There\u2019s a story Victor Montagliani likes to tell about being insulted in his first big moment as a global soccer executive. <\/p>\n
This was in March, 2017, at the Zurich headquarters of FIFA, the global governing body of soccer. Two years earlier, the leadership of CONCACAF, the regional Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, had been implicated in a corruption scandal that was tearing its way through the sport. Hoping to turn the page, CONCACAF\u2019s membership decided in 2016 to install a new president who seemed beyond reproach, which is to say a Canadian, which is to say Montagliani.<\/p>\n
The job came with a vice-presidency of FIFA, suddenly vaulting Montagliani into one of the most powerful positions in global sport. On that March day, he found himself in the organization\u2019s executive boardroom, a black, subterranean cavern notorious for its Dr. Strangelove aesthetic. He was chairing the inaugural meeting of the Football Stakeholders Committee, one of FIFA\u2019s post-scandal initiatives. Representatives of some of the world\u2019s richest clubs and leagues lined the rectangular table, along with FIFPRO, the worldwide players\u2019 union.<\/p>\n
Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Mr. Montagliani speaks during the 76th FIFA Congress in his hometown of Vancouver in April, 2026.ETHAN CAIRNS\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n \u201cIt was all this global football, very European-based. And we\u2019re talking about serious issues of football,\u201d Montagliani recalled during a recent video interview from his home office in West Vancouver.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember after the meeting, a couple of the guys who ran big leagues \u2013 we\u2019re talking EPL, Bundesliga \u2013 came up to me, and one guy says: \u2018Wow.\u2019 I go: \u2018What?\u2019 He goes, \u2018I never thought a Canadian had this kind of knowledge about football.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Montagliani paused, eyes growing wide at the affront. \u201cAnd I went, \u2018Wow.\u2019\u201d Another pause. \u201c\u2018I guess it\u2019s a compliment?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n The executive began backpedalling, he said, clarifying that he didn\u2019t mean any disrespect. Montagliani brushed it off. \u201cI said, \u2018You didn\u2019t offend me. I totally get it. But you know, there\u2019s more than one of us. There\u2019s a lot of us. We just haven\u2019t had the opportunity.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Montagliani has a lot of these stories: of being underestimated, snubbed, and of rising above the slight, of using the tales to inspire others to join him in battle against those who would count them out.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n From right, Mr. Montagliani, Diana Fox Carney, Prime Minister Mark Carney, and FIFA President Gianni Infantino watch the World CUp match between Canada and Qatar in Vancouver on June 18.ETHAN CAIRNS\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n As Canada hosts a World Cup<\/a> for the first time, Montagliani has been on something of a victory tour, smiling for the press and hosting Prime Minister Mark Carney at a pair of games in Vancouver. Fifteen years ago, he and a couple of other dreamers began to sketch out an improbable plan to bring the tournament to these shores. Few took them seriously at the time, but in June, 2018, FIFA said yes to a bid that would put 13 matches in each of Canada and Mexico and 78 in the United States.<\/p>\n It was not a smooth road to kickoff. All international sporting competitions are fraught, but FIFA and the World Cup have carved out their own impressive brand of infamy. Spiralling costs and corruption around the 2014 edition in Brazil gave way to allegations of bid-rigging and widespread worker abuse for Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022. This year\u2019s tournament has been beset by an array of problems, from exorbitant ticket prices to attacks by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration on foreign fans and America\u2019s co-hosts, undermining the spirit of an event that had been conceived as a celebration of continental unity.