The end of Gianni Infantino? Inside FIFA's biggest crisis yet with Tariq Panja: Men in Blazers 08/03/2026

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0:45Welcoming you to enjoy the games this summer. Start planning your journey at meninblazers.com backslash cityguides. You're listening to the Men in Blazers Media Network. Suboptimal radio. Gianni Infantino, even if he has the numbers, it's done, Roger. Is it really? How can these people get into a room again? You've seen the statements from UEFA saying they've lost complete confidence in this man. We've already said that these countries are threatening to boycott the World Cup.

1:21Welcome to this FIFA in Free Fall special. we've all watched as the world of football is in a state of civil war. Six days ago, news broke in the English media that FIFA president Gianni Infantino was circulating a plan to sell off 20 % of the World Cup to private investors, including the Kushner family, and create, yeah, a$20 billion new company to run the World Cup, of which he'd ultimately become quite a highly paid commissioner. Cue global outcry UEFA, the European governing body, threatening to boycott all FIFA events. FIFA leaders resigning, revolting, and a four-day chaos of darkness, of mire, of cold, naked greed, which led to Infantino aborting the plan by Friday.

2:06Remember, all of this just 15 days on from a quite glorious World Cup's conclusion. Jean-Léon Fantino's premiership now on the brink. Speed of his downfall. Been extraordinary to witness. Scramble of power plays. They'll honestly make House of the Dragons look like some kind of rom-com. This stuff, complicated. slightly mad like why is a non-profit raking in billions in need of raising money in the first place why is an organization tasked with overseeing and safeguarding football in danger of breaking it where are the checks and balances who's watching the watchman and even though the plan is over make no mistake football's forever changed the infighting continues this is no case of threat thwarted or bullet dodge so to understand what happened and how this week will change football's future forever.

2:52When I want to know the answer to the question, football seems safe, but for how long? I always turn to one man and one man only, Tarek Panja, global sports reporter for the New York Times, a man who spends his life staring into the football bureaucracy abyss so you don't have to. Tarek, are you still standing? I think I have a chance of standing a bit longer than Jenny and Fantina, and that is a remarkable thing to say. Gotta let that sink in, because that is my first question. The proposal to sell chunks of the World Cup to private investors has collapsed. There's anger globally. It's an enormous humiliation.

3:27But is Gianni Infantino's 10 and a half year presidency of FIFA, is it over, clinging to power? Is it a matter when, not if? It certainly feels like that. And if it was a normal company, a normal business, normal organisation, he would have gone by the time we've recorded this. But as you've so definitely described in the intro this is not a normal company this is not a normal industry and this man is clinging on for grim life and he still has supporters around the world uh despite all of this and what do we mean by all of this this is as you said civil war this could break the world cup and in a way i was hoping that it actually goes through because then you read rubber really hits the road, what are you going to do?

4:14At the moment, you've got this threat of a boycott. But if it did happen, you get the idea that these European nations were going to walk away from this. And that explodes the football setup as we know it, the FIFA as we know it. And this is after, Raj, you and I talked about this, I believe before the Qatar World Cup. We looked back at the perp walk from the Boralak Hotel that the previous generation of FIFA leaders, Sepp Blatter's crew took in 2015 and thought that was going to change FIFA forever. If anything, it is very much the same as it was then and then on steroids. Maybe not the cartoon corruption, but the kind of strange behavior where money rules, committee places, expensive sinecures, people not wanting to speak up.

5:01But here we are at this moment and it does seem very interesting. So you almost wanted to blow the whole thing up because that is the only radical surgery that's going to create change. And we will get to that, but we do need to dive in. I want to walk through step by step how we got here and what happens now. But before we do so, I want to acknowledge the joy that football can bring you, the joy the World Cup brought us. You know, it's crazy to me that just 15 days later, here we are just back in the mire. and I want to say none of us become football fans to follow the bureaucracy of the game, the administration.

5:38It's kind of like loving hot dog eating contests because you do love how the sausage is being made. But here we are and a word to you viewers, I'm going to try and keep this as simple as possible to try and relive the beats, try and understand the tectonic plate shifting below the surface and I hope this is a show that everyone can kind of follow along but in the deepest way, not just on the surface. So let's start. Last Tuesday, Lord, it was just six days ago when the Times of London, Martin Ziegler, when all the president's men wrote the story of our 25-page sales deck entitled FIFA Forward Enterprise Member Materials has been circulated in the highest circles of FIFA.

