'It Was Just Business': Infantino's FIFA Reign Under Threat as Discovery Order Bites and Trump Backs Away

Gianni Infantino's grip on the FIFA presidency is facing its sternest test yet after a European legal action produced a discovery order tied to the governing body's collapsed attempt to sell World Cup broadcast rights — a development The Guardian's Barney Ronay suggests could mark 'the beginning of the end' for football's most powerful administrator. At the heart of the affair is a failed and highly secretive FIFA plan to monetise the World Cup through an external rights sale, a scheme that drew fierce criticism from broadcasters, leagues and stakeholders before it unravelled. Now a court has ordered discovery, meaning internal FIFA documents, communications and decision-making processes could be laid bare for legal scrutiny. For an organisation that has historically prized discretion above almost everything else, that prospect is deeply alarming. Ronay frames the drama with a line from The Godfather — 'Tell Mike it was just business. I always liked him.' — and the allusion is pointed. Infantino's survival at the head of FIFA has always rested on a web of political alliances, none more significant than his much-publicised bond with US President Donald Trump. With the 2026 World Cup set to be staged across the United States, Canada and Mexico, that relationship has been the cornerstone of the FIFA president's power base. But according to Ronay's reporting, that support now appears to be evaporating. The discovery order, he notes, will worry the American president — and history suggests that when legal exposure begins lapping at the feet of powerful friends, those friends tend to step away quickly. As Ronay observes, it is 'a situation that tends to end badly for the culprit'. The timing could hardly be more delicate. The tournament opens in June 2026, the intended crowning achievement of Infantino's decade in charge since his election in 2016. Instead of presiding over a triumphal summer, the FIFA president may find himself fighting a two-front war: delivering the biggest World Cup in history while fending off legal disclosures that could prove embarrassing both in Zurich and Washington. For now, Infantino remains in office, and FIFA has given no public indication that its leadership is in jeopardy. But the combination of an aggressive UEFA-linked legal challenge, a court-mandated window into FIFA's inner workings, and a visibly cooling relationship with the White House is precisely the kind of alignment that has ended football presidencies before. As Michael Corleone understood all too well, alliances in this world last exactly as long as they remain useful. On the evidence of Ronay's reporting for Guardian Football, Gianni Infantino may be about to discover just how abruptly that usefulness can expire — with the eyes of the football world fixed on his tournament, and his legal troubles, at the worst possible moment. This article is a rewrite based on original reporting by Barney Ronay for Guardian Football.