Gianni Infantino's Crisis: From World Cup Glory to FIFA's Backlash

Gianni Infantino sat beside Donald Trump at MetLife Stadium less than a fortnight ago, basking in the glow of a World Cup final that felt like his personal coronation. The “King of Football”, as the US president likes to call him, had delivered the biggest tournament in history: 104 games, record revenues, global audiences, a slick show that ran to time and to budget.

There were boos as the pair crossed the turf to hand medals to Spain and Argentina on July 19, but they sounded like background noise to a man who looked untouchable. The election next March in Rabat seemed a formality. The Infantino era looked set to roll on.

That moment already feels like a different age.

From coronation to crisis

In the space of a week, Infantino has managed to turn that high into the deepest crisis of his presidency. The same leader who flew out of New York with letters of support from around 200 of FIFA’s 211 member federations now finds his backing in question, his judgment under attack and his future no longer guaranteed.

The rupture came from a single, audacious idea: inviting private investors to buy into the future profits of the World Cup and other FIFA events.

The plan centred on a new subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), that would bundle the money-making arms of world football’s governing body – World Cups, other tournaments, broadcasting rights, sponsorship, tickets and hospitality – into a vehicle attractive to private equity and sovereign wealth funds.

On paper, it was a blockbuster. FIFA talked about raising $4.2bn by selling roughly 20 percent of FFE, based on a $20bn valuation. The anchor investor was to be Thrive Eternal, a fund launched by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

For many in football, that was the line in the sand.

The deal that detonated FIFA

Private equity and petrostate money have long since become part of the furniture in European club football. But the World Cup is different. It is still treated, at least symbolically, as a sacred space – a prize about glory and belonging, not a revenue stream to be sliced up and sold.

Infantino’s pitch tried to square that circle with hard cash.

Each of FIFA’s 211 member associations, already the effective owners of the organisation under Swiss law, was offered $20m to sign up to the new structure, with a deadline of September 19. That sat on top of the $10m each federation is already due over the next four-year cycle, funded by record projected revenue of $15bn from 2023-26, driven largely by the World Cup that has just finished.

Under FFE, FIFA said that $10m would double to $20m per federation, then rise to $22m through 2034 and $24m to 2038.

For smaller associations – in places like Andorra, Montserrat or Papua New Guinea – those numbers are transformational, a chance to build pitches, hire staff, even sustain a federation’s basic existence. For the heavyweights of England, Spain or France, they are less compelling. Money is not their problem. Power is.

And this plan, in the eyes of many, handed too much of it to private investors.

A wall of opposition

The backlash built quickly and brutally.

Some of FIFA’s own vice presidents opposed the scheme. Senior executives lined up against it. All European federations rejected it. Football bodies in Asia and North America voiced alarm. Britain’s prime minister weighed in. The global association of domestic leagues objected. Fans across continents recoiled at the thought of the World Cup being partially carved off and sold.

By Friday, Infantino looked isolated.

His senior adviser, Carlos Cordeiro – a former Goldman Sachs banker and ex-US Soccer president – resigned, calling it a bad deal. FIFA’s chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, issued a blistering statement defending staff and questioning the project in terms that would make most presidents wonder how they could carry on.

The decisive blow came from Europe. UEFA announced that its members would boycott all FIFA competitions if the plan went ahead. That was not a symbolic threat. European teams dominate the men’s World Cup and the Club World Cup, the two biggest engines of FIFA’s commercial machine. They feared that private investors would push for more games, bigger formats and an ever-expanding calendar to squeeze out extra value – with direct consequences for the Champions League and domestic leagues.

The fixture list is already bursting. Elite players are at breaking point. Broadcasters and sponsors are not bottomless wells. UEFA and the major leagues saw the FFE project as an existential risk to their own competitions.

They were also furious at the way it had been conceived. Infantino, they argued, had spent the past year building the plan in a small circle, consulting almost no one in the broader football family while spending conspicuous amounts of time in Trump’s orbit. Even Trump, for all the talk of their alliance, said on Friday that he had not discussed the investment scheme with the FIFA president.

The pressure finally told.

On Friday, Infantino pulled the plug.

“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.

The climbdown stopped the sell-off. It did not end the questions.

A fractured base

Infantino’s political strength has always rested on the global south. Africa’s 54 votes, a decisive bloc in any FIFA election, powered his rise and have underpinned his authority. That continent’s response to FFE, though, was muted. Many African federations stayed neutral, wary of rejecting what, for them, was “game-changing” money, but equally cautious about backing a plan that had triggered such global fury.

South America, through CONMEBOL, trod carefully. On Friday, the 10-nation confederation acknowledged receiving the proposal and promised to study it “with the rigour it demands”. Its president, Alejandro Dominguez of Paraguay, doubles as a FIFA vice president and has his own stakes in Infantino’s future. He is counting on the FIFA chief to expand the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams.

That expansion would be politically loaded. Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – the latter the original 1930 World Cup host – are currently due to stage just one match each of the 104-game tournament, with the rest in Spain, Portugal and Morocco. More teams would mean more games, and more games would mean more matches in South America.

Infantino’s ability to deliver that now hangs in the balance.

Can he survive this?

The immediate battle is over. UEFA’s boycott threat forced FIFA to abandon the FFE project. The bigger fight is only just beginning.

Does Infantino still command enough credibility to lead world football after a week in which his own COO and his senior adviser publicly broke ranks? In most organisations, such interventions would leave a president fatally weakened.

The timeline is tight. November 18 is the deadline for presidential candidates to declare. The election takes place on March 19 in Rabat, Morocco, where FIFA has its African hub. Infantino, re-elected unopposed in 2019 in Paris and again in 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda, is entitled under FIFA’s statutes to one more four-year term, taking him to 2031.

The FFE structure seemed to offer something more: a commissioner-style role beyond 2031, detached from the presidency but sitting atop FIFA’s commercial engine, and likely far more lucrative than his current package of more than $6m a year in salary and bonuses. That vision now lies in ruins.

To win a contested election, a candidate needs 106 votes – a simple majority of the 211 member federations. No continent votes as a single bloc, but the arithmetic is stark. If most of Europe’s 55 associations, CONCACAF’s 35 and Asia’s 46 aligned behind a challenger, they would form a formidable base.

Names are already circulating. Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the Paris Saint-Germain president and a powerful figure in both European club football and Qatari sport, is regularly mentioned. Victor Montagliani, the Canadian who serves as FIFA vice president and heads CONCACAF, features in the speculation. Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, the long-serving AFC president from Bahrain who narrowly lost to Infantino in 2016, could be tempted to run again.

Until this week, such talk felt distant, more gossip than genuine plotting. Infantino’s grip on power, for all the grumbling over his style and his repeated pushes for unpopular reforms, looked solid.

Now, the conversation has changed. The World Cup has never been more valuable. The money has never been bigger. The stakes, for clubs, leagues, federations and players, have never been higher.

The question hanging over Zurich is no longer whether Infantino can grow FIFA’s revenues again. It is whether he will still be in charge when the next World Cup kicks off.