A years-long effort to woo Trump culminates with the World Cup

[NEW YORK] For the past year, Fifa, the governing body of international football, has leased an office on the 17th floor of New York’s Trump Tower that has sat all but empty.

The rent goes to US President Donald Trump’s family business, but football officials say the space sits largely idle.

Paying rent to the Trumps was the choice of Gianni Infantino, Fifa’s president, who has made being close to Trump a top priority. He has lavished the president with praise, trophies and a medal.

He has made pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, the Trump National Doral golf club and even the Melania documentary premiere.

Infantino has publicly boosted the president through impeachments and plummeting poll numbers.

It was all in service, Infantino’s supporters say, of ensuring that the World Cup, which begins this week, goes off without a hitch. Trump could disrupt the games in any number of ways. Infantino, allies say, is handling a volatile president who responds to praise and gifts.

Fifa officials are clear about what they want from the World Cup. They want a higher profile in the US and more growth in the world’s biggest consumer market. They also want to shed the reputation for corruption and cartoonish excess that led to Justice Department prosecutions.

Infantino presided over the previous two World Cups, in Russia and Qatar, and drew criticism for cosying up to autocrats in both countries. His amity with Trump has him once again defending his way of operating in what is supposed to be a politically neutral position.

“I think it is absolutely crucial for the success of a World Cup to have a close relationship with the president, with the government,” Infantino said last year. “I have a lot of friends.”

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Inside Fifa, many officials privately question whether this has all been in service of Infantino himself. He has accompanied Trump on state visits, sat centre stage at the inauguration and has attended diplomatic events.

What does any of that, his critics ask, have to do with football?

Infantino declined to be interviewed. His years-long campaign to curry favour with Trump, and the hand-wringing it has prompted, was described in dozens of interviews with Fifa insiders and others close to the two men.

Some spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

“Infantino thinks he’s the leader in the relationship,” said Sepp Blatter, the former Fifa president whose ouster at the height of the corruption scandal paved the way for Infantino’s ascension. “But nobody can lead Trump.”

The first meeting

Infantino and Trump first met in the Oval Office in the summer of 2018. The US had just won the right, along with Canada and Mexico, to host the World Cup, and the mood was celebratory.

“You’re pretty famous, right?” Trump asked. “Pretty important and pretty famous.”

“Yeah,” Infantino replied. “It looks like it.”

Infantino had secured the Fifa presidency the same year that Trump was elected.

In that first White House meeting, he presented the president with a Trump jersey and a set of penalty cards that the men joked could be used on the news media.

“You are part of the Fifa team now,” Infantino said.

It was a remarkable turnabout. Three years earlier, the Justice Department had unveiled an indictment detailing corruption in world football. Major brands did not renew their sponsorship deals, and the organisation suffered financial losses.

But if Infantino was eager to welcome the president onto Fifa’s team, he quickly found himself on the Trump Team: a pretty important, pretty famous endorser of a president in the middle of an impeachment inquiry.

Soon, Infantino was back at the White House, this time as an unusual guest for the signing of the Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic ties between Israel and some Arab nations. He also arranged a “courtesy visit” with the attorney-general, who was overseeing the Fifa cases.

“I am fully convinced,” Infantino said after that meeting, “that the credibility and reputation of Fifa is being restored at the highest level.”

Then came the 2020 election.

Joe Biden proved to be less welcoming to Fifa. Officials in his administration said they had been wary of getting too close to a scandal-tainted organisation. They saw no benefit in putting the president alongside Infantino.

So when Trump won the election in 2024, there was an opportunity to build on Infantino’s foundation. And Trump seemed eager to pick up where they had left off.

Days before Trump’s second inauguration, the men convened at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in South Florida, and flashed thumbs-up signs for a photo that Infantino posted to Instagram.

Trump thanked him by name at a victory rally. And Infantino had an elevated seat behind Trump at the inauguration.

Infantino eagerly promoted all of it, sounding at times like Trump’s campaign partner. “Together we will make not only America great again, but also the entire world,” he said.

Infantino, it seemed, had achieved everything he wanted: accolades, endorsements and a World Cup task force, proposed by Infantino himself, that gave Fifa a formal place among Trump’s inner circle.

But soon it was clear that such closeness had drawbacks.

“Private political interests”

When the world’s top football officials gathered in Paraguay for their annual meeting in May 2025, Infantino was on the other side of the globe, tagging along on Trump’s state visit to Persian Gulf countries.

The trip had little to do with the sport, and when he finally arrived at the Fifa meeting, he was several hours late. European football officials walked out, protesting his prioritisation of “private political interests”.

Infantino was undeterred.

One of his signature innovations was a 32-team tournament for the world’s best professional teams: the Club World Cup. But when he plugged the event from the Oval Office, he suddenly credited Trump as a co-creator.

Then, on the eve of the tournament, US Customs and Border Protection announced that agents would be “suited and booted ready to provide security for the first round of games”.

Tournament officials panicked, terrified that immigration agents would arrest fans, said three people who participated in planning discussions. Such a spectacle could deter attendance at the 2026 World Cup and potentially lead to a global backlash against Fifa.

By then, Infantino was living in Miami, in the president’s orbit. His advisers strategised about asking Trump for a moratorium on immigration actions, both during the club matches and the World Cup.

While no one close to either man has indicated what, exactly, they discussed privately, Fifa officials said that Infantino pressed the immigration matter.

Whether for that reason or not, the government’s social media post was removed and Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids never materialised.

Football officials said they believed there was a similar understanding for the World Cup. But, as is often the case with Trump, nobody can say for sure.

Oval Office visits are now routine for Infantino. “Always happy to be here, at home, if I can say that,” he said last year.

“You are home,” Trump replied.

Infantino has sought to capitalise on access to Trump allies.

Under his watch, Fifa discussed with former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin an investment in a streaming service, a senior Fifa official said.

More recently, the organisation has explored hotel licensing deals with a prominent South Florida developer who is poised to develop the waterfront opposite Mar-a-Lago.

Infantino also lobbied for Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which the president has craved. When the award went to Venezuelan politician Maria Corina Machado, Infantino had an idea.

Three weeks after the Nobel announcement, senior Fifa officials were told that Infantino wanted to announce a peace prize of his own. How long, they asked, did they have to work out the details: the criteria, for example, or the make-up of the nomination committee?

Those questions went unanswered.

Some of the most senior officials were told straightaway whom the first honoree would be, said a person with direct knowledge of the plans, who learned about the prize and its recipient on the same day.

The Fifa Peace Prize was announced Nov 5, 2025, with the award to be bestowed a month later.

Infantino held the event at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. Trump attended and, to nobody’s surprise, was the first recipient of the prize.

Trump called it “truly one of the great honours of my life”.

The award angered many football officials, who said that it had embarrassed Fifa and cast the organisation as partisan.

Infantino, though, has worn his friendship with the president on his sleeve. And his head.

At one public meeting, world leaders and delegates were given red “USA” baseball caps. Infantino happily donned his, emblazoned with the numbers 45-47, signifying the Trump presidencies.

Early this year, when Infantino announced at a football meeting in Vancouver that he would run for a third term, he argued that the organisation had repaired its reputation and played a slideshow that included Trump.

“We have definitely come a long way these last 10 years,” he told football officials. Fifa, he said, was now “sitting at the top tables, in every aspect”. NYTIMES