The World Cup Story, Part 2: Too Big To Fail

**Ryan Knutson** (0:09)
In 2015, FIFA was in freefall.
FIFA's longtime president, Sepp Blatter, had just stepped down in disgrace. More than a dozen officials had been indicted. Some pleaded guilty. Others were convicted at trial. A few served prison time in the US. We tell that story in episode one, which came out last Sunday. So FIFA needed to move forward, and the nonprofit that oversees the world's most watched sporting event was looking for a new president.
How do you run for FIFA president? What's the process like for choosing a president of FIFA?

**Jonathan Clegg** (0:50)
FIFA operates like any sort of democratic institution. So it's one country, one vote, and whoever gets the most votes becomes president. And I think there were five in the running to replace Blatter.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:03)
The man who ended up winning the job was Gianni Infantino.
He had been in charge of UEFA, the European soccer body, and he promised big changes at FIFA. My colleagues Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson told me the story.

**Jonathan Clegg** (1:18)
His platform was basically...

**Ryan Knutson** (1:19)
Make FIFA great again?

**Jonathan Clegg** (1:20)
Essentially, yes. It was like radical transparency.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:23)
Change we can believe in.

**Joshua Robinson** (1:25)
Exactly. And he was going to get FIFA back to its roots, loving football.

**Jonathan Clegg** (1:29)
This organization that has operated for too long in the shadows and has now been found to have allowed all this corruption and rampant will be brought up to sort of modern standards. There will be a much greater focus on ethical behavior and all the bad stuff that happened in the set bladder will no longer happen.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:48)
That was back in 2016
Infantino has now been president of FIFA for a decade. And over that time, Josh and John say that Infantino's big promises to the fans haven't come through.

**Jonathan Clegg** (2:02)
I think the World Cup certainly as far as FIFA and Infantino are concerned has ceased to be a tournament about the fans. And that's again something that we're witnessing now in the 2026 World Cup when the considerations of fans seem to be the last thing on FIFA's mind.

**Ryan Knutson** (2:26)
From The Journal, this is our two-part Sunday special on The World Cup. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's June 14th.
Coming up, Part 2 How far can Gianni Infantino take the World Cup?

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**Ryan Knutson** (3:47)
Gianni Infantino became FIFA president in 2016
He's part Swiss, Italian and Lebanese. He's bald, has thick eyebrows, and often wears a dark suit and white sneakers.

**Gianni Infantino** (3:59)
Welcome, bienvenido, bienvenu, benvindo, benvenuti, willkommen, ahlan was ahlan in all the languages of the world. Of course, in the language...

**Ryan Knutson** (4:10)
Early on, he tried to differentiate himself from the corruption scandals that happened under his predecessor, Sepp Blatter.

**Joshua Robinson** (4:17)
He's pledged to organize regular matches at FIFA headquarters, in which he often plays. I personally watched him take one of the worst corner kicks I've ever seen anyone who's kicked a ball take.

**Ryan Knutson** (4:29)
So he plays, but not maybe super well, but...

**Joshua Robinson** (4:31)
Not especially well.

**Jonathan Clegg** (4:32)
So he also surrounded himself with, like, FIFA legends.

**Joshua Robinson** (4:35)
He loves the FIFA legend.

**Jonathan Clegg** (4:36)
Great players of days of yore. He would spend a lot of time palling around with those to sort of emphasize his relationship with the players and the fans. Because I think that one of the other things about the Bladder era is that FIFA had come to feel very distant from the players who play in the World Cup and the fans who fund the whole thing.

**Joshua Robinson** (4:55)
He also early on made headlines because he was going to control FIFA's costs, and so he started flying on EasyJet around Europe.

**Ryan Knutson** (5:03)
A low-budget European airline.

**Joshua Robinson** (5:05)
Exactly.

**Jonathan Clegg** (5:06)
Infantino was sort of promised to bring the game back to the fans and have them be a much more sort of powerful constituency in how the organization operated going forward.

**Gianni Infantino** (5:13)
Every day should be about joy, about fun, about passion, and we have to take ourselves a little bit less serious. We have to be serious.