What's documented

Gianni Infantino has run FIFA since 2016, and by the numbers he was hired to move, he has delivered. FIFA's revenue has climbed every four-year cycle since he took over — $5.72 billion in Sepp Blatter's last cycle, $6.42 billion, $7.57 billion for the Qatar World Cup, and now, per Infantino's own July 2026 statement, over $15 billion for the current cycle. That's roughly 160% growth. FIFA Forward, the program that funnels money to all 211 national federations, has paid out $5.1 billion total across his tenure — real money reaching football programs in countries that had never seen anything like it.

The 48-team World Cup, which just finished its first edition across the US, Mexico, and Canada, was a unanimous FIFA Council decision in 2017. The expanded Club World Cup carried a $1 billion prize pool this year, with FIFA saying $250 million of it went to solidarity payments for clubs that didn't even play in the tournament. Infantino's public case for all of it has been consistent: "in 80% of the world, if we don't invest, if we don't believe... nobody will."

That is the honest pro-case, and it is not nothing.

The pattern

Set against the revenue chart is a second column, and it has been filling in fast.

FIFA overruled its own committee on Qatar. After the 2022 World Cup, FIFA's own human rights subcommittee recommended using a legacy fund to compensate migrant workers for wages, injuries, and deaths tied to World Cup construction. Amnesty International and a coalition of unions had asked for $440 million — matching the tournament's total prize money. FIFA didn't do it. It launched a $50 million "Legacy Fund" instead, with no worker-compensation component at all. Human Rights Watch called FIFA's earlier promises "blatant falsehoods."

The Saudi 2034 human rights assessment was outsourced to a Riyadh-based firm. FIFA's own bid evaluation rated Saudi Arabia "medium risk" for human rights while giving it the highest technical score of any World Cup bid in FIFA's history. The independent risk assessment behind that rating was produced by AS&H Clifford Chance, a Riyadh affiliate of the law firm — and, per Amnesty and a coalition of 22 rights organizations, it consulted no independent experts, no affected workers, and no human rights groups. Amnesty called the whole process an "astonishing whitewash."

Term limits got reinterpreted in his favor. FIFA's 2016 reforms — passed specifically to prevent another Blatter — capped the presidency at three four-year terms, 12 years total. Infantino's first partial term (2016–2019, completing Blatter's unexpired term) was later ruled by FIFA's own governance committee not to count toward that cap. Critics call it a loophole; FIFA calls it a legitimate reading of the rule. Either way, Infantino is now standing for an unopposed fourth term running through 2031, with no declared rival.

And then there's Trump. The relationship built in stages. In March 2025, Trump created a White House Task Force on the World Cup with Infantino at his side. That December, Infantino awarded Trump FIFA's inaugural Peace Prize. Then, during the tournament itself in July 2026, Trump personally called Infantino asking him to review a red-card suspension against USMNT striker Folarin Balogun — and FIFA's disciplinary body reduced the ban. UEFA's own statement called it a decision that had "crossed a red line," calling it "unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable." A human rights group, FairSquare, filed a complaint with the International Olympic Committee alleging Infantino had breached rules on political neutrality; the IOC has since declined to act on it. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin skipped the World Cup final entirely, after attending the tournament's opening match — widely read as a signal of disapproval, though he never said so on the record.

The deal that just broke it open

Here is where the Trump thread and the commercialization thread turn out to be the same thread.

In 2025, Infantino held secret talks with Joshua Kushner — the venture capitalist brother of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner — about maximizing FIFA's commercial revenue. Those talks became a plan: a new $20 billion subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise, bundling the World Cup's broadcast rights, sponsorships, ticketing, and licensing into one entity, with up to 20% of it sold to outside investors to raise as much as $4.2 billion. Joshua Kushner's investment vehicle, Thrive Eternal, was lined up as the "cornerstone investor." JPMorgan was brought in early this year to package the media rights. FIFA gave its 211 member federations a September 19 deadline to approve it, and attached money to the answer: $20 million to each federation on approval, followed by payments of $20 million, $22 million and $24 million between 2027 and 2038 — roughly $86 million in all. Federations are in line for about $8 million in ordinary forward funding over 2027–2030 regardless. The gap between those two numbers is what a "yes" vote is worth.

(Jared Kushner has a separate, already-documented role in the World Cup story — as a White House contact who helped secure MetLife Stadium as the final's venue. That is a different thing from his brother's investment stake, and the two shouldn't be conflated.)

Today, all 55 UEFA member federations voted unanimously to boycott every FIFA competition, including the World Cup, unless the plan is scrapped entirely. UEFA's statement: "The World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product... No part of it should ever be surrendered to private investors. The World Cup is not for sale." The AFC's president separately called FIFA's lack of consultation "totally unacceptable." Infantino's response has been to downplay it: "a proposal, not an obligation."

