Gianni Infantino
Based on Wikipedia: Gianni Infantino
The Man Who Runs World Football
In November 2025, the president of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association—FIFA, the organization that governs world soccer—created something called the FIFA Peace Prize. The inaugural recipient? Donald Trump.
The timing was remarkable. Trump had long and publicly coveted the Nobel Peace Prize, griping about it repeatedly over the years. Now here was FIFA's president, Gianni Infantino, handing him a new peace award in Washington, D.C., just weeks after the American election. Critics immediately noticed the optics: a sports organization inventing a prize to give to a politician who had openly campaigned for a different, more prestigious award.
This is Gianni Infantino in a nutshell—a man who has transformed FIFA from a mere sports governing body into something that increasingly resembles a geopolitical actor, with himself at the center of every photograph, his name literally engraved on the trophies.
A Polyglot from the Swiss Alps
Giovanni Vincenzo Infantino was born on March 23, 1970, in Brig, a small town in the Swiss Alps near the Italian border. His parents were Italian immigrants—his father from Calabria in the south, his mother from Lombardy in the north. This dual heritage gave him something valuable: citizenship in both Switzerland and Italy.
But his upbringing gave him something even more valuable for an international sports bureaucrat. Infantino grew up speaking French, German, and Italian as native languages—the three main languages of Switzerland. He later added English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic to his repertoire. In the world of international football diplomacy, where you might need to negotiate with officials from Moscow, Doha, and Madrid in the same week, this linguistic dexterity is a superpower.
He studied law at the University of Fribourg, then worked at the International Center for Sports Studies at the University of Neuchâtel. The path to running world football was not through playing the game—Infantino was never a professional footballer—but through the conference rooms and legal offices where the sport's business happens.
Climbing the Ladder at UEFA
In August 2000, Infantino joined the Union of European Football Associations, known as UEFA, the governing body for football in Europe. It's a powerful organization—European clubs dominate the sport financially and competitively, making UEFA second only to FIFA in importance.
Infantino climbed the ranks methodically. By 2004, he was directing UEFA's legal affairs. By 2007, deputy general secretary. By 2009, general secretary—essentially the chief executive running the organization's daily operations.
During this period, he helped implement some genuinely significant reforms. UEFA introduced Financial Fair Play, a system designed to prevent clubs from spending far beyond their means and accumulating ruinous debts. The idea was simple: you shouldn't be able to buy championships with money you don't have. Whether Financial Fair Play actually works as intended remains debated, but it represented an attempt to impose some rationality on football's increasingly unhinged economics.
Infantino also oversaw the expansion of the European Championship from 16 teams to 24, and helped conceive the UEFA Nations League, a competition designed to make the endless schedule of international friendlies more meaningful. He was building a résumé of big, splashy changes—the kind of reforms that make headlines and build a reputation as a man who gets things done.
The FIFA Presidency Opens Up
FIFA, for decades, had been run by two men: João Havelange of Brazil from 1974 to 1998, and Sepp Blatter of Switzerland from 1998 onward. Blatter's tenure ended in disgrace when American and Swiss authorities launched sweeping corruption investigations into FIFA in 2015. Officials were arrested in dawn raids at a Zurich hotel. Blatter was banned from football. The organization's reputation was in tatters.
Infantino saw an opportunity. On October 26, 2015, he received backing from UEFA's executive committee to run for FIFA president. He entered the race as a reformist candidate, promising to clean up the organization's image. He also promised something that would appeal to smaller football nations: expanding the World Cup from 32 teams to 40.
On February 26, 2016, he won. At 45, Infantino became the ninth president of FIFA and the first Italian to hold the position.
The Panama Papers Shadow
Just weeks after his election, Infantino's name appeared in the Panama Papers, the massive leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm that revealed how the world's wealthy hid money offshore. The documents suggested that during his time at UEFA, the organization had undertaken deals with figures who were later indicted in football corruption scandals—figures UEFA had previously denied any relationship with.
Infantino said he was "dismayed" by the reports and claimed he had never personally dealt with the parties involved. The controversy faded, as controversies often do in international football, an industry that seems to metabolize scandal without ever quite changing.
Putin's Medal
The 2018 World Cup took place in Russia, and by all accounts of atmosphere and organization, it was a success. The stadiums were full. The matches were exciting. The host nation, against expectations, reached the quarterfinals before losing to Croatia on penalties.
Infantino declared it "the best World Cup ever."