<\/p>\n Here at home, Montagliani\u2019s World Cup dream carried a heavy cost, burdening Canada Soccer with a business deal that almost brought down the federation. That prompted nasty spats with its women\u2019s and men\u2019s senior teams; the toppling of its leadership; fears of bankruptcy; a $40-million lawsuit; and ugly parliamentary hearings in which MPs personally chastised him. <\/p>\n But Montagliani has been battling his whole life. He grew up in the rough-and-tumble 1970s in East Vancouver. \u201cYou need to stand on your own two feet and think on your own two feet pretty quickly,\u201d he explained. He fell in with a crew of fellow Italian-Canadian kids obsessed with football \u2013 not the sport indigenous to North America but the one that, back then, was considered an immigrant\u2019s game. Soccer might show up occasionally on TV, but it was largely ignored by the mainstream. In Canada, pro teams launched and folded regularly. Internationally, the Canadian men\u2019s team didn\u2019t even rate as an afterthought. <\/p>\n You could understand how all that might give Montagliani a chip on the shoulder, a simmering frustration that sometimes boils over into blunt language or action, as it did even on this video call. He is a man of big emotions: At Vancouver City Hall last fall, he choked up while giving an acceptance speech in front of family and friends after Mayor Ken Sim proclaimed Sept. 12, his 60th birthday, Victor Montagliani Day. He cries a lot \u2013 \u201cmy mom says sometimes too much,\u201d he chuckled.<\/p>\n Sometimes that passion can rub people the wrong way. Carl Valentine, a longtime friend who played for the men\u2019s national team in the 1986 World Cup, said Montagliani\u2019s no-nonsense leadership style means \u201cyou\u2019re either going to like him a lot or dislike him a lot, because what you see is what you get.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Mr. Montagliani juggles a ball at Garden Park, where he used to play pickup soccer as a kid growing up in East Vancouver.Jennifer Gauthier\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Montagliani returned to where it all began for him, a one-square-block patch of grass in East Van called Garden Park. His mother still lives a couple of streets away in the house where he and his younger brother, Mario, grew up. (Their father passed away in 2024. He was such an ardent Inter Milan fan that he gave Mario the middle name Mazzola after one of the team\u2019s legends, Sandro Mazzola.) <\/p>\n Back in the seventies, Montagliani recalled, the park had a big wooden fence, and \u201cwe\u2019d just smash balls on it.\u201d There were, he said, \u201ca lot of pickup games on that pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n A bunch of the neighbourhood boys went on to play or coach for the men\u2019s national team. He namechecked Dale Mitchell, Bruce Miller, Dino and Carlo Alberti, Frank Ciaccia, Colin Miller. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a unique little spot.\u201d<\/p>\n On this June day, Montagliani had brought along a Trionda, the red-blue-and-green Adidas ball designed for this year\u2019s World Cup, to show off his skills for a Globe and Mail photographer. Though his stocky upper body may seem more fit for a rugby scrum, in his prime, Montagliani played a technical style that allowed him to assist many goals from centre midfield. He honed the fancy footwork by kicking a ball against his family\u2019s garage wall \u201ca thousand times\u201d a day, said Mario, who added that his brother has always been known more for his offence than his defence.<\/p>\n \u201cHe couldn\u2019t check his coat, but he can put the ball on your foot from 40 yards,\u201d he joked in a recent interview. <\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Mr. Montagliani balances a Trionda, the red-blue-and-green Adidas ball designed for this year\u2019s World Cup.Jennifer Gauthier\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n When he is back home for longer stretches of time, Victor still makes the occasional trek across Burrard Inlet from tony West Van to the weekly Friday morning futsal match his childhood friends still play at East Vancouver\u2019s Italian Cultural Centre.<\/p>\n Montagliani played semi-pro soccer with Columbus FC and then futsal (indoor soccer on a hard court, played five-a-side) internationally until a brutal ankle injury at age 28 ended any hope of a career on the field. After getting a BA in political science with a minor in French at Simon Fraser University, he moved into the insurance business. Then a friend of his father\u2019s said they needed someone like him to join the board of BC Soccer. He said he\u2019d try it out for a year, loved it and soon became president, recalled Mario.<\/p>\n He joined the board of Canada Soccer in 2006, and in 2012, won the presidency on a platform of governance reform and the need to improve the level of on-field performance through what Montagliani called a \u201cfootball first\u201d approach. He had a reputation as \u201cthe soccer guy.