A double agent is, according to spy textbooks, a person employed by one government or organization while actually spying for another.
In the spring of 2021, while people were still walking around with masks on their faces, leaders of 12 of the most powerful football clubs established the so-called European Super League, a new closed-type competition in which they would compete among themselves, where smaller clubs would not participate, and fans would watch only the strongest matches between Real, Barcelona, Manchester, Liverpool, Inter, Juventus, and others week after week.
The pandemic financially drained these giants, making this exclusive competition, which had been discussed in elite football circles for some time since the last century, a matter of necessity. However, the resistance they encountered was unexpected. UEFA immediately threatened that players from the breakaway clubs would not participate in competitions under its auspices, including the European Championship.
UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin stated that for him, Andrea Agnelli, then president of Juventus and from one of the most powerful Italian families, owners of Fiat and Ferrari, no longer existed. Čeferin is the godfather to Agnelli’s daughter. Almost the entire football community joined the protest, from clubs to associations, and then journalists, analysts, and politicians. The then Prime Minister of England, Boris Johnson, was saving his tarnished reputation by stating that the Government does not support such a cartel association that acts against the fundamental principles of competition.
After two days, fans took to the streets and blocked the entrance of the bus with Chelsea players to the stadium, making it clear that the Super League had no future, and the giants announced their withdrawal from the project, one by one, until only three remained: Juventus, Barcelona, and Real Madrid, whose president Florentino Perez also presided over the entire project.
Meanwhile, some media reports emerged that the Super League had the support of Gianni Infantino and FIFA, but when the president of the governing football organization finally stated that he strongly opposed the project, those speculations were quickly forgotten. Only then did the president of the Spanish La Liga, Javier Tebas, express serious doubts regarding Infantino and that he was concerned about his role in the whole story.
The Super League that Overturned the Football Order
The idea of the Super League disappeared from the public space, but the remaining trio, now under the leadership of A22 Sports Management, a company that took on the task of redefining the project, continued to develop the story and occasionally, subtly, conveyed that the Super League was not dead. A significant victory occurred in December 2023, when the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg ruled that FIFA and UEFA acted unlawfully when they threatened the founding clubs of the Super League and that they exploited their dominant position.
Perez then stated that freedom had won and that no one would have the right to a monopoly over football anymore. Gianni Infantino said that, with due respect to the Court, the decision changes nothing and that FIFA, as has always been the case, will continue to organize the best competitions in the world. The following year, when Agnelli had already stepped down from the club, Juventus also withdrew from the Super League. Real Madrid sought compensation from UEFA, and the saga ended early this year when Barcelona and Real, as the last duo, reached a settlement with UEFA and left the project after five years of legal disputes.
After the recently concluded World Cup in the United States, Gianni Infantino announced that FIFA, which is, by the way, registered as a non-profit organization, is establishing a subsidiary « FIFA Forward Enterprise, » of which 20 percent would be sold to external investors.
From Protector of Football to Double Agent
It was the day when all of Europe turned against Infantino and FIFA. UEFA took the front line, threatening to boycott FIFA competitions. Until yesterday, FIFA and UEFA were spoken of in the same context, as those standing against the privatization of football, and now UEFA positioned itself against FIFA as it once did against those who wanted the largest piece of the pie for themselves. Fans, analysts, and politicians rose against Infantino, and the English Prime Minister, this time fresh Andy Burnham, built his reputation by stating that he believes Infantino is not the right person to lead football on a global level.
Various media began digging up all sorts of information about Infantino, and then the English Guardian recently published that it had obtained a FIFA document from October 2020, revealing that Infantino and the organization he presides over were deeply involved in the planning of the Super League and that FIFA was to receive its share in the new competition, which would give it the right to decide on the format, calendar, distribution of money, and the people running the company. The Super League was launched six months after this alleged document, so it is unclear what FIFA’s role was just before the launch of the infamously failed project.
Considering the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union from 2023, which opened the doors of the football industry to new players and to which Infantino himself contributed with his alleged involvement in the Super League, the FIFA president presumably thought that his new project would find fertile ground. However, when Donald Trump called Infantino a week earlier after the match with Bosnia and Herzegovina and requested the cancellation of the red card for Folarin Balogun, and FIFA fulfilled that order, Infantino’s reputation irretrievably vanished, and only one last move awaited the FIFA president to bury himself. Then it happened that the president of the governing football organization announced that he was selling part of FIFA to Thrive Capital, a company owned by Josh Kushner, brother of Trump’s daughter Ivanka’s husband.
