FIFA boss Gianni Infantino turned to Donald Trump to save his job amid revolt against World Cup privatisation plan.<\/p>\n
Published On 3 Aug 20263 Aug 2026<\/p>\n
FIFA President Gianni Infantino sought support from the administration of US President Donald Trump amid mounting criticism \u2060after his abandoned plan to sell a stake in World Cup commercial rights, the New York Post reported on Monday, citing sources familiar \u2060with the matter.<\/p>\n
The Post said that Infantino had repeatedly tried and failed to reach Trump by phone since the proposal collapsed on Friday, \u2060and that the FIFA chief felt \u201cisolated\u201d by an avalanche of negative media coverage.<\/p>\n
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FIFA had no immediate comment.<\/p>\n
Criticism has intensified over Infantino\u2019s failed plan to spin off the world football governing body\u2019s commercial assets into a new entity backed by private investors.<\/p>\n
FIFA\u2019s plan to \u200cunlock up to $4.2bn from private investors by selling a roughly 20 percent stake in a new entity overseeing competitions including the World Cup ended in retreat on Friday after fierce resistance from stakeholders.<\/p>\n
With the idea abandoned, attention has now turned to the potential repercussions for Infantino, whose bid for another term as FIFA president from 2027 to 2031 faces increased scrutiny following the failed \u2060initiative.<\/p>\n
Trump and Infantino have forged a close relationship, with the \u2060two appearing together at major football events including this year\u2019s World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.<\/p>\n
The bond was highlighted in December 2025 when Infantino presented Trump with the inaugural FIFA \u2060Peace Prize, making him the first recipient of the award.<\/p>\n
The relationship has drawn further attention over FIFA\u2019s World Cup selloff \u2060plan, a deal that was set to be anchored \u2060by Thrive Capital, founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump\u2019s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.<\/p>\n
The Post also reported that Infantino had scheduled private talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with two sources familiar with the matter saying the FIFA \u200cboss was due to hold a call with the top US diplomat shortly after 9am ET (13:00 GMT).<\/p>\n
However, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs Dylan Johnson \u200csaid \u200cin a post on X that there were \u201cno plans\u201d for Rubio to speak with 56-year-old Swiss-Italian Infantino and that \u201cthere is no call this morning\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIFA boss Gianni Infantino turned to Donald Trump to save his job amid revolt against World Cup privatisation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[218,59,50,217,101,56,54,158,55,3544,6526],"class_list":["post-726403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-football","tag-gb","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-canada","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}