Infantino Faces Legal Heat Amid Uefa's Lawsuit
“Tell Mike it was just business. I always liked him.”
The old Godfather line lands differently this week. Because for the first time since Gianni Infantino’s latest scandal broke, it feels as though the president of Fifa – a man who has glided through storm after storm – might finally have run out of safe rooms to duck into.
Infantino has been under fire for almost six weeks now, ever since details emerged of his covert plan to sell off football’s greatest shared asset – the World Cup – on terms that allegedly undervalued it and, on top of that, offered him a vast personal salary. The man hired to guard the game’s crown jewel is accused of pawning it, cheap.
The noise has been relentless: columns, denunciations, the usual chorus of outrage. Even Mikaël Silvestre has weighed in. But Infantino has survived that kind of thing before. He knows how to ride out gnats at his ankles.
This time feels different. Because this time, hard power has entered the room.
A lawsuit that cuts to the bone
Two developments, both tied to Uefa’s legal action in the United States, have shifted the ground under Infantino’s feet.
First, Josh Kushner – the financier whose Thrive Capital was central to the Fifa Forward deal – broke cover. Named in discovery proceedings in Florida, Kushner issued a statement saying he “would not have gotten involved” had he known the full picture and calling the whole episode regrettable.
On the surface, the language is mild. Underneath, it sounds like someone quietly stepping away from the blast zone. A deliberate distance from the project, and from the man at the centre of it.
Kushner has also brought in Alex Spiro, a heavyweight lawyer whose client list includes Elon Musk, in the “pedo guy” defamation case, and Alec Baldwin, after the fatal shooting on a film set. You don’t hire Spiro for a minor misunderstanding. You hire him when you expect a fight.
Fifa’s own move this week was even more telling. In a counterfiling, it dismissed the whole affair as a “smear campaign”. Then came the real tell: a sharp, explicit objection to discovery – the process that forces parties to hand over emails, memos, messages, anything relevant to the case.
Nobody on Infantino’s side wants that. Not Fifa. Not Thrive. Not anyone orbiting Donald Trump.
Because discovery means opening the box.
The terror of the paper trail
This is what Uefa is pushing for: a clear look inside the machinery of the deal that allegedly undersold the World Cup. They want documents from Fifa, from Thrive Capital, from Greg Maffei – the Trump donor and deal adviser who helped usher Infantino into the highest levels of US power.
All of them will have paper trails from that intoxicating period when the Fifa president was granted rare access to the Trump White House and its network. That’s what makes this dangerous. Not the rhetoric. The receipts.
Infantino knows it. Fifa’s legal team knows it. Anyone who has ever done business close to Trump knows it. Discovery is not an abstract legal term. It is screenshots, drafts, WhatsApp messages sent from the golf course after lunch.
And if those documents ever see daylight, the story stops being about spin and becomes about facts.
The Trump embrace – and the Trump shrug
Infantino’s relationship with Trump has always been presented as a protective shield. The gleaming bald technocrat and the former president, grinning together like co-stars in a Brooks Brothers knitwear ad. Trump once praised him as “a very tall, very handsome man”. Infantino, in turn, sold football’s future to a man who treats loyalty as a disposable asset.
That alliance always looked brittle. Trump’s politics are built on a simple matrix: winners and losers. No belief system, no doctrine – just a running tally of who is useful and who is expendable.
History shows what happens when you slip into the second category. Michael Cohen, who once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump, ended up imprisoned, disbarred, exiled from the inner circle. Jeff Sessions, the early loyalist who called Trumpism “a movement”, was later branded weak, dumb, “a disgrace”, even “mentally retarded”. Once you’re out, you’re not just forgotten. You’re actively buried.
Infantino’s own backing from Trump already looks thinner than advertised. In early August, Trump posted on Truth Social that it would be “really bad” if Fifa removed Infantino “for any reason”. The wording was oddly conditional. The support felt qualified. And since then? Silence.
No fresh endorsement. No loud defence. Just a sense of a man quietly stepping away from the stage, leaving his “very tall, very handsome” friend alone under the lights.
Uefa’s gambit: not about winning, but about exposing
Uefa’s lawsuit accuses Fifa and Infantino of “criminal mismanagement” over the alleged undervaluing of the World Cup rights. The case itself may not be designed for a clean, crushing courtroom victory. It feels more like a chess problem – a zugzwang. Forcing the king to move when every available square is dangerous.
The key is not the verdict. It is the process.
If the court allows discovery, Uefa gets to rummage through the drawers. Emails, term sheets, side notes, calendar entries from the days when Infantino was being ushered around Washington, granted access that football administrators had never enjoyed before.
Picture the Club World Cup trophy: strange, jagged, full of unsettling angles, like it hides a secret compartment you’re not sure you want to open. That’s what this is. Do you really want to know what’s in there? And if you do, are you ready for what comes out?
The president on the road, the walls closing in
Infantino is not sitting still. He is out on the circuit, touring Fifa’s outer provinces, shaking hands, counting allies. Saudi Arabia has offered backing “at this time” – that small caveat hanging in the air like a warning label. There is a Fifa congress in November. There are votes to be tallied. There is a re‑election next March.
But even that feels less central than it once did. This is no longer just about the politics of Zurich and the arithmetic of a congress hall. It is about what might be written down, archived, and suddenly dragged into a courtroom in Florida.
Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini know how quickly things can turn. One illegal payment, one sudden charge, and two of the most powerful men in football were gone, their careers shattered by a single, well-aimed shot from the legal world.
For now, the case simmers. Legal challenges often fizzle. Settlements appear. Complaints get quietly withdrawn. Uefa’s task is simply to keep the heat on, to make it clear that the coals will be raked until someone flinches.
Infantino has always behaved like the man who sold the world and walked away clean. This time, the deal comes with discovery.
And that, for a president who has spent years trading access, favours and power, might be the one thing he cannot afford.
