Gianni Infantino's FIFA Presidency: From Reform to Controversy

When Gianni Infantino walked into the Fifa presidency in 2016, it felt like a break with the past. A surprise winner, a clean-ish technocrat after the toxic end of the Sepp Blatter era, he arrived promising to “restore the image of Fifa”, to open the curtains, to let in the light.

He also promised money. Lots of it.

Accountability, transparency, reform – all part of the pitch – but the core message to the 211 member associations was blunt: expect a “very significant increase” in funding. The applause he predicted “from everyone in the world” was always likely to be secondary to the cheers from inside the Fifa family. Even then, there were murmurs about the private jets and the taste for the good life. They sounded like side notes. They no longer do.

From grey bureaucrat to would‑be head of state

Back then, Infantino was painted as a typical Swiss administrator, a diligent lawyer in a neat suit. Nobody uses that description now. Inside the game, the language has hardened. Senior figures talk instead about a man who “thinks he’s running a nation state”.

That line has rarely felt more apt than in the week Fifa unveiled, without consultation, a plan to sell a slice of the World Cup’s commercial rights to outside investors. No congress debate. No real attempt at persuasion. Just a decree from the top of the pyramid.

This is not a sudden turn. It is the logical extension of a presidency built on relentless expansion – of tournaments, of revenue streams, of Fifa’s reach.

Infantino floated the idea of a bigger World Cup almost as soon as he took office, in 2016, and pushed an expanded Club World Cup in the same breath. By 2017, the decision to take the World Cup to 48 teams from 2026 was locked in. A year later came the proposal for a global Nations League, to be run through a new corporate vehicle and funded by external money. That scheme died under pressure, but the direction of travel was unmistakable.

The same year, 2021, brought another flashpoint. The 12 Super League clubs believed Fifa would quietly back their breakaway. It did not, and the project collapsed, yet Infantino closed out that year by launching another grenade into the calendar: his push for a biennial World Cup.

The pattern was set. Every time the dust settled, another idea landed on the table.

Covid, cash and the accelerator pressed to the floor

Once football emerged from the Covid-19 shutdown, bleeding money and desperate for stability, Infantino moved even faster. Fifa’s own Forward Programme was used to plug some of the financial gaps, but the real play was to grow the pie.

The 32‑team Club World Cup was born, immediately accompanied by talk of how it might get bigger still. The 2030 World Cup was stretched across three continents and six host nations, a geographical jigsaw sold as celebration but driven by politics and commercial reach. The 2034 edition went, with barely a murmur of contest, straight to Saudi Arabia.

There is even discussion of pushing the World Cup to 64 teams. On the field, smaller tweaks appeared, such as mandatory hydration breaks, but the real story lay off it: more games, more markets, more broadcast windows to sell.

Inside boardrooms and confederation offices, the same question keeps surfacing. What is driving this? What exactly is eating Gianni Infantino?

Patronage, legacy or something simpler?

The most common answer is the oldest one in politics: patronage. Inflate the competitions, inflate the revenues, and then redistribute the money to the member associations. In that world, loyalty is not built on ideology, but on bank transfers.

It has worked. Since Infantino took charge, Fifa’s revenues have effectively tripled. Congresses have become coronations. Rules on presidential term limits have been rewritten, and his third full term – all but assured – will be his last under the new framework.

So why the need to keep pushing? Why the latest move to carve out World Cup commercial rights for a new, investor‑backed vehicle?

One theory, sharpened by those plans, is that Infantino is not just building Fifa’s future; he is building his own. Reports in the Times suggested he could step in as CEO of the new structure once he leaves the presidency, with a salary closer to a corporate titan than the head of a non‑profit sporting body. Fifa has flatly denied any such conversations, and there is no proof they have taken place.

Even if they did, though, that alone would not explain a decade of upheaval, confrontation and structural change. The scale of the project is bigger than a single retirement job.

Which leaves a third, more straightforward reading – and one that is getting harder to ignore inside the game.

The kid from Brig at the top table

Infantino’s backstory is well known. The son of Italian immigrants, raised working class in affluent Switzerland, bullied for his ginger hair, an outsider in a country that prides itself on order and discretion. He has never hidden his hunger to escape that box.

As an administrator, he gravitated early towards the trappings of status. The private jets. The entourages. The decision, during his 2016 campaign, to surround himself with a dozen former stars, rebranded as Fifa Legends, to sell his vision to the world’s federations.

Once he became Fifa president, the celebrity shifted from ex‑players to heads of state. The photo‑ops with Vladimir Putin. The easy familiarity with the emir of Qatar. The warm embrace of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. The handshake lines with Donald Trump.

The football politician began to move like a geopolitical operator, borrowing the language and posture of global power. Every summit, every World Cup draw, every opening ceremony became another stage on which Infantino could act not as a sports administrator, but as a leader among leaders.

That perception of power has allowed him to force through change after change with minimal resistance. Inside Fifa, dissent is muted. National associations, buoyed by record distributions, have little appetite to pick a fight. Those who do speak out find themselves isolated.

But political alliances at that level are rarely built on affection. They are transactional, fragile, and they come with a bill.

One senior football figure, looking at the latest commercial plan, argued that this is no longer simply Infantino’s project at all. “Gianni has got in way over his head with Trump,” they said privately. “He [Trump] is now extracting his share of the World Cup rewards.”

If that is true – and it remains an allegation, not a proven fact – it would mark a new phase in Fifa’s story: a World Cup not just reshaped by one man’s ambition, but carved up under pressure from forces outside the sport entirely.

The question now is not whether Infantino has changed Fifa. He has, utterly. The real question is how much of football’s future he has already traded away, and to whom.