"There are no plans for @SecRubio to speak with Infantino and there is no call this morning." That's the US State Department, publicly telling the New York Post to check its sources — and effectively leaving Gianni Infantino with nowhere to hide.
US Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson issued the denial on Monday after the Post reported that the FIFA president had lined up a call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio just after 9am ET. One insider had framed it diplomatically — Infantino wanted to discuss "how soccer can be a form of soft power for America." Johnson wasn't buying it. "They could have just asked us," he added, which is as close to a public embarrassment as diplomatic language gets.
What Infantino actually needs right now
The context matters. Infantino has reportedly been trying to reach Donald Trump by phone since Friday, when his FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal collapsed under the weight of near-universal opposition. The FFE would have allowed private investors to take a minority stake in a new subsidiary controlling the commercial rights to the World Cup and other FIFA competitions. Confederations and national associations didn't want it. They said so loudly.
CONCACAF and UEFA didn't just oppose the plan — they called for a "comprehensive reckoning" with Infantino's leadership over the weekend. That's not routine dissent. That's the architecture of a presidency starting to crack.
By Monday morning, the Football Association of Wales became the first national association to formally withdraw support for Infantino's re-election bid. The English FA was reportedly preparing to follow. Whatever goodwill Infantino built through his closeness to Trump ahead of the 2026 World Cup, it's burning fast.
The phone that won't get answered
There's something telling about a FIFA president unable to get the US president on the line, scrambling to reach the Secretary of State instead, and then getting denied publicly before that call even happens. Whether or not the New York Post's sources were real or wishful, the optics are the same.
Infantino's leverage has always rested on access — to power, to money, to political figures who could give football a geopolitical shine. That leverage looks considerably shakier this week. With opposition mounting from national associations and his commercial restructuring plan in ruins, a phone call was never going to fix this.
