By most objective standards, the 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament — which concluded two weeks ago in New Jersey with Spain’s grueling 1-0 victory over Argentina — was a major success. Despite global anxiety over the collision between the world’s largest sporting event and Donald Trump’s “America First” regime, stadiums were mostly full across North America, fans and players from all sorts of large and small countries seemed to enjoy themselves (and tried to smuggle home large quantities of ranch dressing) and, of course, something like $15 billion flowed into FIFA’s coffers. 

Just below the surface, however, the soccer world was seething with discontent. That erupted into all-out rebellion this week, which could finally bring down Gianni Infantino, the Swiss administrator who has served as FIFA chief executive for the last decade. Unpacking the byzantine history of alleged or actual corruption within FIFA and the numerous regional and national federations under its purview would be a dissertation-length project. But it’s definitely not wrong to say there’s a Trump angle, and that Infantino’s marriage of convenience and shared sensibility with the U.S. president may bring his downfall. 

Even before this year’s tournament, Infantino stood accused of commercializing or “Americanizing” world soccer — a process he did not start but has certainly accelerated — and of shamelessly cozying up to Trump, whom he presented with the newly-invented FIFA Peace Prize, aka the “Temu Nobel,” last December. That was all inarguably true, and the guy has form, as they say on British cop shows. Back in 2022, while seeking to justify holding the World Cup in Qatar, an autocratic monarchy with a famously dreadful human rights record, Infantino launched a thousand memes with this memorable monologue:

“Today I have very strong feelings, I can tell you. Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker.”

If it seems extraordinary that a major executive of any enterprise, anywhere in the world, could say stuff like that and still have a job four years later, you are beginning to appreciate the hallucinatory Infantino experience. Anyway, in 2026 Infantino seems to have swapped all those intersectional identities for an adjunct MAGA membership, and this year’s World Cup pushed the soccer world’s bizarre love-hate relationship with its leader into overdrive. 

Tom Burrows of the Athletic did a nice job this week of summarizing the indictment: Infantino drove World Cup ticket prices to previously unimagined levels, introduced “commercial breaks in each half [of matches] dressed up as hydration breaks” — a network-friendly innovation that global football had resisted for decades — capitulated to Trump in reversing a red-card suspension for U.S. star striker Folarin Balogun, and introduced a “surreal halftime show” featuring Madonna, BTS and Justin Bieber in the final match, in obvious (and inept) imitation of the Super Bowl. 

All of that, mind you, came before Infantino’s big surprise this past week: Apparently without consulting any relevant stakeholders, he announced a plan to spin off commercial rights to the World Cup into a new for-profit company (FIFA is a nonprofit, like other international sporting federations) and then sell off a big chunk of that company to an investment consortium led by Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. So it’s not entirely accurate to say that Infantino wanted to sell world soccer’s biggest brand to the Trump family. But it’s not exactly false either. 

To coin a phrase, you can’t make this stuff up. But the good news, or the kind-of good news, or the “why in God’s name did this take so long” news, is that Infantino has finally choked on an overdose of hubris. His proposal collapsed within 48 hours and as of this weekend has been abandoned completely. (Soccer fans will discern unmistakable echoes of the European Super League, a proposed NFL-style closed competition for Europe’s top club teams that was announced in 2021 and imploded within a few weeks.)

UEFA, the federation that governs European soccer and is by far the most powerful of FIFA’s regional subsidiaries, wasted no time in rejecting Infantino’s scheme and announcing that none of its 55 national teams would participate in any FIFA competitions until the proposal was ditched. That was almost certainly enough to torpedo this galaxy-brain plan, and other regional confederations — most notably Concacaf, which represents North America, Central America and the Caribbean, and therefore includes the U.S. — soon followed UEFA’s lead, if not as aggressively. 

Donald Trump did not pick up the phone on this occasion. (“Johnny who? Really, I barely know the guy.”) Only the Confederation of African Football — whose member nations, fairly or otherwise, are perceived as Infantino supporters — remained silent. More on that shortly.

Anyone who follows world soccer already knows that UEFA has its own extensive history of political intrigue and internal scandal, and is not well positioned to play populist hero in this drama. But as is so often the case in world affairs, there are no good guys in the story and you have to pick your poison. One could draw a rough analogy with the European Union, a deeply flawed entity that nonetheless represents some degree of ideological or economic counterweight to Trump’s America. In this particular confrontation, Europe held nearly all the cards. 

While the next men’s World Cup, FIFA’s biggest golden goose, is still four years away, the consequences of a European boycott would have been felt immediately. The under-20 Women’s World Cup begins in Poland about a month from now, and qualifying playoffs for FIFA’s second-biggest event, the Women’s World Cup (to be held next summer in Brazil) are set for October. Given his avowed commitments to promoting the women’s game and youth soccer at all levels, Infantino simply couldn’t afford to play chicken with UEFA and risk losing those tournaments. Joshua Kushner and his family, one imagines, will not starve. 

This may be stretching the point, but there’s a thematic resemblance at work here to the worldwide pushback against Big Tech data centers, and against the opaque government processes that gets them built, as well as to the popular and legal resistance that has stalled the $110 billion merger between Warner Bros. and Paramount. It’s also true that Infantino is now understood, both to soccer fans and the world at large, as a proxy for Donald Trump, which looks like a much worse bet than it did a year ago. Infantino was cruising to likely re-election as FIFA president next year, but right now it’s an even-money bet that he can survive the next month. 

