Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump at the World Cup final at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 19 July 2026. Photograph: Bradley Collyer/PA View image in fullscreen Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump at the World Cup final at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 19 July 2026. Photograph: Bradley Collyer/PA Opinion Gianni Infantino Who dares ridicule Gianni Infantino as the World Cup boss creates global peace? Not me: is it you? Marina Hyde If you thought he was just a shady rule-dodging reprobate, the Fifa boss’s latest 15-page Instagram rant might make you think again
I hope you have found time to enjoy Fifa president Gianni Infantino’s 15-page Instagram meltdown about his World Cup. The last time I saw this many defiant words, they were inked on someone sitting cross-legged on the floor of a Salvadoran supermax prison.
Infantino has been clapping back at his haters – putting them on blast, in the parlance of our times – and on this evidence seems mesmerisingly close to picking out a Chicano script font and getting STILL I RISE needled across his corporate clavicles. Right next to the ones reading THROUGH THE FIRE, UNBREAKABLE and BUILT DIFFERENT.
“Sorry that the matches are now over and sorry that you missed all that joy and togetherness. Sorry that you were so consumed by hate and criticism that you missed it all,” the Fifa president – reportedly a 56-year-old man – posted yesterday. “To those behind their pens and papers, behind their screens spreading hate and false rumours, I want to say that while you are sitting behind, we at Fifa are on the frontlines organising, working hard, and delivering the best show in the world.” The frontlines of cheating because a fellow presidential shitposter told you to? Hey – it’s a living. Of course, I should say that Infantino denies caving to the repeated interference from Donald Trump over the decision to make the red-carded Folarin Balogun available for the US’s last-16 tie. But I see the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee has launched an investigation into the Fifa president and his ties with the actual president, so ideally Gianni will have the chance to say all this and more in an interview with the committee in due course.
But for now, back to his rant. “To those spending their time and energy hating us,” ran a later, time-consumingly energetic section of the Insta-treatise, “please take a moment to reflect, meditate, pray or watch a football match …” Pray? This, takes us firmly into ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME territory, with Infantino now presenting as the Tupac of the Switzerland-based sporting governance class.
A few years ago I would have said that the Fifa president has forgotten one of the golden rules of modern life – that it’s always fine not to post. You could always, quite simply, just not post. And yet, can that really be said to be the case any more? A fascinating report last week by Luminate , the entertainment data analysts, found that 39% of Americans identified as content creators, while Goldman Sachs’s own last look at the subject forecast well over 100 million people globally placing themselves in this class over the next few years.
Psychically speaking, Infantino seems to be inching ever-closer to the conviction that he invented the product – football – and that his primary job is not administrating it, but being “out there” on his public channels, forever outlining his philosophy, or stoking geopolitical online beef, or embodying it all in some ineffable,…