itself.
The proposal was simple in structure, explosive in meaning. FIFA would create a new subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), to house the money-making side of its operations: World Cups and other tournaments, broadcasting rights, sponsorship deals, ticketing and hospitality.
Around 20 percent of that new entity would be sold to outside investors for $4.2bn, valuing the business at roughly $20bn. The anchor investor: Thrive Eternal, a vehicle launched by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
For a sport already awash with private equity and sovereign wealth money at club level, this was something different. This was the World Cup – the game’s ultimate prize, the event fans still like to believe belongs to them, not to a balance sheet.
The carrot was huge. Each of FIFA’s 211 member federations, already the effective “owners” of the organisation under Swiss law, was offered $20m, with a deadline of September 19 to sign up.
They are currently due $10m each over the next four years, funded largely by FIFA’s record $15bn revenue for the 2023-26 cycle, driven by the World Cup that has just finished. Under the FFE model, that $10m would double to $20m, then rise to $22m per cycle through 2034 and $24m to 2038.
For small federations in places like Andorra, Montserrat or Papua New Guinea, those numbers are transformational. For heavyweights such as England, Spain and France, the calculation is different. They have their own revenue streams, their own priorities, and a keen sense of what the World Cup represents.
Infantino gambled that the promise of money would drown out concerns. He misread the room.
A Global Backlash
The opposition was not subtle. It was overwhelming.
Some of FIFA’s own vice presidents pushed back. Senior executives bristled. European federations lined up against the plan. So did football bodies in Asia and North America. The global organisation of domestic leagues voiced alarm. Fans around the world raged at the idea of selling a slice of the sport’s crown jewel.
Even politicians weighed in. Britain’s prime minister publicly opposed the project.
Inside FIFA, the walls closed in. Carlos Cordeiro, Infantino’s senior adviser and a former Goldman Sachs banker, resigned, branding the deal “bad”. Kevin Lamour, the organisation’s chief operating officer, issued a stinging statement to the Associated Press, defending colleagues and implicitly challenging his own president. It read like an invitation to be sacked – and a direct question over Infantino’s leadership.
The decisive blow came from Europe. On Thursday, UEFA and its member federations pledged to boycott all FIFA competitions if the project went ahead.
That threat could not be shrugged off. European teams dominate FIFA’s blue-riband events – the men’s World Cup and the Club World Cup – which in turn generate the bulk of FIFA’s income. Without Europe, those tournaments are stripped of both quality and commercial muscle.
UEFA’s fear was clear: once private investors bought in, they would demand growth – more matches, expanded competitions, new formats – to drive returns. That would further crush an already suffocating calendar, push elite players beyond breaking point and cannibalise attention and revenue from club football, including the Champions League.
Broadcasters have finite budgets. Sponsors can only spend so much. The game is already stretched to its limits. Europe decided this was a line that could not be crossed.
By Friday, Infantino looked isolated. Friends were scarce. Enemies were multiplying.
Forced Retreat
Under that pressure, the FIFA president backed down.
“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” he said in a statement, announcing that the FFE plan was dead.
The retreat halted the sell-off. It did not repair the damage.
The very people who had carried Infantino to power, and kept him there, now question whether he can credibly continue. Lamour’s and Cordeiro’s interventions would make many presidencies untenable. Inside FIFA, they have raised the question no one seriously asked a fortnight ago: is it time to move on from Infantino?
Even his political base is no longer a sure thing. Infantino left New York with around 200 written pledges of support. After the FFE debacle, those commitments look far less solid.
Fault Lines Across the Continents
Africa, long the bedrock of Infantino’s power, had not rushed to embrace the plan. The continent’s 54 federations, which wield huge influence in any FIFA election, largely adopted a neutral tone, weighing the lure of “game-changing” money against the unease swirling elsewhere.
In South America, CONMEBOL said on Friday that it had received the proposal and would study it “with the rigour it demands”. Its president, Alejandro Dominguez of Paraguay, is also a FIFA vice president and a close ally of Infantino. Dominguez is banking on the 2030 World Cup being expanded to 64 teams, which would mean more matches for minority co-hosts Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Under current plans, each of those countries is scheduled to host just one of the 104 games, with the rest in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
That kind of horse-trading has been central to Infantino’s reign: promise expanded tournaments, more matches, more money, and win loyalty. The FFE scheme followed the same logic, just on a bigger scale – and with private capital attached.
This time, the calculation backfired.
A Presidency on the Brink
The calendar now looms large over Infantino’s future.
November 18 is the deadline for presidential candidates to declare, four months before the vote on March 19 in Rabat, where FIFA has its African headquarters. Infantino sailed through unopposed in 2019 in Paris and again in 2023 in Kigali. Under FIFA’s statutes, he is allowed one more four-year term.
Until this week, the idea of a serious challenger felt fanciful. There was grumbling over his style, frustration at repeated attempts to push through controversial projects, and fatigue at his close orbit around political power – not least his visible proximity to Trump. But nobody truly believed he could be dislodged.
Now, names are circulating with a different tone.
Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the Qatari president of Paris Saint-Germain and a powerful figure in European football and broadcasting, is regularly mentioned. So is Victor Montagliani, the Canadian FIFA vice president who leads CONCACAF. Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, the long-serving AFC president from Bahrain, lost narrowly to Infantino in the 2016 election and could be tempted to try again.
The arithmetic is straightforward. It takes 106 votes to secure a majority in a contested race. No continent votes as a perfect bloc, but a coalition built around most of Europe’s 55 members, CONCACAF’s 35 and Asia’s 46 would form a formidable base for any rival.
Infantino knows the numbers. He also knows what was at stake beyond 2031.
The FFE spinoff offered more than immediate cash and structural change. It hinted at a future in which Infantino could move into a commissioner-style role running the commercial arm of world football, even after his term as FIFA president expired – a job likely to pay far more than his current package of more than $6m per year.
That pathway has vanished. In trying to secure his legacy and extend his influence, he may instead have accelerated the end of his reign.
After the Climb, the Drop
Two weeks ago, Infantino strode across the MetLife turf to present the World Cup trophy, serenaded by a mix of cheers and boos, but secure in the knowledge that the sport’s power structure bent his way.
Today, he faces a different sound: the murmur of federations reconsidering their loyalties, the quiet conversations in hotel lobbies about alternative candidates, the growing sense that the “King of Football” might soon find his court turning on him.
The sell-off has been stopped. The question now is whether that will be enough to stop the game from selling him out.
