Infantino: The man who tried to sell football

Published 3 August 2026 · sports

How FIFA’s most powerful president tried to turn football’s greatest prize into a $20-billion investment vehicle — and finally discovered the limits of his power

How FIFA’s most powerful president tried to turn football’s greatest prize into a $20-billion investment vehicle — and finally discovered the limits of his power. Infantino says ‘nobody’ is trying to sell the World Cup. (AI Cartoon by Nirmalya Dutta.) The Trojan Horse polytropos bandobast Infantino’s Trojan horse of privatisation fell flat. (AI cartoon by Nirmalya Dutta) The fallout The end of the road? Join conversation View All Comments → Share your thoughts in the comments Post Comment Be respectful · TOI community guidelines Hello and welcome to a new version of OFFSIDE, a weekly newsletter looking at everything happening in the Beautiful Game.One pivotal moment in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey shows just how far the film departs from Homer’s epic. In the original, Odysseus tells the Cyclops Polyphemus that his name is “Outis”, meaning “Nobody” or “No One”, before he and his men blind him. When the other Cyclopes come to check on Polyphemus, they are told that “Nobody” is attacking him, leaving them with little reason to intervene.Odysseus escapes the cave, yet cannot resist taunting Polyphemus and revealing his true identity. That gives the Cyclops everything he needs to escalate the complaint to his father, Poseidon, god of the sea, who turns the journey home for Odysseus and Co into the ancient Ryanair experience. That version doesn’t exist in Nolan’s movie, which transforms Odysseus from Homer’s polytropos, the “man of many turns” whose cunning is matched by the hubris that angers the gods, into a traumatised veteran who simply wants to return home to his wife.Speaking of hubris that angers the gods, Gianni Infantino, a man who has changed football in every feasible way to improve FIFA’s relationship with Mammon, was at it again after his plan to “sell the World Cup” was leaked.Once caught out, he channelled his inner Odysseus and insisted that “nobody” was selling football.The comparison ends there.Odysseus’ Trojan Horse made it through the gates of Troy. Infantino’s never got past the turnstile, perhaps because this was hardly his first rodeo and, for once, the footballing world decided, to borrow a line from Sir Alex Ferguson, to check under the pasta to see what was under the sauce.So here’s the Homeric story of the modern-day Odysseus, who thought he could get away with it all till the footballing world finally caught on.Much as it describes Homer’s protagonist, the word– a man of many turns – could very well be used to describe the Swiss man from a nondescript village who had become the most powerful man in football’s history, one whom Donald Trump referred to as the “King of Soccer”.

Perhaps he felt even the Fates were intervening on his behalf when the winds blew Donald Trump back into the White House to ensure that the FIFA World Cup in America would be everything his heart desired.One particular anecdote illustrates how Infantino came to view himself amid the pantheon of global soccer stars and movers and shakers in international politics.In India, there’s a term calledthat translates to “arrangement”, “management” or “organisation”. It refers to the deployment of police, security protocols and logistical arrangements when a VIP is in town and is seen by many as a social marker of power. According to a report by Martyn Ziegler in The Sunday Times, FIFA requested a similarfor him in Canada, seeking the same transport privileges reserved for the US president. The request was declined by Canadian police.Therequest was just the tip of the iceberg. Infantino even has a personal photographer as his “Instagram husband”, someone whose job is to click every moment of his life. He engraved his name twice on the Club World Cup trophy and cast himself as a global peacemaker who brought two “warring nations” to the World Cup.All that is evident in the handprint he has left on the global game.During his tenure, Infantino has managed to expand the World Cup from 32 teams to 48 teams, revamped the Club World Cup into a mini-World Cup with 32 teams, broken football’s long-standing traditions to force through hydration breaks and a half-time show, introduced dynamic pricing for FIFA matches and got players’ bans rescinded, including Ronaldo’s and Folarin Balogun’s. He gave Trump a FIFA Peace Prize when the Nobel Committee wouldn’t give him one and engineered the 2030 tournament by ensuring that it would be played across Europe, Africa and South America to ensure that Saudi Arabia got it in 2034.Earlier, he also tried to push through a secretive $25-billion, 12-year proposal involving SoftBank that envisaged an expanded Club World Cup and a global Nations League culminating in a “Final 8” tournament. That fell through, and he even tried to hold the World Cup every two years instead of four.While neither went forward, both moves emboldened Infantino to think that perhaps his FFE Trojan Horse would go through unchecked.The FFE plan, which sounds rather innocuous, like corporate CSR efforts, was very simple: create a different entity called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), a subsidiary dealing with FIFA’s main mission: improving its relationship with the only god that matters, Mammon.The new company would take care of everything financial: broadcasting rights, sponsorship, ticketing and operational delivery.