Gianni Infantino created an award that had never existed, handed it to the sitting U.S. president at the Kennedy Center, and looped a medal around his neck. The FIFA Peace Prize. First recipient: Donald Trump. The FIFA Council didn't see it coming. They still aren't entirely sure what to make of it.
But it worked. And in the high-stakes, bureaucratically nightmarish project of running the largest World Cup in history across three countries, "working" is all that matters.
The access problem — and how Infantino solved it
Organizing a 48-team World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada is unlike anything the sport has attempted in 96 years. Four of those 48 nations — Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, and Senegal — entered under full or partial U.S. travel bans. A Somali referee was denied entry this week without explanation. The logistical exposure is enormous, and it runs directly through Washington.
Infantino understood early that the only real insurance policy was a direct line to Trump. Over the past year, he appeared at the president's side at least a dozen times — the Oval Office, a Gaza peace summit in Egypt, the World Cup draw. "Anytime he wants to see him or talk to him, he can see him," a senior administration official said.
That kind of access doesn't come from diplomacy. It comes from knowing your audience. A senior White House official admitted there were knowing laughs behind the scenes about the Peace Prize stunt, given Trump's well-documented fixation on winning the Nobel. "It was honestly a smart idea on their part," the official said.
1,248 players, three countries, one relationship
Despite the travel ban complications, all 1,248 players have received visas. That's not a minor administrative footnote — that's the outcome Infantino spent a year engineering through personal proximity to power. FIFA's official line is that it has no role in visa decisions. The reality is messier and more political.
Andrew Giuliani, executive director of the White House's World Cup task force, described Infantino and Trump as sharing "a genuine friendship built on a common vision." That's press-release language, but the underlying dynamic is real: Infantino needed Trump cooperative, and he got there by making Trump feel celebrated by the global football community.
A decade ago, Infantino was a relatively obscure Swiss lawyer operating inside UEFA's bureaucracy. Now he's staging an $11 billion tournament with a direct hotline to the White House. Whatever you think of the methods, the transformation is extraordinary — and the tournament opening Thursday in Mexico City is the proof of concept.
The question of whether the World Cup itself delivers on the scale of its ambition is separate. The question of whether Infantino got it to the starting line? That answer is already in.
