It began, as so much of this presidency does, with a handshake and a trophy.
President Donald J. Trump is quietly pressing to install FIFA President Gianni Infantino as the next secretary-general of the United Nations — a remarkable idea born of a friendship forged in the carnival glare of the World Cup, and one that, if it succeeds, would place a Swiss soccer administrator at the helm of the world's largest diplomatic body.
The president, according to a source close to the White House, believes the 56-year-old Infantino "is respected by everyone around the world, and recognizes he has a special ability to bring people together."
It is a striking vote of confidence — and, to Trump's mind, a stroke of genius.
Only President Trump could have such a genius idea.
— Paolo Zampolli, US special envoy for global partnerships
The bond between the two men hardened across a year of shared spectacle. Infantino, a Swiss-Italian lawyer who has run world soccer's governing body since 2016, bent over backward to charm Trump through the sprawling enterprise of staging the 2026 World Cup. He brought golden trophies to the White House. He stood beside the president at glittering draws. And last December, at a ceremony in Washington, he bestowed upon Trump the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize — a consolation, of sorts, after the president's repeated and fruitless campaigns for the Nobel.
A vacancy, and an opening
The United Nations will elect a new secretary-general this year to succeed António Guterres of Portugal, the weary former prime minister who steps down at the end of December after two terms navigating an institution beset by gridlock and war.
To claim the post, Infantino would need the endorsement of the 15-member Security Council — where the five permanent members each hold a veto — followed by confirmation by the General Assembly. It is a gantlet that has humbled far more conventional candidates.
Yet Trump senses an opening. One insider, surveying the declared field, dismissed it crisply as seven "lame" contenders. The best-known include Chile's socialist former president Michelle Bachelet, who could trip on American resistance, and Argentina's Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who might stir British unease over the disputed Falkland Islands.
The geography of the job
By tradition, the post rotates, loosely, by region. It has been more than four decades since Latin America last held it — the elegant Peruvian diplomat Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, who served from 1982 to 1991.
Trump's concept would upend the anticipated selection of a candidate from Latin America or the Caribbean. But multiple sources familiar with the discussions say that soft geographic convention would not necessarily bar Infantino, and that he could attract several nominations in addition to Trump's own.
Whether Infantino wants the job at all — and how directly Trump has raised it with him — remains unclear. The FIFA president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the United Nations, you have to deal with 193 member states. In FIFA, there are over 200 members — and Gianni's great record shows he knows how to manage.
— Paolo Zampolli
An envoy's enthusiasm
No one close to the idea has championed it more warmly than Paolo Zampolli, the Italian-American businessman and diplomat serving as Trump's special envoy for global partnerships — and a personal friend of Infantino's who once served as ambassador to the UN for the island nation of Dominica.
Zampolli told I News Australia that Infantino "would do a great job," is "liked by everybody," and could bring fresh energy to the sprawling UN bureaucracy — deploying sport, as he has at FIFA, to build new bridges and inspire the young and the poor across the developing world.
"There is some similarity" between the two roles, Zampolli said. "At the United Nations, you have to deal with 193 member states. In FIFA, there are over 200 members, and Gianni's great record shows he knows how to manage."
Zampolli spent time with Infantino at last weekend's World Cup final in New Jersey but said they did not discuss the concept — and that he was surprised to learn of it.
Trump, the UN, and a restless presidency
The push carries the unmistakable imprint of a president who has long regarded the United Nations with a mix of frustration and ambition. Trump has fumed at what he sees as the institution's paralysis in the face of the world's major conflicts, and last year stood up a new US-led Board of Peace that drew whispers he was building a rival organization — even as he brokered ceasefires, including between Israel and Hamas.
Trump denied the parallel, insisting he hopes the UN will take a more active role. Since returning to the White House, he has nonetheless slashed American contributions to the organization and pulled the United States from a string of its bodies, among them the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the UN Human Rights Council.
Installing a friendly figure at the very top — one he knows, one he trusts, one who handed him a peace prize — could quietly repair the frayed relationship between Washington and the institution it hosts.
The price of public service
There would be, should it come to pass, a steep pay cut. Infantino earns roughly $6 million a year at FIFA, a sum that places him among the best-paid executives in sport. The secretary-general's recently reported compensation amounts to about $418,000.
There is also the matter of his day job. Infantino has already declared his candidacy for re-election as FIFA president, a selection process that concludes next March. He has lined up endorsements from nearly all of FIFA's 211 member associations.
But the road has grown bumpier. Trump's intervention on behalf of the American team — a phone call to overturn the one-match suspension of forward Folarin Balogun ahead of the game against Belgium — outraged European nations. The subsequent American loss blunted the fallout, yet the episode lingers.
Among those now clamoring for Infantino's ouster is Sepp Blatter, the disgraced former FIFA president whose own tenure collapsed under the bribery scandal that awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
None of which, in Trump's telling, diminishes the man he met under a shower of gold confetti. To the president, the Swiss soccer boss with the global Rolodex may be precisely the figure to shake the glass tower on the East River from its long, dignified slumber.