He also accepted something that would haunt him later: the Order of Friendship medal, presented to him personally by Vladimir Putin. At the time, Russia was already under international sanctions for its annexation of Crimea. Four years later, Russia would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and that photograph of Putin pinning a medal on the FIFA president would look even more uncomfortable.
The Iran Exception
Not every controversy during Infantino's tenure has shown him in a poor light. Consider his handling of Iran.
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian women had been banned from attending men's football matches. This was one of the most visible symbols of gender discrimination in the country—women who loved football could only watch on television while men packed the stadiums.
Infantino repeatedly pressured the Iranian football federation and government to change this policy. Then, in September 2019, something terrible happened. A young woman named Sahar Khodayari set herself on fire after being arrested for trying to enter a stadium. She died of her injuries.
"Our position is clear and firm," Infantino declared. "Women have to be allowed into football stadiums in Iran. Now is the moment to change things."
A month later, more than 3,500 Iranian women attended a World Cup qualifying match at Tehran's Azadi Stadium. It was a genuine victory for human rights, achieved through the leverage that football provides—the threat of banning a football-mad nation from international competition.
This is the strange duality of Infantino and FIFA. The organization that would later minimize Qatar's treatment of migrant workers first won a meaningful battle for Iranian women.
Qatar 2022: "I Feel Gay, Disabled, and Like a Migrant Worker"
The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was controversial from the moment it was awarded in 2010, years before Infantino took charge. But as FIFA president, he became its most visible defender.
Qatar is a tiny, extraordinarily wealthy emirate on the Persian Gulf. It had no football tradition, no existing stadiums, and summer temperatures that made outdoor sport genuinely dangerous. To host the World Cup, Qatar would need to build everything from scratch—and the people building it would be migrant workers from South Asia and Africa, laboring under a system called kafala that tied workers to their employers and made them vulnerable to exploitation.
Reports emerged of unpaid wages, excessive working hours, illegal recruitment practices, and deaths among construction workers. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International documented cases of what they called forced labor.
When questioned about these abuses, Infantino offered a remarkable defense. The migrant workers, he said, were given "work and pay" and were "proud to contribute" to building the stadiums.
Then, on November 19, 2022, the day before the tournament began, Infantino delivered an hour-long monologue to reporters that would define his presidency. He began by announcing: "I feel Qatari today. I feel Arab. I feel African. I feel gay. I feel disabled. I feel like a migrant worker."
The statement was immediately mocked. How could a wealthy Swiss-Italian football bureaucrat claim to feel like a gay person in a country where homosexuality is illegal, or like a migrant worker in a country where workers had died building his tournament?
But Infantino was just getting started. He pivoted to attacking Western critics. "What we Europeans have been doing for the last 3,000 years," he declared, "we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons."
It was a bold rhetorical strategy—deflecting criticism of Qatar's present by invoking Europe's colonial past. Norway's national team coach, Ståle Solbakken, offered a withering response: Infantino, he said, was "not fit to teach anyone about morals and ethics" and was "neither a great sports leader nor a great historian."
The speech earned Infantino Britain's Foot in Mouth Award for 2022, given annually to public figures who say notably absurd things.
The Saudi Deal
If Qatar was controversial, Saudi Arabia is something else entirely.
On October 31, 2023, Infantino announced that Saudi Arabia would host the 2034 World Cup. The way this happened reveals much about how FIFA operates under his leadership.
First, FIFA decided that the 2030 World Cup would be hosted across three continents—with most games in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, but opening matches in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay to celebrate the tournament's centenary. This unusual arrangement ruled out Europe, Africa, and South America from hosting in 2034.
Then FIFA announced that 2034 hosting would be restricted to Asia or Oceania. This immediately limited the field. Australia might have been interested, but FIFA also compressed the bidding timeline dramatically, giving nations just 25 days to express interest.
Within minutes of the announcement, Saudi Arabia declared its candidacy. Within hours, the Asian Football Confederation endorsed it. There would be no competition.
The behind-the-scenes maneuvering was even more revealing. Infantino had personally engaged in diplomacy on Saudi Arabia's behalf, exploring whether Greece and Egypt might partner with the Saudis on a 2030 bid. When that didn't materialize and Saudi Arabia withdrew from 2030, the stage was set for a 2034 coronation.
Infantino has been photographed repeatedly with Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who American intelligence concluded ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He frequently promotes Saudi sporting events on his social media accounts.
Name on the Trophy
In 2024, FIFA expanded the Club World Cup—a tournament for the world's best club teams—from 7 teams to 32. It also made a decision that perfectly encapsulates the Infantino era: his name would be engraved on the trophy.