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Like his White House buddy, Infantino has thrived on a remarkable ability to weaponize greed and cynicism, both on an epic scale and at ground level. He fully intended to push through his scheme to sell shares in the World Cup by casting himself, believe it or not, as a defender of the downtrodden and underprivileged. He feels gay and African and disabled, remember? The uncomfortable truth is that he has ruled over a vast global sports and merchandising empire largely by fulfilling his promises to channel lots of money into regional and national federations in the Global South that have historically had few resources. 

Under Infantino’s proposed plan, each of FIFA’s 211 federations — at least the ones who supported him! — would have received an immediate cash infusion of $40 million, with further annual installments to follow. That sum would barely make a difference to the football gods in England, Spain or France, but would been enormous in Malawi or Madagascar. Affluent European nations don’t need infusions of private equity capital to build new stadiums and support younger players, and can afford to stand up to Infantino’s Trump-flavored bribery scheme. For players, parents, coaches and local officials in sub-Saharan Africa, the equation might have looked very different. Why should they care where the money comes from? This particular grift may have failed, but in a world built on massive structural inequality, grifters tend to prosper.

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By any measure, the 2026 World Cup has been exceptional. The new format, expanding team participation from 32 to 48, has brought to center stage smaller, underdog countries that have outperformed expectations, produced unexpected heroes and warmed our collective hearts. FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, has repeatedly positioned the sport as a force for inclusion and social cohesion; soccer diplomacy is being elevated as the panacea for our current global disharmony. 

But all is not golden at the World Cup. This tournament has had no shortage of controversies, as fights over referee favoritism and interference by President Donald Trump attest. There is much to pick apart about this year’s World Cup, but one issue has been mostly invisible in the public discussion and debates: gender-based violence.

Several players currently competing in the World Cup are facing allegations, investigations or charges for sexual assault, rape or intimate partner violence. While the facts and legal outcomes of these cases vary and due process must always be followed, the larger question remains: Why does FIFA maintain strict rules that police everything from drug use and match-fixing to financial fair play, yet it has no universal standard on gender-based violence?

This silence reveals a deeper contradiction at the heart of the world’s most popular sport.

Soccer is built on collective responsibility. Success depends on discipline, teamwork, emotional control, respect for others and adherence to the rules of the game. Yet the game’s governing institutions have shown little commitment to these values when it comes to allegations of violence against women.

Infantino has many opinions on violence in soccer, but seemingly none on gender-based violence. This stands in stark contrast with other sports associations like the NFL, which in recent years has committed itself to addressing domestic and other violence through its Personal Conduct Policy. So does Major League Baseball. Its policy combines investigation, discipline and mandatory education. FIFA’s lack of comparable universal standards is not just a governance failure. It’s also a missed opportunity for prevention.

Gender-based violence is often framed as a private matter between individuals or a problem for the criminal justice system to solve. But decades of research and community-based prevention efforts tell us otherwise. Violence is shaped by social norms, power dynamics and the behaviors that institutions reward, tolerate or condemn. Prevention happens not only through laws and prosecutions, but also through the values communities choose to uphold.

Few institutions have greater influence over those values than soccer. The World Cup is more than a sporting event — it is one of the most powerful cultural platforms in the world. When soccer institutions fail to address violence against women with the same seriousness they bring to drug-use, corruption or fan misconduct, they undermine those very lessons. They communicate the respect that matters on the pitch but may be optional off it.

While much of the blame for this omission can be squarely placed on Infantino as the longtime leader of the association, the soccer clubs themselves must also be held accountable. FIFA is the governing body that controls international competition, but the onus also falls on “global football” as a whole. The elite European teams, which are all owned either by billionaires, investment groups or actual nation-states, especially petrostates — all of whom derive great financial rewards from the commercial value generated by their star players — should face particular scrutiny. 

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Too often, soccer institutions seem willing to tolerate serious allegations when the player in question remains valuable on the field. A case in point is Achraf Hakimi, who is currently playing for the Morocco national team and has been ordered to stand trial in France over a rape allegation. Hakimi’s full-time job is with Paris Saint-Germain, which is owned by Qatar; he continues to play for both teams with impunity.

Several players in previous World Cups, including Dani Alves, have been convicted of rape or sexual assault. But convictions are rare. They are often overturned or reduced on appeal, as was Alves’ case, which prosecutors cited they would appeal to Spain’s Supreme Court. Convictions are uncommon not because allegations are rare but because the legal system is slow and flawed. Studies show that in the US, for every 1,000 sexual assaults, 50 reports lead to arrests, 28 cases lead to felony convictions, and only 25 are sentenced to incarceration, according to RAINN.

The problem for this World Cup is players are competing under active charges or investigations. FIFA’s selective moral leadership — claiming the high ground on fair play, inclusion and human rights — cannot be credible without meaningful action on gender-based violence.

To that end, FIFA must develop and enforce a broad policy that includes independent reporting mechanisms, transparent investigation procedures, survivor-centered protections, mandatory education and prevention programs, as well as clear standards to end impunity. If, as it claims, FIFA truly wants to be the face of global diplomacy and human rights, then the credibility of the “beautiful game” depends not only on how it protects the integrity of competition, but on whether it is willing to use its powerful influence to help create safer communities for women and girls.

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