6:20Johnny Infantino, the president of FIFA, proposing the creation of a new company to run FIFA's commercial operations, 20 % of which will be sold to Joshua Kushner. US investor also happens to be the brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, backed by American bank JP Morgan. They also were the bankers for the Super League. Going again, proposed a quite crude plan, fairly vague at the time, of more tournaments, debt financing, higher ticket prices to drive up profits for FIFA. We'll dig into the deal in a moment, But a technical journalistic question first, Tarrant. You cover FIFA. It's a court of intrigue.

6:59It's a court of power plays, occasional backstabbing. How does this debt get into the hands of the journalist in the first place? Is it someone within FIFA's inner court leaking, right? I mean, how common is that? I think it's fairly common, to be honest, because it's so riven. And I think I have some short memories. Gianni Infantino tried to do this in 2018, tried to sell FIFA to SoftBank. A Japanese conglomerate had Gulf interests, surprise, surprise, in there as well. And he was trying to raise$25 billion at that point. And I remember writing about that myself. And that was because it was very, very similar.

7:35Gianni Infantino walks into a council meeting in Bogota in 2018, slaps these contracts on the table. They've got no names on them. All ND80s said, just put your names on it, lads, and I'm going to bring you 25 billion. And the people in the room were like, hang on, sorry. What, in 60 days, you're going to sell this? And again, it's exactly the same actors. Alexander Sheffrin? Ye for president. Correct, saying, we aren't going to play ball. And very quickly, this stuff came out, and very quickly it got killed. That led to, I think, like a decade-long animus between Alexander Sheffield, the UEFA president, UEFA and FIFA and Gianni Infantino, the president there.

8:17And this is the world of football. This is very, very similar. This is how it breaks. The media puts a story out. And if you noticed, within minutes, if not seconds, the comments are ready to come flying out. These guys were tooled up. Tooled up. I love that. That's a great ending to you. Tooled up. And I love the beginning, which sounded like Gianni Infantino walks into the bar. Sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke. But can you also just explain to listeners, something to be so basic, but it's something that I need help with, what private equity's involvement in football does? Like, it seems like a crazy question.

8:51Why is it bad? Because UEFA actually wrote about it really well in their first statement. By the way, despite the fact they've allowed private equity to roll into club football, their first letter of opposition, this is their quote. They said the moment external investors acquire ownership interest in FIFA competitions, football changes forever. Commercial return becomes a permanent obligation. Investor expectations become a daily pressure from that moment onwards. Every decision on competition football formats and every decision shaping the future of football no longer driven by what best serves the game, but by what best serves shareholders.

9:26This model has no place in world football. Football cannot mortgage its future for financial gain. What they're saying in those words, like for fans to understand, people at home, remember those really expensive World Cup ticket prices we've just sat through? Well, that will become the normal because you have to drive revenue as high as you can. Those hydration breaks. Well, hang on. It might be cold. We don't need them. No, we're going to have hydration breaks because they're also known as ad breaks. So all of that type of tuning to suit the whims and needs of your investors, that will happen more and more.

10:01Equally, choice of where the World Cup should be hosted. Well, why don't we go to the places that can pay us more money? Yeah, we'll go there again and again. So that's what they were getting at from the fact that football straddles a lot of society. Yes, it does straddle enterprise and big business, but it does also have a cultural role. It has a societal role. It has a sporting role. You know, whether you're participating in it or whether you're following it, it has all of these hats. What they're saying is, no, no, after this, just one big sombrero. I'm sorry. I'm quite interested in one big sombrero.

10:40I've got to be honest, when you tell it like that. I've been in Mexico. Yeah, I'm there. Miguel Delaney wrote quite articulately. He said in The Independent, it's been described as a, quote, very bad securitization deal for an asset that isn't even distressed. The question that hung over it was FIFA City on billions of dollars in reserve. It has no debt. Why do this? Again, a simple question, but how do you even sell the basic idea? It's very hard to and you don't need us to do it. One of the people that has walked out on Gianni Infantino is his senior advisor, someone known to probably a lot of your audience.

