What people tend to remember is the peace prize.
Last fall, FIFA president, had an idea. The Nobel Peace Prize had just been awarded to Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado. President Donald Trump, who had openly campaigned for the award, was angered.
Infantino, who sought to approach Trump as an ally, saw an opportunity. Why couldn’t FIFA, the governing body of international football, have its own peace prize? The first honoree: Trump, of course.
Why took Infantino’s efforts to curry favor and win Trump’s favor to a new level. The hastily put together award ceremony angered many football officials, who said it embarrassed FIFA and gave the organization a partisan tone. Trump, in turn, called the award “truly one of the great honors of my life.”
But while grand gestures like the FIFA Peace Prize have attracted attention, they have ended up overshadowing a larger story about how FIFA has been transforming under Infantino. The entity’s president is not only going to great lengths to cultivate his relationship with Trump; he is also making the organization more like Trump in the process.
Trumpification
The body that governs international football to use the name FIFA? Under Infantino, FIFA is exploring exactly this, just as the Trump family has long done, we learn.
Continues after advertising
Should there be a FIFA cryptocurrency? Infantino, who this year attended a crypto summit at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, also explored this possibility, as did the Trumps.
FIFA’s headquarters are in Zurich. But the organization recently opened a gleaming North American hub in Miami, where Infantino lives — and it has been operating very much within the president’s orbit.
The organization taken over by Infantino was already facing controversies before his arrival. When he became FIFA president in 2016, the organization was still reeling from a corruption case brought by the US Department of Justice, which detailed decades of bribery schemes and illicit kickbacks.
Continues after advertising
In fact, Infantino set out to rehabilitate FIFA’s reputation, especially in the United States — reshaping the entity’s image as an organization closely aligned with the American government and no longer viewed with suspicion by its authorities.
But to do so, it was necessary to approach an administration marked by its own scandals and embrace Trump’s transactional logic, which involves taking advantage of relationships for both possible profit and political gain.
In Trump’s first term, Infantino praised the president during his impeachment proceedings and even as his popularity ratings fell. The investment paid off. Infantino’s access to the Trump administration made possible a “courtesy visit,” as a FIFA statement described it, with the U.S. attorney general, who oversaw FIFA’s cases. Infantino left the meeting saying he was “completely convinced” that “FIFA’s credibility and reputation are being restored at the highest level”.
Continues after advertising
In typical Trumpian style, this proximity also generated potential business opportunities. Under Infantino’s command, FIFA discussed with then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin an investment in a streaming service, according to a senior FIFA official. Nothing materialized, but only because the project was put on pause, we understand.
Infantino also tried to woo the Biden administration. But members of the administration kept their distance, wary of getting too close to an organization marred by scandals, former government officials said.
The relationship with Trump has paid even greater dividends since his return to the White House. Infantino appeared prominently among officials at Trump’s inauguration last year and accompanied the president on official trips abroad — raising FIFA’s profile and his own.
Continues after advertising
A was Infantino
This year’s World Cup — jointly hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico — could be the ultimate test of whether all this relationship building was worth it.
Infantino’s supporters say he . (A senior FIFA official said he believed there was an informal understanding that authorities, for example, would not carry out immigration enforcement actions outside stadiums — something denied by an entity spokesperson.)
This month’s controversies over the US refusal to allow in a Somali referee and the logistical challenges faced by the Iranian team have yet to overshadow football, and show how disruptive Trump could be if he wanted to. “I think it is absolutely crucial, for the success of a World Cup, to have a close relationship with the president,” Infantino said last year.
But the transformation of FIFA as a result of the relationship between Trump and Infantino may endure in ways that will outlast the tournament. FIFA has political neutrality rules. Many football officials have expressed concern that Infantino has crossed ethical lines in his relationship with Trump. Some filed formal complaints with the ethics department. The concern is that the Infantino era has replaced the rampant corruption of the previous period with problems of a different nature.
c.2026 The New York Times Company
