What people tend to remember is the peace prize.
Last year, during the autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, had an idea. The Nobel Peace Prize had just been awarded to Venezuelan María Corina Machado. President Donald Trump, who had openly campaigned for the award, was angered.
Infantino, who was trying to win over Trump as an ally, saw the occasion as an opportunity. Why couldn’t FIFA, the governing body of international football, establish an exclusive peace prize? The first honoree, of course, was Trump.
The FIFA Peace Prize made headlines because it took Infantino’s efforts to curry favor with Trump to a new level. Hastily organized, the honor angered many football officials, who claimed that he had embarrassed FIFA and caused the organization to be seen as partisan. Trump, in turn, called the award “truly one of the greatest honors of my life.”
But while they have attracted attention, grand gestures like the FIFA Peace Prize are overshadowing a bigger story: how the highest governing body that governs and regulates football is transforming under Infantino’s presidency. This one is not just trying his best to cultivate a relationship with Trump; it is also making the organization more like the American president in the process.
The ‘Trumpification’
Should the world football governing body license the Fifa brand for hotels? Under Infantino’s command, the institution has been exploring exactly this type of business — similar to what the Trump family has been doing for decades.
And would it make sense for FIFA to have its own cryptocurrency? Infantino, who this year participated in a summit on cryptocurrencies in Mar-a-Lago, the American president’s retreat in Florida, also explored this possibility — once again in tune with the Trump family’s business universe.
FIFA’s headquarters remain in Zurich, but the organization recently opened an operations center in Miami, the city where Infantino lives and where he operates increasingly closer to the president’s orbit.
The FIFA that Infantino took over was already marked by controversies before his administration. When he became president in 2016, the entity was still trying to rebuild itself after the corruption investigation conducted by the United States Department of Justice, which exposed decades of bribes and kickbacks.
Infantino presented himself as the leader who would restore FIFA’s reputation — especially in the USA. Its objective was to reposition it as an entity aligned with Washington and leave behind the image of an institution viewed with suspicion by American authorities.
To do this, however, he approached a government also surrounded by scandals and adhered to Trump’s transactional dynamics, which boils down to cultivating personal and institutional relationships both as a political asset and as a business opportunity.
Still in his first term, Infantino publicly praised Trump even during the impeachment proceedings and amid the president’s falling popularity. The bet paid off. Access to the Trumpist circle paved the way for a “courtesy visit”, as FIFA described in a statement, to the US Attorney General, the authority responsible for overseeing cases involving the entity. At the end of the meeting, Infantino said he was “totally convinced” that “FIFA’s credibility and reputation are being restored to the highest level.”
In Trumpian fashion, the proximity also generated potential business opportunities. Under Infantino’s watch, FIFA discussed with then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin an investment in a streaming service, according to a senior FIFA official. Nothing came to fruition, but only because the venture was put on hold, according to people familiar with the matter.
Infantino tried to win over Democrat Joe Biden’s government as well. But his advisors kept their distance, afraid of getting too close to an organization marred by scandals, according to what former government officials told us.
The relationship with Trump has paid even greater dividends since his return to the White House. Infantino occupied a prominent place among officials at last year’s inauguration ceremony and accompanied the president on state visits abroad — raising the profile of FIFA and Infantino himself.
A was Infantino
Hosted jointly by the USA, Canada and Mexico, this year’s World Cup could be the decisive test to see if all this engineering of relations cultivated by Infantino was in fact worth it.
His supporters argue that he is trying to ensure that an unpredictable president does not derail the tournament. (A senior FIFA official even said that he believed there was an informal understanding that American authorities would avoid immigration operations in the vicinity of stadiums — something that was denied by an entity spokesperson.)
So far, this month’s controversies — such as the US refusal to allow a Somali referee to enter and the logistical obstacles faced by the Iranian team — have not overshadowed the competition. Still, they illustrate the degree of disruption Trump could cause if he wanted to. “For the success of a World Cup, I think it is absolutely crucial to have a close relationship with the president,” Infantino declared last year.
But the effects of the rapprochement between Trump and Infantino may survive the tournament. FIFA has rules of political neutrality, and many football officials have expressed concern that the organization’s president has gone beyond ethical limits in his relationship with Trump. Some even filed formal complaints. The fear of these critics is that the Infantino era has replaced the blatant corruption of the past with problems of another nature.
