Fifa World Cup: Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino make a perfect match for football’s farce - Winston Aldworth

Back then, a kickback was as likely to refer to a brown envelope surreptitiously changing hands as it was to a centre back passing to their goalie.

Today, Fifa’s profiteering and its sucking up to powerful figures is played out in barefaced glory. Perhaps the towering achievement of Gianni Infantino, as head of world football’s governing body, is corporatising Fifa’s blatant money grab, whitewashing it through the White House while the world looks on.

Where previous Fifa bosses might have been squeamish about being seen to sign off on Saudi Arabia hosting the 2034 tournament, Infantino’s Fifa would happily turn the discussion into a snazzy Powerpoint presentation, complete with Aramco branding.

US President Donald Trump is equally open about his transactional nature. He’s a businessman, scratch his back and he’ll scratch yours ... as long as scratching yours is still good for him.

To the uninvolved spectator, it might seem odd that Fifa agreed to lease office space on the 17th floor of New York’s Trump Tower (The New York Times has reported that the office space has barely been used).

To Trump and Infantino, the deal made perfect sense; as did the Fifa Peace Prize bestowed upon the President.

Infantino was a special guest at Trump’s second inauguration and the pair have met at least 10 times this year, believed to be more meetings than the President has had with any foreign leader in that time.

It’s no surprise Infantino swiped right on the tangerine-tanned head of state. Trump is the ideal political leader for this tournament: Like Fifa, he clearly neither understands nor much cares for football. And, like Fifa, he makes up rules as he goes along.

Breaking the famously flowing sport into quarters so advertisers can sell more crap? Now that’s speaking Trump’s language!

Randomly slapping tariffs on trading partners and allies? Get in!

Rejigging your own qualification system to get Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami into the 2025 Club World Cup? High-five!

Trump’s stunning intervention to have a red-card suspension overturned for a US player in a sport that he knows nothing about, and in which he has zero interest, has been one of the off-field highlights of the tournament.

Whatever happened at Fifa’s head office, the optics are terrible. Trump has claimed credit for getting on the phone and getting Folarin Balogun’s one-match suspension postponed for one year.

Fifa’s own Code of Ethics says it must remain politically neutral, and Infantino has insisted the process here was completely independent.

It appears Trump never got the memo.

“I asked for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“I thought it was two great athletes that crashed into each other and got entangled. That was not a guy punching somebody in the face or anything.”

This is footballing discourse as delivered by a drunk uncle at Christmas who has never seen a football game before and thinks the sport stinks.

Parts of it certainly do stink.

After the eyebrow-raising decisions to host the World Cup in Russia (2018) and the migrant-labourer hell-pit of Qatar (2022), this tournament was meant to clear away some of the stench.

Having a head of state phoning Fifa’s back office to get his team’s star player on the field will not end well for Infantino. This affair will be ammunition for those in the corridors of power at Fifa who might rather the organisation had a different leader.

Could he expect help from Trump?

At time of publishing, there was no word on whether Trump has been on the blower to Infantino to get the result from the USA’s 4-1 defeat to Belgium overturned.

With his side knocked out, the President’s attention will likely swing to other sporting spectaculars. Like many who have partnered with Trump in the past, Infantino might find he’s quick to swipe left.

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