\u201d <\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter, right, and then-CSA President Victor Montagliani attend the opening press conference for the FIFA Women’s Under 20 World Cup in August, 2014.The Canadian Press<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Former CSA president Mr. Montagliani, left, introduces then-new head coach of the Men’s National Team Octavio Zambrano in March, 2017.The Canadian Press<\/p>\n The game is threaded through his life. When he and his wife, Tanya, emerged from the church after their wedding 34 years ago, they did so to the strains of You\u2019ll Never Walk Alone, Rodgers & Hammerstein\u2019s weepie from the Broadway musical Carousel that has been adopted as a rousing anthem by fans of Liverpool FC, Borussia Dortmund, Celtic FC and other clubs. <\/p>\n When the FIFA scandal hit in May, 2015, and almost a dozen executives linked to CONCACAF were indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for kickbacks and rigging World Cup bids, Montagliani was asked to be part of a seven-person caretaker committee to help right the organization. <\/p>\n For decades, the 41-nation governing body had been an unwieldy three-headed Hydra, with the 31-country Caribbean Football Union consistently outvoting the three North American and seven Central American associations. But with its reputation and finances in a shambles, the membership was ready for something radical. <\/p>\n In 2016, Montagliani ran for president on a platform of unifying the confederation under what he called \u201cOne CONCACAF.\u201d Bobby Lenarduzzi, an East Vancouver soccer legend, recalls his friend making sure he directly lobbied every one of the 40 other soccer associations that had a vote for the presidency. <\/p>\n He defeated rival candidate Larry Mussenden, the head of the Bermuda Football Association, by a 25-16 margin. <\/p>\n Unlike Montagliani\u2019s BC Soccer and Canada Soccer positions, the CONCACAF presidency is paid: IRS filings for the Miami-based non-profit show he received almost US$3-million in compensation in 2024.<\/p>\n Montagliani may seem an odd choice to lead a continental confederation. He is unpolished, inclined to blue language, physically imposing and given to awkward malapropisms. In part, that\u2019s a function of the fact that his family spoke only Italian in the home: Family lore holds that Victor returned from his first day of kindergarten in tears because he hadn\u2019t understood the English coming out of his teacher\u2019s mouth, according to Mario. <\/p>\n Montagliani said his upbringing and decades of soccer \u2013 as well as his fluency in languages (he also speaks Spanish and French) \u2013 helped him navigate CONCACAF. <\/p>\n \u201cThe teammates I played with came from literally all six [FIFA continental] confederations,\u201d he said. \u201cI had players I played with or against that were from the Caribbean and Latin America and everywhere, and I think that really helped me be culturally sensitive and appreciative \u2013 and not judge other cultures. To listen more than you talk.\u201d<\/p>\n Within a few years, he had revived CONCACAF\u2019s reputation and fortunes, hiring new staff and introducing a raft of new and expanded competitions, hundreds of new matches each year, with robust programming on the women\u2019s side. This brought in tens of millions of new dollars in media, sponsorship and ticketing revenue, making everyone happy. He would run for re-election twice, in 2019 and 2023, both times unopposed. <\/p>\n But back in Canada, the national federation he\u2019d left behind a few years earlier began to tear itself apart in a crisis that could be traced straight to Montagliani\u2019s time at the helm and his aspiration of landing a World Cup. <\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n From left, Sunil Gulati, former president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, Decio de Maria, former president of the Mexican Football Federation, and Mr. Montagliani, then president of the CSA, hold a news conference about the he CONCACAF bid for the 2026 World Cup, in April, 2017.The Associated Press<\/p>\n If Canada wanted to co-host in 2026, it needed to have a domestic professional men\u2019s league. As Canada Soccer president, Montagliani had helped design an arrangement under which a new private company, Canadian Soccer Business, would pay the federation a flat annual fee of $3-million to $4-million for its sponsorship and broadcast rights (not including international tournaments such as the World Cup). The owners of CSB would launch a new league \u2013 the Canadian Premier League that hit the pitch in 2019 \u2013 and a streaming service, OneSoccer, which would carry the games of both the new league and Canada Soccer\u2019s national teams. <\/p>\n