11:16Carlos Cordero, the former head of US soccer, he was a former Goldman Sachs vice chairman for Asia. So a man, you would think, would know a little bit about money and investments. So if you take Carlos Cordero's statement of resignation at its word, he was left out in the cold. He only found out about it in the media reports, in the dispatches, and was horrified by what he saw. Not only the fact that he didn't know anything about it. As a senior advisor to Johnny. Yeah, like this is the guy. Why would you get this guy if you're not going to tell him about things like this? You know, and he just says similar, you know, to what you just quoted in Miguel's piece there, which is FIFA is swimming in cash.

12:03It has so much money. You know, I've heard it said and I believe it to almost has too much money. That's why this money is going all over the place. These federations, whether they need it or not, they all get the same amount. And here we have this promise for more. And the point Carlos Cordero made was like, we could do that anyway. We don't need to sell the family China. So, you know, we've talked about private equity coming into sports and into other industries. Well, usually these businesses are in trouble. Like COVID has happened. They've got a debt pile that needs to be serviced some other way.

12:39They need this money desperately because private equity money is not easy money. The easy money is you go to the bank, you get a loan. But this is almost like you're giving up something because you need it so badly. FIFA really does it. So then your question was, why would you do it? So you're looking at this thing and you've got the deal is$4.2 billion for 20 % of this business, which they're valuing at$20 billion. We've just come through a$15 billion, which I think is conservative. I've heard recently it could be anything as much as$17 billion, the takings from the World Cup in 2026. So you're giving away this at such a low price to these people.

13:23Key bono, like who's benefiting here? And the only answer that people seem to suggest is, well, whoever's going to run this thing is in for a real windfall when this happens. so we've seen the reports i haven't had i haven't been able to to confirm this but gianni and fantino becoming a commissioner style person uh on roger goodell style money they call it the nfl boss 60 million dollars at the moment gianni and fantino is probably the best paid head of a non-profit in the world he'll be taking home around six million dollars that's not bad roger is it it's not podcasting sorry just be candid um i mean i mean ultimately to answer the question why you would do it you would do it if if there's maybe something to gain for you personally maybe again this is this is where the speculation goes while there is this opacity in the deal why there's no clarity while no deal sheet has been published that is where smart minds people in the business world are going to it's not just me saying this to you that they are suggesting that whoever's going to run this thing is in for a decent chunk of change in return.

14:33Decent, decent. I mean, my reaction, I've got to be candid when I read all of this, because it all seems so familiar to me as someone who lives in America and watches American sports, watches American life, watches American politics. It is very, very American. I said this before, the World Cup, football for good or for bad is about to enter its American century. This is what the 2026 World Cup almost hit the markings, already so many of the biggest clubs in the world, already run by American investors. FIFA has been in our culture here since 2018, out of Miami organizing this World Cup. This felt very much how business is currently done here, how politics is done here, how sports leagues are increasingly done here.

15:16But what was truly fascinating, and you've hit some of this, when the contours of the plan, which were, when first reported, relatively vague were fleshed out by reporting. Martin Ziegler wrote a piece in the Times again yesterday in which he kind of broke down how the whole World Cup arc retrospectively, how so many of the decisions were designed to almost build up and lead to this investor sale. The decision, he starts with the decision to suspend Cristiano in Aldo's red card. He was not going to be in the first two games of the World Cup, but then lo and behold, he goes to a White House dinner.

15:50The suspension is suspended. The hydration breaks, which you mentioned, which added a new asset to commodify. He goes into detail on the Trump Peace Prize, the insane ticket prices, even the glitzy halftime show. Again, another asset to commodify down the pike. And then the Balogun decision. Again, the White House had effectively become Infantino's future partners, flexing their muscle publicly, reshaping the competitive contours of the World Cup in the way they wanted it to be, commercially, star wattage-wise. And then the personal kicker in Ziegler's article, Infantino, who was grappling with term limits as FIFA president.

16:28I think this fourth term will be irrespective of what happens now is last turning himself into a commissioner. Ziegler reported, I think, a starting salary of 30 million dollars plus bonuses, according to whistleblowers. When you look back at the 2026 World Cup and the beats now, Tarek, is it cynical to say it was both a football tournament, which I enjoyed? going to be candid, but it was also a glossy brochure to create a stampede of private investors. You and I have talked about this on previous shows as well, how much we love the World Cup, because it reminds us of our childhood. There's a purity, at least in our minds, about what it should be.

