"If Gianni Infantino doesn't get re-elected unanimously, then whoever voted against him needs to get their head examined." That's Andrew Giuliani, former executive director of the White House Task Force for the 2026 World Cup, and he's not mincing words.
Giuliani worked alongside Infantino throughout the summer's tournament and has come out swinging as the FIFA president faces calls to resign from UEFA, Concacaf, and the Asian Football Confederation. The trigger: Infantino's abrupt reversal on the FIFA Forward Enterprise plan, which would have opened World Cup revenue streams to private investment. He ditched it. The confederations, apparently, didn't appreciate the U-turn.
Politics, jealousy, and a Trump comparison
Giuliani isn't buying the outrage. He calls it jealousy dressed up as governance.
"People are jealous when people are very high achievers," he told The Athletic. "What Gianni Infantino has done for FIFA is he's taken them to a whole new level that probably they didn't think was possible."
He drew a direct line between criticism of Infantino and the political targeting of Donald Trump — a comparison that will either resonate or infuriate depending on your corner of the room. Either way, it signals how far into the political sphere FIFA's internal crisis has now drifted.
Giuliani also floated the idea that FIFA might need a "Save FIFA Act" — a riff on Trump's SAVE America Act. Whether that's a serious suggestion or a quip, it landed at roughly the same time Trump posted on Truth Social calling Infantino's potential removal a "terrible mistake" and describing him as "fantastic." The two clearly talked. The coordinated messaging isn't subtle.
The case for Infantino — and what comes next
Giuliani's argument isn't purely political theatre. There's a factual core to it. The 2026 World Cup generated over four times the revenue of the previous edition. No major incidents. Record numbers. By the metrics that matter to FIFA's commercial partners, it was a success — and Infantino was the man who built the blueprint for it.
Russia and Qatar were inherited. 2026 was his. That distinction matters.
Giuliani says he's spoken to Infantino since the fallout and that the president has "a good plan over the next few months into March of next year to get re-elected for a third and final term." Whether that plan survives three major confederations publicly demanding his head is a different question entirely.
On the FFE misstep itself, Giuliani offered something close to a defence without quite being one: "Just because you're always trying to improve doesn't mean that you're not going to take a misstep here or there." Confederation leaders who feel blindsided by a privatisation proposal they never agreed to may find that framing a little convenient.
What's clear is that the battle for Infantino's future won't be settled on football grounds — it'll be settled in the kind of backroom diplomacy where Trump-aligned voices and confederation presidents trade leverage. The FFE plan is dead. Whether Infantino follows it there is the only question left that matters.
