Gianni Infantino Faces Legal Turmoil Over World Cup Sale

“Tom, can you get me off the hook? For old times’ sake?”

“Sorry. Can’t do it.”

The old Godfather lines have never felt more apt. For years it was easy to believe Gianni Infantino would ride out anything, that the FIFA president’s power was too deep-rooted, his alliances too carefully stitched together for any real jeopardy to reach him.

Not this week. This week, the walls feel closer.

Infantino has been under siege for almost six weeks, ever since details emerged of his covert plan to flog off football’s biggest shared asset – the World Cup – on the cheap, with the added sting of a vast personal payday attached. The man hired to safeguard the global game stands accused of trying to cash it in.

There has been a lot of wishful thinking since: talk of his reputation turning toxic, of support ebbing away, of a rival candidate emerging before next March’s presidential election. Yet power at FIFA is not easily dislodged. It is layered, entrenched, stitched into federations and favours. Time passes, outrage fades, the corridors close up again.

Infantino has already sold the world once, then did it again – this time to Donald Trump, in exchange for access, flattery and the trinkets of proximity to political power. A peace prize here, a photo-op there, a seat at the kids’ table of geopolitics.

Give it a month, the thinking went, and he’d be back at a lectern somewhere, arms carving the air, talking about unity, development, equality, solidarity, financial empowerment. The familiar patter. The painted-on eyes, oddly flat, scanning the room. You don’t buy me out. I buy you out.

Yet something has shifted. Not because of the predictable swarms of critics – the angry columns, the stern open letters, even the latest rebuke from former Manchester United defender Mikaël Silvestre. Those are gnats around the ankles.

The danger now comes from hard power.

Two developments in particular, both triggered by UEFA’s lawsuit in the United States, have changed the mood. Few seriously expect UEFA to march into court and emerge with a clean, crushing victory. This feels more like a clever chess play – a zugzwang, where the king must move but every square looks poisoned.

The first jolt came from Florida, where Josh Kushner was named as a party to discovery. Kushner was the money man behind the “FIFA Forward” World Cup rights deal – the financier whose firm, Thrive Capital, helped engineer the proposed sale of the tournament’s commercial future.

By sheer coincidence, of course, he is also the brother of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

Kushner’s response this week was calm on the surface, explosive underneath. He said he “would not have gotten involved” had he known the full picture. He called the whole thing “regrettable”. On paper, it read as measured. Between the lines, it sounded like someone quietly cutting the cord.

He has not stopped there. Kushner has hired Alex Spiro, a high-end litigator known for defending Elon Musk in the “pedo guy” defamation case and Alec Baldwin after the fatal Rust shooting. This is not the move of a man planning to ride shotgun for FIFA. It is the move of someone preparing to protect himself at all costs.

FIFA’s own reaction has been even more revealing. In its counterfiling this week, the organisation dismissed the entire affair as a “smear campaign”. Then it said the part it would rather have left unsaid: discovery is coming, and FIFA is desperate to stop it.

That is the heart of this story. No one in Infantino’s camp wants discovery – the legal process that forces open the filing cabinets and phones, from internal memos to offhand emails sent from a golf course after lunch. Once that door opens, you cannot control what blows out.

Infantino understands this. So does anyone who has ever orbited Trump-world. The last thing you want is to become a problem for people who live by the ledger of favours and enemies.

Even Trump’s support for Infantino, loudly trumpeted in August on Truth Social, felt oddly qualified. The former president warned that removing Infantino “for any reason” would be terrible. It sounded like backing. It also sounded like a man leaving himself room to walk away.

Since then? Silence.

The bromance of the Gianni-Trump era already feels like a period piece: the two of them grinning for cameras, like models in a Brooks Brothers knitwear catalogue, the bald FIFA president playing impresario while Trump loomed beside him, a human-sized serving of something deep-fried and honey-glazed in an overlarge suit, handing out compliments about “a very tall, very handsome man”.

Relationships like that are fragile. Trump is generous with access and attention, but loyalty is strictly conditional. His politics is not built on belief; it is built on a scoreboard. Winners and losers. Assets and liabilities.

Once you drift into the second category, the pattern is familiar. The Guardian has already catalogued the fate of former allies who crossed him or simply ceased to be useful: legal charges, investigations, vanished clearances, public humiliation.

Michael Cohen, who once vowed to “take a bullet” for Trump, ended up imprisoned, disbarred, exiled from the inner circle. Jeff Sessions, who hailed Trumpism as “a movement”, was later derided by Trump as weak, confused, dumb, an idiot, a disgrace, even “mentally retarded”. The message is blunt. While you are useful, you are protected. When you are not, you are on your own.

This is the shadow now creeping across Infantino’s world.

The looming decision on discovery could define everything. UEFA accuses FIFA and its president of “criminal mismanagement” over the World Cup sale, alleging that the tournament’s rights were undervalued and effectively handed over at a discount. Separate from that, but sitting uncomfortably close, is the allegation that Infantino stood to gain a vast personal salary from the structure of the deal.

UEFA’s aim is simple: open the box and see what is inside.

To do that, it wants discovery not only from FIFA but from Thrive Capital and from Greg Maffei, the Trump donor and deal adviser who was involved in the talks. Between them, those parties will have emails, drafts, presentations – a full paper trail from the period when Infantino enjoyed intoxicating access to the White House and the Trump orbit.

The image that comes to mind is the Club World Cup trophy: oddly sharp, full of strange angles and hidden corners, like it might conceal a secret drawer you are not sure you really want to open. You can look. But is it safe to know?

“Please, Mike, don’t do this, don’t do this to me.”

“Today I settle all family business. So don’t tell me you’re innocent.”

Infantino is not waiting around. He has taken to the road, working the FIFA map, visiting federations, shaking hands, shoring up support. Saudi Arabia has offered backing, but even that came with a telling qualifier – support “at this time…”.

There is a FIFA Congress in November. On paper, votes will decide his fate. In reality, the calculation may be shifting somewhere else entirely. Ask Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini how it ends when the legal weather suddenly turns. One unexplained payment, one investigation that seemed distant, and the floor gave way beneath them.

For now, the legal process simmers. Cases like this often stall or fade. UEFA does not need a spectacular courtroom victory. It just needs to keep the coals hot, to make clear that if discovery is granted, nothing stays hidden without a fight.

Keep pushing, keep prising at the seams, and you never quite know what – or who – might fall out.