The Alliance with Trump that Changed Everything
The story of Infantino and Trump is grotesque and begins during Trump’s first presidential term when the United States was awarded the hosting of the 2026 World Cup. It was a time when no one took Trump seriously and long before almost the entire world would bow to him in the new normal universe a few years later. In 2018, Infantino came to the White House with record viewership numbers from Russia, and Trump, in his next statement, said everything we need to know about his first term: « Let’s see how it will be in 2026. I won’t be here. They might extend my term, because if they don’t, the media will be very boring.
Meanwhile, Trump experienced a sort of resurrection and appeared in 2024 in the American elections as the leader of the new world, smoothly securing another four years in Washington. How much he has ramped up in the meantime is best shown by statements in which he often mentions his third term as an option, despite the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution from 1951, which stipulates that no person can be elected more than twice.
However, since his inauguration, to which everyone who is worth something tried to squeeze in, and where Infantino found himself alongside the most powerful people in the world, from Musk, Bezos, Altman, and those who overnight became Republicans like Zuckerberg, until today, Trump’s popularity has only declined. When at the beginning of 2025 Trump named Infantino the king of football, fans wondered where that was leading, but Trump still had a solid 47 percent of Americans supporting him.
At the end of the same year, he called him one of the greatest people in sports, and more and more people were willing to argue with Trump and say that perhaps Leo Messi was greater. Ou Michael Jordan. Usain Bolt, Novak Djokovic. Déjà quelqu’un d’eux. Lorsque, en décembre de l’année dernière, Infantino a récompensé le blessé Trump, qui malgré une auto-promotion sans précédent n’a pas reçu le Prix Nobel de la paix, avec un prix FIFA de consolation pour, comme il l’a dit, un engagement exceptionnel et extraordinaire dans la promotion de la paix et de l’unité dans le monde, le soutien de Trump était déjà tombé à 36 pour cent.
Quelques semaines après la Coupe du Monde, qui devait être le sommet de leurs huit longues années de coopération sportive, Infantino et Trump vivaient leurs pires jours en termes de popularité. Malgré le fait que le public du football n’a généralement pas de droits de vote aux États-Unis, les fans de football sont un public extrêmement reconnaissant dans de nombreuses situations.
Europe contre le reste du monde
Bien qu’il ait d’abord semblé qu’il n’y avait pas de salut pour Infantino et que le monde entier du football s’était retourné contre lui après le plan de vente des actions de la FIFA, la situation s’est cristallisée et a montré que seule l’UEFA et l’Europe sont unies contre Infantino jusqu’à la fin. Sur tous les autres continents, les associations nationales de football sont divisées en ce qui concerne le soutien au président de la FIFA, révélant une fracture potentiellement profonde entre le football européen et le reste du monde. L’Europe n’a pas été impressionnée par la proposition selon laquelle chacune des 211 associations nationales recevrait de l’argent si le projet était réalisé, tandis que de nombreux pays du monde l’étaient.
L’Afrique et l’Amérique du Sud sont les plus grands alliés d’Infantino, tandis qu’il a probablement été le plus affecté par le fait que l’organe dirigeant de l’Amérique du Nord et centrale, où il avait construit des amitiés pendant les huit dernières années, a rejoint l’Europe et l’Asie dans une lettre ouverte appelant à son départ du poste. Javier Tebas, depuis le début de l’histoire, a également pris la parole. Il dit que l’ère d’Infantino est terminée et se demande comment le reste du monde réalise seulement maintenant quel genre de leadership c’est.
Ainsi, il semble que les affaires américaines n’ont pas réussi à infiltrer le football européen après tout. Une petite blague. Onze des 20 clubs de la Premier League anglaise sont détenus par des Américains, y compris Arsenal, Chelsea et Manchester United. Beaucoup de ces propriétaires possèdent également quelques clubs de la NBA, NFL, NHL et d’autres ligues sportives américaines de type fermé qui rappellent toutes ce que la Super League européenne était censée être. Les dernières nouvelles disent qu’une participation à Liverpool est achetée par Jeff Bezos et Eduardo Saverin, co-fondateur de Facebook.
