The 2026 World Cup was supposed to be FIFA’s comeback party. Instead, it’s turning into a governance nightmare, and the heat is now coming from both sides of the Atlantic.
On Wednesday, the European Parliament officially called for an investigation into FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s handling of the tournament. According to a report from Madrid Zone via ESPN, EU lawmakers are accusing Infantino of violating the principle of sporting neutrality. They’re specifically pointing to recent changes in FIFA’s disciplinary protocols, which they described as a perversion of justice.
Those same lawmakers are now lobbying national football associations to push the FIFA Ethics Committee into auditing Infantino’s inner circle. The question they want answered: did FIFA bend its own rules under political pressure, specifically around fair play standards?
The backchannel that broke everything
This legal pressure comes on top of a far more explosive story. The New York Times confirmed that former U.S. President Donald Trump directly contacted Infantino to request an immediate review of a red card issued to U.S. star forward Folarin Balogun during a match against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Balogun was facing a mandatory suspension. Trump’s team reportedly brought in elite lawyers to argue that referee Raphael Claus relied on unauthorized slow-motion VAR replays.
FIFA’s executive branch hasn’t said a word about the outreach. But the fact that political intervention apparently prevented a mandatory sports ban has triggered a serious internal crisis. Multiple sources inside the organization describe the situation as a breaking point.
It’s a bad look for an organization that spent the last decade trying to scrub the stain of the 2015 racketeering and corruption scandals that gutted its executive ranks. Infantino has worked hard to present an image of stability. But when BBC sports editor Dan Roan asked him last week if he had lost control of the tournament, Infantino told him to calm down and relax.
That response hasn’t aged well.
The European Parliament’s move isn’t binding, but it carries real political weight. If national associations start pulling support, the Ethics Committee could face pressure it hasn’t dealt with since the corruption days. And with Trump’s intervention now public, the question isn’t whether Infantino can control the narrative anymore. It’s whether he can control the organization at all.
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