But when money got tight for the program, critics began to blame the CSB deal, noting that profits were supporting the new league instead of the national teams. <\/p>\n Things got nasty. In the spring of 2022, the men boycotted a friendly match and released a public letter condemning the deal. The next winter, at a competition in the U.S., the women called for a strike until Canada Soccer forced them back to the pitch with the threat of a lawsuit. <\/p>\n The House of Commons standing committee on Canadian heritage convened hearings in March, 2023, in which MPs slammed Montagliani for advising Canada Soccer\u2019s board of directors to \u201cstrip\u201d the organization of its media and sponsorship assets and turn them over to the privately held CSB. (He left Canada Soccer in May, 2017, as the deal was being negotiated; it wasn\u2019t signed until early 2019, by his successor, Steve Reed.) <\/p>\n As the controversy intensified, Nick Bontis, Canada Soccer\u2019s president, resigned. (Days earlier, he had been elected as a paid vice-president of the CONCACAF Council, the confederation\u2019s main decision-making body.) Chief executive Earl Cochrane quit a few months after that. In early 2024, the union representing players on the women\u2019s team sued the Canada Soccer board members who had made the CSB deal, for $40-million. The suit is still before the courts. <\/p>\n Four months ago, with the World Cup and its spotlight looming, CSB \u2013 which had just rebranded as Canadian Soccer Media and Entertainment \u2013 and Canada Soccer finally announced they had struck a new deal that would give millions of dollars a year more to the federation. <\/p>\n \u201cNow it\u2019s one big happy family and I think it\u2019s going really well,\u201d Montagliani said. \u201cHonestly, you need to go through these things sometimes, and I think the federation and the game is in a better shape because they went through it, quite frankly.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Mr. Montagliani, left, celebrates with delegates of Mexico and the United States, along with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, after winning a joint bid to host the 2026 World Cup, at the FIFA congress in Moscow, Russia, in June, 2018.Alexander Zemlianichenko\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n You\u2019ll hear this a lot from Montagliani, this talk of family. It echoes through the way he speaks about CONCACAF. He is its proud and indulgent paternal figure.<\/p>\n But critics say that FIFA and its confederations have a conflict of interest at their core that can\u2019t help but corrode the institutions. <\/p>\n They \u201cnot only regulate football, they regulate all markets related to football,\u201d noted Miguel Maduro, a Portuguese governance expert, in a recent interview. \u201cAt the same time, they are also the main commercial actors in those markets.\u201d That is, they are driven to maximize revenues, he said, \u201cand that is not always in alignment with what ought to be the best regulation, in terms of the common good for the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n Maduro was brought in by FIFA\u2019s new president, Gianni Infantino, in 2016 to chair its governance and review committee as part of post-scandal clean-up efforts. But he left only eight months into the job after falling out of favour with Infantino, he said.<\/p>\n The system builds loyalty to those at the top, he added. <\/p>\n While FIFA\u2019s official policy is to distribute equal funds to all of its 211 member associations (not counting the compensation for playing in tournaments such as the World Cup), it also sprinkles its largesse on associations it deems deserving through initiatives such as the FIFA Forward Development Programme. When FIFA gave US$5.4-million toward the first national soccer training centre in Indonesia in 2024, the president of the national football association thanked Infantino personally in a public letter.<\/p>\n \u201cBy getting more money, the president of FIFA, or the presidents of confederations, then reward or punish football associations and the people within the world of football that support them or oppose them,\u201d Maduro said. <\/p>\n He noted one pernicious effect of the system is that, once presidents of confederations have solidified their power, they are rarely opposed in elections. Neither Infantino nor Montagliani has faced any challenger since they were first elected to office. <\/p>\n \u201cThe votes in the Congress of FIFA are ridiculous,\u201d said Maduro. \u201cThey are unanimous. There\u2019s no voice criticizing, and that\u2019s all a consequence and a reflection of this power structure.\u201d<\/p>\n