"If Gianni Infantino doesn't get re-elected unanimously, then whoever voted against him needs to get their head examined." That's Andrew Giuliani — former executive director of the White House Task Force on the 2026 FIFA World Cup — and he's not mincing words.
Speaking to The Athletic on Friday, Giuliani mounted one of the more full-throated defenses of the embattled FIFA president yet, calling any opposition "foolish" and attributing criticism to jealousy rather than legitimate governance concerns. "People are jealous when people are very high achievers," he said, crediting Infantino with taking FIFA "to a whole new level."
It's a bold take given the context. Infantino is under serious pressure after FIFA's FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal — a plan to spin off commercial operations into a subsidiary and sell a 20% stake to private investors — collapsed spectacularly. FIFA pulled the proposal. Infantino apologized. The criticism didn't stop.
The opposition is organized and growing
UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation, and CONCACAF issued a joint letter demanding an independent review of how the whole thing was handled. Ireland, England, and New Zealand have withdrawn their support for Infantino's reelection. England and Norway have gone further — they want him to resign entirely.
That's not fringe dissent. That's three of the sport's most powerful confederations, and multiple influential national associations, all breaking from the FIFA president in the same week. The math on a "unanimous" reelection is looking shakier by the day.
Giuliani's defense does have a factual foundation, though. The 2026 World Cup, by his own account, generated more than four times the revenue of the previous tournament — and by most measures it ran without serious incident. That's a genuine achievement. Whether it's enough to paper over a governance scandal that spooked UEFA and half the globe is a different question entirely.
Trump weighed in too on Monday, calling it "a terrible mistake" to even consider replacing Infantino, and claiming the World Cup was the most successful ever "by four times." The backing of a sitting US president is an unusual asset for a FIFA election campaign — though it's unlikely to move the English FA.
Infantino's reelection isn't in imminent danger. FIFA's voting structure means the support of federations across Africa, Asia, and the Americas still carries serious weight, and Giuliani is right that the 2026 numbers give him a platform to campaign on. But "he ran a good World Cup" and "his private investment plan was a governance mess" can both be true at once. UEFA and the English FA clearly think they are.
