Ten Years of Infantino: How One Man Turned Fifa Into a $13bn Machine Nobody Can Stop

Ten years. That's how long Gianni Infantino has been running world football, and the story is far stranger than most fans realise.

When he was elected in February 2016, Fifa was in freefall. Sponsors had bolted, executives were being indicted by the US Department of Justice, and the organisation was staring at a reported $550m financial hole. Infantino walked in promising to restore trust, give money back to football, and keep his ego out of it.

A decade on, the finances are transformed. The controversy, though, has multiplied at roughly the same rate.

From Background Figure to the Most Recognised Face in Football

Not many people knew who Infantino was before 2016. To most fans, he was the man in the suit who pulled balls out of pots at Champions League draws. That was basically it.

His election was closer than people remember. He only pulled clear in the final round after votes were redistributed from eliminated candidates, finishing 115 to 88 against Sheikh Salman of the Asian confederation. Uefa backed him as their preferred candidate after Michel Platini got dragged into the Blatter-era scandal.

From that quiet start, Infantino has become one of the most visible people in global sport. Whether that visibility has been entirely earned is a different question.

His early years were relatively low-key. He got the World Cup expanded to 48 teams, pushed development funding to smaller nations, and started rebuilding Fifa's commercial operation. The finances recovered fast.

The Qatar Turning Point and the Speech Nobody Forgot

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was the moment Infantino stopped being a background figure and became a genuine lightning rod.

Criticism of the tournament, particularly around workers' rights and the decision to award it to Qatar in the first place, was loud and sustained. Infantino's response was to go on the offensive in a way that shocked almost everyone watching.

His pre-tournament speech, where he declared he 'felt Qatari, felt Arabic, felt African, felt gay, felt disabled, felt like a migrant worker' became one of the most talked-about moments in football administration history. It landed badly in most of Europe and bewildered many observers globally.

There were also reports, never denied by Fifa, that television directors were advised to show Infantino on screen at least once per game. Whether that's true or not, it captures something real about how his presidency had evolved. The quiet reformer had become a showman.

The Club World Cup, Trump, and the $13bn Question

After Qatar, the controversies came faster. The expanded Club World Cup in the United States in the summer of 2025 was meant to be a showcase. Instead, it was characterised by half-empty stadiums and widespread player welfare complaints. Infantino stood in Trump Tower and called it 'already the most successful club competition in the world'.

His relationship with Donald Trump has become one of the defining features of his later presidency. He travelled with Trump on a diplomatic tour of the Middle East, arriving two hours late to his own Fifa Congress as a result. Uefa staged a walkout. The tension between Infantino and European football has rarely been more visible.

Then came the 2026 World Cup itself, hosted across the USA, Mexico and Canada. Before a ball was kicked, there were visa refusals for supporters and officials, a Somali referee denied entry at Miami airport, and Iran's base camp moved to Mexico for political reasons. Trump personally intervened to get Folarin Balogun's red card overturned, a moment without precedent in the tournament's history.

Football has never seen anything quite like it.

Ticket prices for the final in New Jersey started at over £3,000. Infantino called demand 'absolutely crazy' and defended every penny.

Now Infantino wants to sell stakes in Fifa's competitions, including the World Cup itself, to private investors. Uefa nations have threatened to boycott all future Fifa events if it passes. Infantino responded by offering all 211 member associations $40m each to back the plan.

That is not subtle. But it might just work.

Why Nobody Can Actually Stop Him

Here's the reality of the football governance landscape in 2026. Infantino has been re-elected unopposed twice. He's heading for a third election in 2027 and there is no credible challenger. He's allowed to stand again despite Fifa's own three-term limit, and nearly half of all votes are held by Asia and Africa, two regions that have received dramatically more funding and development support under his watch.

For all the noise from Europe, the numbers don't lie. Fifa is heading for $13bn in revenue across the current three-year cycle. That money has filtered down to smaller nations in ways that genuinely matter. Development funding, infrastructure, travel costs for minnow nations. These things count.

In Europe and among players' unions, the view of Infantino ranges from sceptical to outright hostile. But football isn't just Europe.

The man who turned up in 2016 promising to restore Fifa and put money back into the game has done exactly that, just on his own terms, with his face on the trophy and a US president in his corner.

Whether the next decade looks more like the first half of his tenure or the second is the real question. And right now, nobody is positioned to influence that answer except Infantino himself.