Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump have taken the 2026 World Cup for themselves

Two men held a press event in the Oval Office last week to announce a taskforce that would work to resolve the logistical problems surrounding the 2026 World Cup in North America, which were largely created by one of them.

Both men were in their element. One, Donald Trump, received toady genuflection and a large, golden … thing (actually the Club World Cup trophy). The other, Fifa president Gianni Infantino, occasioned to bask in the proximity to real power, was affectionately referred to as “The king of soccer, I guess, in a certain way” by Trump.

Theirs may be a marriage of convenience, but it seems to be a very happy one.

At the event, Infantino made unsourced claims of an economic impact of $40bn and the creation of 200,000 jobs, all delivered by the 2025 Club World Cup and the subsequent World Cup proper. Trump demonstratively signed a piece of paper that made the World Cup taskforce official.

The whole thing felt little more than symbolic. Such a taskforce doesn’t require a presidential decree, for a start. But also because Infantino knows full well, as did everyone else in the room, that the president is unlikely to rouse himself for a cause he seems to barely understand.

“Can the US win?” Trump asked at one point, interrupting Infantino, who ignored the question.

“First time it’s ever been in this part of the world,” proclaimed Trump, apparently referring to the World Cup. Never mind that three men’s World Cups have already been staged in North America – in Mexico in 1970 and 1986, and in 1994 in the United States.

Infantino proceeded to theatrically show Trump the new Fifa Club World Cup trophy, a gaudy, golden behemoth that unlocks some rings orbiting its center with a key, which seemed to impress the president. Then the Swiss handed Trump an official match ball with the latter’s signature printed on it, tickling the last of the president’s erogenous zones that had not yet been activated.

By the time he was done, Infantino had fully draped the tournament around one of his favorite strongmen. If it wasn’t already obvious, the 23rd edition of the Fifa World Cup will be remembered as The Donald Trump World Cup (trademark pending). Just as other mega-events have been hijacked for political ends, this World Cup will be leveraged for the glorification of a leader to a degree not seen since Benito Mussolini dominated the 1934 World Cup in Italy or the Videla regime’s stage crafting of the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. While a quarter of the matches will be hosted by Canada and Mexico – introducing a separate set of issues owing to Trump’s erratic saber-rattling with his neighbors – the dominant narrative of the tournament has seemingly already been set.

“When we made this,” Trump said of the 2026 World Cup, “it was made during my first term, and it was so sad, because I said, ‘Can you imagine, I’m not going to be president? And that’s too bad.’ And what happened is they rigged the election, and I became president and so that was a good thing.” Presumably, he was referring to the 2020 election, which he lost with no evidence of rigging, and his subsequent re-election in 2024.

It always seemed unlikely that the sport would be able to keep Trump from claiming soccer’s signature tournament as his own. But Infantino has seen to it that something like the opposite is accomplished instead. The Fifa president, the proud holder of the Russian Federation’s Order of Friendship medal, has written a type of playbook on cozying up to autocrats – or democratically elected heads of state with autocratic inclinations – and entering into mutually beneficial bargains with them. They are lent the World Cup for whatever stains they need to sportswash away and handed a place of prominence at the tournament’s key moments, and Infantino is given a pliant environment from which to source the profits that will keep his patronage machine humming.

That same week, Fifa also announced that the World Cup final will be interrupted by a half-time show for the first time in its history. As well as casting its lot with a historically unpopular US president, Fifa will also indulge in all the worst impulses of American sports.

The 2026 edition of the world’s biggest sporting event, which somehow retains its prestige and credibility despite the best efforts of its guardians over the last century, will already count more teams and more games than any before it. The notion of expanding from 48 to 64 teams for the 2030 edition has already been soft-launched at the Fifa council.

More, more, more, until every last inch and second and ounce of the World Cup has been commercialized and monetized. This is what the full Infantino-ing of Fifa looks like, mirroring the Trump-ification of the next World Cup co-hosts. Each grifting as hard as they possibly can.

After the Oval Office event, Infantino made another appearance with Trump, at a White House crypto summit. Infantino demonstrated his labor-intensive trophy again. And then he cut to the chase. “Fifa is very, very interested to develop a Fifa coin,” he told the roundtable of crypto people. “If there is anyone here who is interested to team up with Fifa, here we are.”

Of course they are.

• Leander Schaerlaeckens is at work on a book about the United States men’s national soccer team, out in 2026.