17:07And here you have the monopolist, FIFA, that owns this and nobody else owns it. This is the other amazing thing here. You don't need to sell this thing to anybody else. You're selling oxygen. What a thing to have in your hands and no one else can do it. And you want to give it to Jared Kushner's brother at a discount. What a strange world we're in. You mentioned the Americanization, the American element of this, and you've gone through that. But I also think we also saw a hint of this just before Club World Cup. Lionel Messi, who with Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the three most famous human beings on the planet.

17:41I think Taylor Swift is the person in between them. He somehow and his team into Miami were made champions of a tournament that never existed somehow and they even got a trophy i think and were shoehorned into this new club world cup that again is is moving the dial belatedly yeah moving it up put your finger on the scale let's try and tweak it this way to get the wattage as you you said into into this competition we also saw dynamic pricing that became a bit of story in the World Cup, first trial here in the Club World Cup. So, yeah. Again, another norm in American sporting culture that the world was like, what is that again?

18:23These norms coming out of here, the world looks at them and is like, I don't. It's just jarring with the football culture that I understood and grew up with. That's kind of that. That's one of the great dislocations we're grappling with. The other element, I guess, is the cynicism of all of this, because Gianni Infantino, Valentino or whoever, I think from my reporting, is he seems to have done this very much in terms of advisors on his own, on his side, not the investor side, because that's an army of Kushners and JP Morgans and all the rest of it. But he found himself believing in his own hype so much.

19:00He excluded the entire FIFA management from something as significant as this. From my understanding is they found out, and this is mad, this thing had been going on for at least a year they found out this is like the top lieutenants the people who run thief of the administration on the day before the world cup final the waldorf astoria i think there was a meeting there and they were under pressure because they have to try and sign off on this i'm not sure they all did and this is one man's vision headstrong to remind you of anyone he spent a lot of time in the in the oval office recently he he's very much of his own mind.

19:37The norms have been broken. This is what's going to happen. But where he's run out of road is he pushed the cynicism, I think, so far, because all he thought was, all I've got to do is pay these guys a bit more money and they'll just let me do it. We are delighted to bring you the Men in Blazers City Guides, presented by Visa, a joyously assembled guide to the best places to eat, drink and explore and watch the beautiful game across the country. It's a guide aimed at helping fans experience the city as a local. It's built by you, our listeners, recommending some of the best small businesses in your communities, like the finest Viet Cajun in Houston.

20:17Yes. The best burrito in San Francisco. Yes. Where to savour lemon pepper wet in Atlanta. Yes, yes, yes. A massive shout out to our sponsor Visa, who's made this guide possible. Visa gives local business owners the tools and support to be ready for moments exactly like this one, welcoming you to enjoy the games this summer. Start planning your journey at meninblazers.com backslash cityguides. I want to just take a minute to go a tiny bit deeper on this because I want to get to the response. I want to get to the repercussions. One of the things I understand the least in this moment, Johnny Infantino is many things.

20:58He presents himself in a certain way on the surface, but he is an incredibly canny politician. He has demonstrated, to this point, an incredible understanding of the levers of power. It is not like Gianni Infantino to leave himself so politically exposed. So I'm trying to understand the miscalculation. Was this just a feeling of invulnerability? Almost, you know, when you fly from city to city in private planes with the world's television cameras, but are we forced to be on you at every match at prescribed times when you can avoid the press face-to-face for an extended period do you just become a no one can touch me mentality I just organized a Messi Mbappe Haarlem World Cup that was bigger than anything in the world or was this an active leaker just seizing a chance to stab him in the back we have to look at the evolution of Gianni Infantino I think he wasn't a canny politician he got to where he got to but if you see the last year of Gianni Infantino and he allows us to see this his Instagram has become his point of contact with the world now I've been covering FIFA for about 20 years and I remember with Sepp Blatter his previous however bad it got and it got very bad he would always show up at press conference we'd have like six of these a year and they were quite entertaining in a way because it was complete chaos really but he would always step up and he actually had a a kind of sense for showmanship in a way Infantino doesn't in a way and would be willing to spar with the media.

