"The Man Who Thinks He's God." That's not a tabloid headline — that's the title of the official statement released by the president of global players' union FIFPRO about Gianni Infantino during last year's Club World Cup. Ten years after buying beers for journalists in a Cardiff hotel bar, the FIFA president now flies on a Qatari state jet, earns $6 million a year, and counts Trump, Putin and Crown Prince MBS among his personal contacts.
That's quite a transformation for a man who ran UEFA's Champions League draws.
The numbers are genuinely impressive — and that's the problem
Strip away the spectacle and Infantino has delivered some things he actually promised. FIFA's distribution fund to its 211 member associations has grown eightfold. Annual revenue has climbed from $502 million in 2016 to $2.66 billion in 2025, with $9 billion projected for 2026 alone. The 2026 World Cup expands to 48 teams — his flagship election pledge, now a reality. Sources close to FIFA say financial oversight of member associations has tightened sharply, with accounting experts sent in to ensure "every dollar is now accounted for."
These aren't nothing. After the FBI raids, the Zurich hotel arrests, the $150 million in bribes that defined the Blatter era, stabilizing the organization and growing its revenues was the job. By that metric, Infantino succeeded.
But the gap between his stated values and his actual behaviour has grown into something impossible to ignore.
He gave Trump a "FIFA Peace Prize" in December 2025 — a unilateral decision that human rights group FairSquare called an "egregious abuse of power" in a formal eight-page complaint. He wore a red Trump hat at a White House meeting, triggering an IOC investigation into neutrality breaches (he was cleared). He missed the start of FIFA Congress in Paraguay by three hours because he was at a world leaders' summit in Riyadh — prompting UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin and a group of European association heads to walk out in protest. He tried to engineer a public handshake between Israeli and Palestinian football officials on a Congress stage; the Palestinian FA president walked off in disgust and their vice president called it "absurd."
Michel Platini, whose own downfall created the vacancy Infantino filled, put it bluntly to the Guardian in January: "He was a good No. 2, but is not a good No. 1. He likes the rich and powerful people, the ones with money. It's his character."
The World Cup ticket mess isn't an accident — it's a philosophy
The 2026 World Cup should be Infantino's crowning moment. Instead, it has become the clearest illustration of who he actually serves.
The cheapest tickets for the USMNT's opening game against Paraguay in Los Angeles were priced at $1,200 through FIFA's dynamic pricing algorithm. Attending the group stage is projected to cost Scotland supporters between £5,000 and £10,000 once travel, accommodation and tickets are factored in. Parking at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts: $175 per space. A return train from Manhattan to the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium was initially priced at $150 — up from the usual $12.90.
Infantino's defence? "We have to apply market rates." He pointed out that 25% of group stage tickets can be bought for under $300, and that you can't watch a top U.S. college game for less than that. Even Trump told the New York Post he "wouldn't pay" $1,200 for a ticket.
New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill went further: "FIFA is making $11 billion off of this World Cup... and providing $0 for transportation. Zero." FIFA's response was that no other major event at MetLife had required organizers to pay for fan transport. Technically true. Entirely tone-deaf.
Scotland fans are hiring school buses from Boston. That's the ground-level reality of the tournament Infantino describes as the "biggest sporting event the world has ever seen."
- Dynamic pricing on resale has pushed some tickets to $10,000 for the final
- 39 countries face US visa restrictions, including World Cup qualifiers Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast and Senegal
- 80% of hotels surveyed in World Cup cities are tracking below booking expectations
- FIFA has contributed nothing to host city transportation costs despite a projected $9 billion revenue year
For anyone pricing the tournament's hospitality and travel packages — or assessing whether the economic boom cities were promised will actually materialize — those hotel figures are a serious warning sign. Empty seats and apathetic host cities would be a reputational disaster that lands squarely on Infantino's desk.
The silence around him is the real story
What makes Infantino's position extraordinary isn't his power — it's how few people inside football are willing to challenge it. ESPN approached a leading national association for comment on FIFA's ticketing scheme and received this response: "Ha, we won't be doing that!"
Even Sepp Blatter — disgraced, suspended, stripped of his legacy — noticed. "We have 211 national associations and there is not one single association who is opposed to the work of the president," Blatter told the Telegraph in December. Coming from Blatter, that observation carries a specific kind of weight.
Lise Klaveness of the Norwegian Football Federation has spoken up. FIFPRO's Sergio Marchi has spoken up. Almost no one else has, at least not on record.
Infantino has been re-elected twice unopposed and is expected to run again in 2027 without serious challenge. Under FIFA's statutes, he can serve until 2031 — and sources say he won't seek to extend beyond that, partly because the role is, in the words of someone close to him, simply "exhausting."
The man who bought journalists a round of beers in 2016 now stays at a 17th-century castle when he returns to Cardiff, while Saudi Arabia — confirmed as the 2034 World Cup host through a bidding process announced and closed within 27 days — waits on the horizon. The beer-buying was a nice touch. But that version of Gianni Infantino hasn't been seen in a long time.
