FIFA has a Gianni Infantino problem

There are sentences one never expected to write. Here is one: Sepp Blatter is beginning to look good. That is quite an accomplishment by Gianni Infantino.

Blatter presided over FIFA when corruption became so synonymous with international football that the organisation occasionally resembled a criminal enterprise with a sporting division. Eventually, American prosecutors arrived. In 2015, the United States indicted nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives on racketeering, wire fraud and money-laundering charges arising from what prosecutors described as a 24-year corruption scheme. Two serving FIFA vice-presidents were among those charged. The scandal engulfed the organisation and helped end Blatter’s presidency.

There was always an exquisite irony about America’s sudden missionary zeal concerning FIFA governance. Five years earlier, the United States had competed for the 2022 World Cup and lost to Qatar in a secret vote of FIFA’s Executive Committee. One need not indulge conspiracy theories to appreciate the chronology. America lost the World Cup. A few years later, American law enforcement became intensely interested in the people who had been running world football. History sometimes has a mischievous sense of timing.

The resulting upheaval was supposed to produce a cleaner FIFA. It produced Gianni Infantino. Infantino has achieved something Blatter never quite managed. Blatter’s FIFA was notorious for what allegedly happened behind closed doors. Infantino has made the cultivation of political power so conspicuous that doors seem superfluous.

Consider FIFA’s Peace Prize. Yes, FIFA now has one. An organisation responsible for football apparently decided that the Nobel Committee had left an intolerable gap in the international awards market. Its inaugural choice was a man whose public repertoire includes demeaning opponents, invading and threatening other nations and treating political intimidation as an instrument of statecraft.

Apparently, in Infantino’s FIFA, these are not disqualifications for a peace prize but qualifications for one. In December, Infantino presented the inaugural prize to Donald Trump at the World Cup draw in Washington. He told Trump that he deserved it and, more remarkably, assured the American president that he could “always count” on Infantino’s support and that of the football community.

One wonders when the football community authorised the pledge. The issue is not whether one admires or despises Trump. It is why the president of FIFA is pledging his support to any politician. FIFA represents 211 national associations and professes political neutrality. Its president is supposed to administer world football, not audition for membership in the court of whichever president, monarch or prince happens to possess useful stadiums, money or political influence.

The relationship has now become sufficiently peculiar that Representative Jamie Raskin and other House Democrats want Infantino before the House Judiciary Committee. They are seeking documents concerning FIFA’s dealings with Trump, including communications, gifts and favours, as well as information concerning FIFA’s curious decision to lease office space in Trump Tower. Then there is Folarin Balogun.

After the American player received a red card during the World Cup, Trump personally telephoned Infantino about the suspension. FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee subsequently deferred Balogun’s one-match ban for a year, allowing him to play against Belgium. Infantino says FIFA’s judicial bodies are independent and that he merely explained the disciplinary process to Trump.

Perhaps. But the scandal begins before one reaches the outcome. Why is the president of the United States telephoning the president of FIFA about the disciplinary sanction of an American footballer? Imagine Vladimir Putin telephoning Infantino concerning a Russian player’s suspension. Or Xi Jinping about a Chinese player. Or the president of Iran about an Iranian one. The condemnation would be instantaneous, and properly so.

There is only one appropriate response when a head of government calls FIFA’s president about an individual disciplinary proceeding: This is none of your business and none of mine. Instead, the call occurred and the sanction changed. FIFA then invited the world to admire the independence of the process. Even Norway’s football federation is reportedly considering an ethics complaint. La Liga president Javier Tebas has described the intervention as extraordinarily serious. What should have been an elementary principle of sporting governance has become another subject requiring FIFA explanation.

Infantino’s solicitude for political power becomes particularly striking when contrasted with his solicitude for people without it. Consider Omar Abdulkadir Artan. Artan, a Somali referee named Africa’s best male referee for 2025, had been selected to officiate at the World Cup. He arrived at Miami International Airport in June and was refused entry into the United States. FIFA’s response was a small masterpiece of bureaucratic helplessness: immigration decisions belonged to the host government. Quite. And what, precisely, is FIFA for?

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FIFA selects a host country pursuant to elaborate undertakings designed to make a global tournament possible. It invites national teams, officials and supporters from across the world. If it cannot secure the admission of a referee whom it selected to officiate at its own World Cup, perhaps the word “governing” in “world football’s governing body” requires reconsideration.

Iran encountered its own indignities. Visa and security problems disrupted its arrangements and resulted in the team being based in Mexico despite matches in the United States. Again FIFA, normally capable of discovering considerable institutional muscle when money or its own prerogatives are involved, became a spectator.

This is the emerging Infantino doctrine: FIFA is sovereign when dealing with those dependent upon FIFA and deferential when dealing with those upon whom FIFA depends.