Not just his name. The trophy would include this inscription: "We are witness to a new age. The golden era of club football: the era of the FIFA Club World Cup. The pinnacle of all club competitions. Inspired by the FIFA president Gianni Infantino."
The World Cup trophy doesn't bear the names of past FIFA presidents. Neither does the Champions League trophy, or any other major football prize. But Infantino has made himself, literally, part of the silverware.
Ethics Investigations and Private Jets
In July 2016, just months after taking office, Infantino was interviewed by FIFA's own ethics committee. The investigation focused on flights he had taken, hiring decisions in his office, and his refusal to sign a contract specifying his employment relationship with FIFA.
Leaked documents alleged that Infantino had billed FIFA for personal expenses: nearly 9,000 pounds for mattresses at his home, close to 7,000 pounds for an exercise machine, over 1,000 pounds for a tuxedo, and smaller amounts for flowers and personal laundry. He allegedly demanded that FIFA hire a driver for his family while he was traveling.
The ethics committee also examined whether Infantino had a conflict of interest when Russia and Qatar—both World Cup hosts—provided private jets for him and his staff. The committee found no violation.
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, then chairman of Bayern Munich, was unimpressed. Infantino had promised transparency, democracy, and better governance. "So far this has not succeeded in my eyes," Rummenigge said.
In 2020, more questions arose when Infantino was accused of secret meetings with Michael Lauber, Switzerland's attorney general, who was at the time investigating FIFA corruption. A Swiss court found that Lauber had covered up these meetings and lied to his supervisors. Lauber resigned. Infantino defended himself, saying it was "perfectly legitimate and perfectly legal" to meet with Switzerland's top prosecutor.
Life in Doha
Since October 2021, Infantino has spent significant time in Doha, Qatar, renting a house there. Two of his children attend school in Qatar. His former predecessor, Sepp Blatter, has speculated that Infantino might move FIFA's headquarters from Zurich to the Gulf.
Infantino insists his official residence remains in Switzerland, explaining that organizing the World Cup in Qatar required his presence there. In 2022, he moved his Swiss residence from Zurich to Zug—a canton known for its favorable tax treatment.
In November 2025, Infantino obtained Lebanese citizenship following a meeting with Lebanon's president. His wife, Leena Al Ashqar, is Lebanese. He is a fan of Inter Milan.
The Two-Hour Delay
On May 15, 2025, FIFA held its 75th Congress in Asunción, Paraguay. Infantino arrived two hours late. The reason? He had been meeting with Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The leaders of UEFA—the European football body where Infantino once worked—walked out in protest. They accused their former colleague of prioritizing political interests over football.
Months later, Infantino suggested that the World Cup, traditionally held during June and July, might need to move to winter months to allow the tournament to be held in countries where summer is too hot for outdoor sport. Countries like Qatar. Countries like Saudi Arabia.
The European clubs objected. Winter is the heart of the European club season. Moving the World Cup would disrupt the leagues that generate the vast majority of global football revenue.
Infantino told them to "keep an open mind."
The Collection of Medals
Gianni Infantino has accumulated an impressive collection of honors from around the world: Commander of the Congolese Order of Merit, First Class of Indonesia's Order of the Star of Service, Italy's Golden Collar for Sporting Merit, Commander of the Order of Merit of Niger, Russia's Medal of the Order of Friendship, Uzbekistan's Medal of the Order of Dostlik, and Kosovo's Presidential Medal of Merits.
He also received the Asian Football Confederation's Diamond of Asia award.
And, of course, Britain's Foot in Mouth Award.
What FIFA Has Become
Football is the world's most popular sport. The World Cup final is the most-watched event on Earth. Whoever controls FIFA controls something immensely powerful—not just commercially, but culturally and politically.
Under Infantino, FIFA has expanded its footprint dramatically. The World Cup is growing from 32 teams to 48. The Club World Cup has exploded from a weeklong curiosity to a month-long mega-event. New competitions seem to emerge constantly.
But FIFA has also become something else: a player in great-power politics. Infantino meets with Vladimir Putin and receives medals. He meets with Mohammed bin Salman and delivers World Cups. He meets with Donald Trump and invents peace prizes.
Whether this is football's golden era, as the inscription on his trophy claims, or something else entirely, depends on what you think sport is for. Is it a business to be maximized? A cultural institution to be protected? A diplomatic tool to be deployed?
Gianni Infantino seems to believe it is all of these things—and that he should be at the center of each.