An entire confederation voting to boycott the World Cup itself has no precedent in FIFA's history. It is also, so far, one confederation: as of this writing CONCACAF has been publicly critical without joining the boycott, CAF has not taken a position, and CONMEBOL has stayed silent. Whether UEFA stands alone or others follow is the thing to watch next — though UEFA may not need company. The commercial logic cuts against Infantino here: outside investors are unlikely to buy into a World Cup that Europe's teams have voted not to play in, which is why the boycott is being read as potentially fatal to the plan rather than merely symbolic.

Is it time for him to go?

Here's the honest answer, and it's more precise than either "he's corrupt" or "the critics are overblown."

No FIFA ethics finding currently stands against Infantino. A 2017 investigation into his use of private jets and personal gifts from World Cup hosts was closed without sanction. A Swiss criminal probe into undisclosed meetings with the country's top prosecutor was dropped in 2023 for lack of evidence. The complaints filed against him this year — to FIFA's own ethics committee and to the IOC — remain unresolved, and the IOC has already declined to act on its piece of it. No major FIFA sponsor has called for his resignation.

Only one person with real institutional standing in football has explicitly called for him to step down: Javier Tebas, president of Spain's LaLiga — not a FIFA official, but the head of the sport's most powerful domestic league. Tebas, on July 21: "I think he's had his day." (Individual figures have said similar — a retired English refereeing chief said in late July that Infantino "needs to go" — but that's a credentialed voice, not an institutional position, and the two shouldn't be counted the same.) FIFPRO, the global players' union, has been scathing — its president titled one statement "The Man Who Thinks He's God" and compared the Club World Cup to the "bread and circuses" of Nero's Rome — but its statements target the governance model, not a personnel change, and it has stopped short of a resignation call.

So there is no single scandal. What there is instead is a five-front pattern, each thread independently documented: his own committee overruled on worker compensation, a whitewashed risk assessment for the next World Cup host, a term-limit rule reinterpreted in his own favor, an increasingly personal relationship with a sitting US president that has already altered a competitive outcome, and a secretly-negotiated deal to sell a piece of the World Cup itself to investors connected to that president's family — a deal that just produced the first confederation-wide boycott threat in the organization's history.

None of that is a finding of wrongdoing, and this piece does not claim otherwise. What critics across the sport — a confederation, a players' union, a league president, three human rights organizations — are describing, in their own different ways, is an institution that has stopped effectively checking the man who runs it. Whether that's disqualifying is a judgment call, and reasonable people will land in different places. But it's the right question to be asking in public right now, not a decade from now.

What this piece is not saying

This isn't a claim that FIFA caused the Qatar or Saudi human rights abuses directly — those are host-government responsibilities under host-country law. What FIFA is responsible for is its own due diligence process, its own committee's recommendations, and its own decision to award and defend those hosting rights anyway. That distinction matters and this piece has tried to hold it throughout.

It's also not a claim that Ceferin's absence from the World Cup final was a confirmed protest — that's a widely-held interpretation, not something he said himself. And it's not a claim that Jared Kushner is personally involved in the FIFA stake sale — the documented investor relationship runs through his brother Joshua's firm.

What can I do

The honest answer first: an ordinary fan has no direct lever into the vote that actually matters. FIFA's president is chosen by 211 national federations, one vote each, and how each federation casts that vote is almost entirely insulated from individual fans. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

What's real, underneath that:

Sign Amnesty International's current 2026 World Cup petition. Unlike stale Qatar-era campaigns, this one is live and tied to the tournament that just happened, asking FIFA and host governments to respect peaceful protest and stop using the tournament as cover for mass detention or discrimination.

Join a real fan organization — they're free, and they've actually won things. Football Supporters Europe helped drive a 2025 Council of Europe recommendation strengthening travelling fans' rights. The Football Supporters' Association (England/Wales) holds two seats on the FA's governing council. In North America, the Independent Supporters Council represents 140+ fan groups pushing FIFA on hosting commitments.

If you're a US Soccer member, there's an actual vote — the Fan Council sits as a voting bloc on decisions including Federation leadership. Eligibility starts at the Premium Insider membership tier, currently $45/year, which is worth knowing before you go looking for it.

What doesn't belong on this list, and shouldn't be mistaken for action: FIFPRO has no fan-facing membership or campaign — it's a players' union, not something you join. The various "remove Infantino" petitions circulating online have, at most, a few hundred signatures and no backing from any credible organization. And reading a watchdog's report card — Transparency International's FIFA tracker hasn't been updated since 2015 — is research, not leverage. Don't confuse it for the real thing.

The Receipts