That doctrine helps explain another grotesque inconsistency. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Four days later, FIFA and UEFA suspended Russian national and club teams from their competitions. Whatever one thinks of sporting sanctions, the principle appeared clear. A state engaged in a grave military assault could not expect international sport to continue as though nothing had happened.

Then came Gaza. Suddenly FIFA discovered due process. The Palestinian Football Association sought Israel’s suspension. Palestinian football facilities were destroyed. Footballers were killed. The longstanding issue of Israeli clubs operating in occupied Palestinian territory remained unresolved. FIFA responded with investigations, committees, legal assessments and delay.

Russia required four days.

Israel required jurisprudence.

The contrast became still more extraordinary this March when FIFA’s own Disciplinary Committee found that the Israel Football Association had committed multiple breaches of its obligations involving offensive behaviour, fair play, discrimination and racist abuse. The punishment? A fine, a warning and a prevention plan. Russia was expelled from competition. Apparently FIFA’s principles come equipped with geographical settings.

And still Infantino’s political base remains remarkably secure. In April, the member associations of the Confederation of African Football unanimously endorsed him for another term as FIFA president from 2027 to 2031. Unanimously. Not one dissenter. One might have imagined that the treatment of Africa’s leading referee would subsequently produce at least a raised eyebrow among the continent’s football administrators. Apparently not. Infantino’s coronation proceeds undisturbed. Has every African federation has independently concluded that Infantino represents the summit of sporting statesmanship?

There is another possibility. FIFA distributes enormous amounts of money to its member associations. Those associations elect FIFA’s president. This arrangement may be entirely innocent, but it possesses the structural elegance of a patronage system. Patronage, naturally, never calls itself patronage. It prefers “development”, “solidarity” and “the football family”.

The architecture is almost designed for incumbency. Germany has one FIFA vote. So does each tiny national association. A president sitting atop an organisation capable of distributing billions therefore enjoys something more useful than popularity: a worldwide constituency of beneficiaries.

Now Infantino wants to go further. FIFA is pursuing a proposal for a commercial enterprise reportedly valued at as much as $20 billion that would control interests associated with some of its most valuable competitions and bring outside investors into the structure. UEFA is furious and has warned, in essence, that FIFA does not own football and cannot simply sell pieces of it. Europe should take that thought seriously. FIFA does not own football. It administers competitions that exist because nations, clubs, players and supporters accept its authority. Institutional authority is not a property right.

And the economic centre of world football is overwhelmingly European. The Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Champions League dominate the global club game. Many of the greatest African, South American, Asian and North American players earn their living in Europe. UEFA consequently possesses vastly more leverage than it generally chooses to exercise. Perhaps it is time.

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Institutions often survive because everyone assumes there is no alternative to them. FIFA has converted that assumption into a psychological monopoly. Federations complain, confederations grumble, supporters rage, and eventually everyone arrives at the FIFA Congress, applauds the president and collects the distribution.

Europe should begin discussing the previously unthinkable: whether world football still requires FIFA. UEFA need not march out tomorrow. It should make clear that departure is conceivable. It could begin discussions with CONMEBOL and reform-minded associations in Africa, Asia and North America about what a successor international organisation would look like: transparent finances, meaningful term limits, genuinely independent disciplinary institutions, enforceable political-neutrality rules and a president who understands that running football does not require becoming a travelling courtier to presidents, princes and billionaires. The threat alone might produce an outbreak of reform in Zurich.

And then there is Congress. Raskin and his Democratic colleagues presently lack the House majority required to compel Infantino’s appearance through committee subpoena power. November may alter that arithmetic. If Democrats capture the House, Infantino could discover an important distinction between accountability inside FIFA and accountability before a congressional committee.

Congress has subpoenas. Witnesses testify under oath. Documents can be demanded. False statements can have consequences. And when congressional investigations uncover evidence suggesting criminal conduct, that evidence can be referred to law-enforcement authorities.

None of this establishes that Infantino has committed a crime. It establishes something else. Relationships that look merely unseemly from Zurich can become considerably more interesting when examined under oath in Washington.

There would be a delicious historical symmetry to it. The United States helped destroy the FIFA establishment of the Blatter era. The resulting cleansing created the circumstances from which Infantino emerged promising reform. A decade later, American lawmakers are again asking questions about the man running world football. Infantino should accept Raskin’s invitation. And he should bring the documents.

He must explain the Trump Tower lease. The Peace Prize. His pledge of support to Trump. The presidential telephone call concerning Balogun. The subsequent disciplinary reversal. The treatment of Artan. FIFA’s inability or unwillingness to enforce host-country assurances. Iran. Russia. Israel. And the extraordinary unanimity with which football federations continue lining up behind him.

Perhaps there are cogent explanations for all of it.

Congress would be a good place to start hearing them.

Sepp Blatter’s FIFA taught us to worry about what happened under the table.

Gianni Infantino has achieved a peculiar kind of institutional progress.

He increasingly appears to have dispensed with the table.

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