22:28Gianni Infantino feels a bit more prickly, a bit more sensitive and doesn't like being questioned. And he's done so many things that we've not been able to ask him any questions about. For example, giving the World Cup to Saudi Arabia for 2034. That's a whole other show, probably in itself. So this Instagram account, what it does, though, it gives you this window into his life it gives him the window of who Gianni Infantino is the man and what we see is a guy who seems very much seduced by very powerful people very rich people and very famous people now 211 football FA heads are most of them are probably none of those things he kind of I think lost touch with his base if you want and he would maybe pose for a photo with them but he didn't have time for them.

23:18He's in that other sphere with the plutocrats. And I think that is maybe a part of how this miscalculation could have come about. Because as I said earlier, none of his advisors were around him. The chief executive of the organization seemed not to know about this until very late in the day. So when you're so far unmoored from what you were supposed to be, the organization you're supposed to lead and the people who you are supposed to serve, there is a very good chance that something like this could happen. Now, on the other hand, there are a lot of people who are very much waiting to seize on the moment to take advantage of this.

23:59He's not a very popular person inside the halls of FIFA, it seems. We can get into that when we talk about some of the resignations that have been made. He's not very popular in Europe, the place where he made his bones, his career at UEFA. He's pretty much a persona non grata there. They can't wait to see the back of this guy. So here is this group that is ready, as I said earlier, tooled up. So he gives them, as someone said, a tap in. When you hang out with iShowSpeed, life just changes forever. You've walked through a door that the others could not follow him through. and cue that response, the tooled-up response.

24:38It was immediate and it was nuclear. There was a lull for one second, that kind of aftershock that was akin for many to when that preposterous plan for the Super League was first announced. But man, enter UEFA. You've mentioned them, the European governing body, their president, Alexander Sheffarin, a Slovenian former trial lawyer. We've had him on our show. I mean, he's a very, very canny human being, long FIFA's rival, as you said, long an antagonist. And can I just say, it takes a lot these days to unify Europe. So I guess congratulations to FIFA for doing that. On Thursday, after an emergency meeting, 55 nations of UEFA, including many of the biggest teams in the world, six of the last eight quarterfinals come from the UEFA region.

25:25The teams certainly with the most commercial muscle unanimously agreed to boycott all FIFA competitions, including the World Cup. Unequivocally reject, was their terms, FIFA president Gianni Infantino's plan. Remember, Women's World Cup just 325 days away today. Under 20 Women's World Cups starts at the beginning of September. I mean, this is very nuclear. I think in American terms, UEFA threatening to leave the World Cup. It's like the SEC threatening to pull out of the college football playoffs. CONCACAF, later the same day, announced they were angry at the process, not the idea, which is fascinating.

26:00But they rejected the plan. No boycott there. And then a very polite rejection from the Asian Football Confederation later that day. Asia were not angry at the idea, but more, quote, that it divides football. But ultimately, all of this was what made the plan instantly untenable, right? Yeah, it was dead on arrival at that point. I know some of the reporting was like, yeah, they're still trying to get votes or get people to agree to this. Because in the deck, in the plan, it required 50.1 % of the membership. and Gianni Infantino's calculations were, well, there are that many poor FAs who are reliant on my largesse.

26:39Of course, they're going to say yes, but the whip has come out of these various places and it's doomed. But to be honest with you, Roger, I know people don't like to talk about it because it seems very sort of Eurocentric, but there is a reality that Europe is the engine of the football economy in many ways, both from a sporting point of view and in a commercial way as well, along with the United States of America, of course, right? But you didn't even need the 55 European nations to collectively pull out. You take Germany, Spain, England and France. I was going to say Italy, but they don't qualify for World Cups anyway, so maybe we're OK.

27:20Sorry, guys. But it's something someone's told me before. You know, when all of these shenanigans happen and there are always FIFA shenanigans, right? You know, as long as we've been around, Roger, people have said, why don't the big countries just say no? And there's something about this structure where no one is willing to be strong and that they've been exposed as weak often. And it required this kind of collective response. But I genuinely think if five European nations said, you know what? Ciao, do your private equity deal. we'll set up a competition because the reality is we love the world cup i've never said i love the fifa world cup this is an organization that runs this thing the reason we love it is because these players in these countries are playing in their national colors in these tournaments we all come together in one place and we absolutely revel in it we're not saying oh god well it hasn't got fifa on there so yeah it might not be as good it doesn't matter god it is amazing though but it's a segue wait, we don't have time for it right now because I want to stay on these beats.