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POLITICO

How the World Cup became Trump’s trophy

n June 2018, the architects of the United Bid gathered for the last time in London, which a month earlier had become the base for their campaign to sell the world on the first-ever World Cup shared by three countries. The following morning, they would hand over their cell phones as a security precaution before boarding a flight to Moscow, where the 211 members of FIFA were primed to vote on whether to place its 2026 tournament jointly in Mexico, Canada and the United States. Eight years earlier, soccer’s governing body had voted to award its 2022 showcase to Qatar — a tiny desert nation with not a single stadium ready for World Cup play and summer temperatures exceeding 100 degrees — over the favored United States. The result stunned American soccer executives and triggered years of bitterness, suspicion and eventually federal investigations that helped bring down much of FIFA’s old leadership structure. In a private room at the River Cafe on the north bank of the River Thames, those who had spent years plotting an American comeback participated in a ritual that carried the feel of a closing dinner before a decisive battle. Over plates of Italian food and wine, they reflected on what would be at stake in Moscow — a referendum on the United States’ place in the world of soccer. “We didn’t know for sure what the outcome was going to be,” said Neil Buethe, then-chief communications officer at the U.S. Soccer Federation. “We felt strongly that if North America hosted 2026 we would put on the biggest and best World Cup ever, but we didn’t know for certain if the rest of the world thought the same.” Now, eight years after that dinner in London, FIFA has kicked off a tournament far larger than any it has ever hosted before — a 48-team, three-country competition that is stretching from Guadalajara to Vancouver to the Meadowlands. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to join FIFA President Gianni Infantino in Los Angeles Friday to watch the United States play its opening match against Paraguay. The decade-long maneuvering to bring the World Cup back to the United States represented a venture in trilateral cooperation just as other relations with Mexico and Canada were growing more fractious than they had been in recent memory. The unlikely success of that collaboration transformed the internal politics of FIFA, became a defining aspect of President Donald Trump’s second term and may permanently change the way the U.S. government participates in sporting mega-events. This insider account of the long road to the 2026 World Cup is drawn from interviews with organizers and government officials, some of whom were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations, along with internal documents and contemporaneous notes reviewed by POLITICO. This is the story of how the U.S. government broke FIFA and then helped build the organization back into something even bigger and more politically powerful than before. CHAPTER 1 Death in Zurich The Americans were optimistic as they trekked through snow to enter the Messe Zurich convention center on Dec. 2, 2010. The two dozen members of the U.S. bid team took their seats in bleachers from which they would watch a consequential vote that would determine the trajectory of the sport for years to come. Days earlier, a delegation — including executives from U.S. Bid Committee, the U.S. Soccer Federation and Major League Soccer — had presented the American case to FIFA’s leadership in the auditorium of the organization’s dungeon-like headquarters. There were four other countries in the competition, all from soccer’s Asian region: Australia, Japan, South Korea and Qatar. The bid was the result of two years’ work by the American bid committee, which had selected 18 U.S. cities that had the stadium facilities as prospective hosts. The bid’s technical advantage was never in doubt: The United States had shown it could stage a successful World Cup in 1994, and possessed a surfeit of the large stadiums and big-city hotel rooms along with the headquarters of many of FIFA’s leading corporate sponsors. The Americans were so confident with their chances that they arrived in Zurich already having booked a celebration venue, a restaurant bar within walking distance of the luxury Baur au Lac hotel which served as FIFA’s de-facto headquarters when foreign soccer officials were in town. The decision rested with FIFA’s executive committee, a collection of 24 power brokers elected or appointed by their respective continental federations who would make the choice via secret ballot. It was a structure that critics had long alleged made vote trading and corruption easy. In fact, two of the committee’s members had already been suspended from the 2022 vote after a London newspaper reported allegations that they had solicited bribes in exchange for their votes in the World Cup selection process. The U.S. Bid Committee treated its presentation as a show of political force. Former President Bill Clinton, who was in office during the last World Cup in the U.S., led the delegation as non-executive chair, joined by Attorney General Eric Holder. The 88-year-old former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a huge soccer fan who had played a crucial role promoting the 1994 tournament, was honorary chair of the bid. (He did not travel to Zurich for the final vote, but spoke of wanting to attend the 2022 tournament at almost 100.) Then-President Barack Obama had written to then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter with childhood memories of playing soccer while living in Indonesia as a way of expressing support for the U.S. to again host. But when Blatter opened the envelope with the results of the executive-committee vote that had been taken earlier in the day at FIFA headquarters, some members of the U.S. team thought they had misheard him. Celebratory screams came immediately from the Qatari delegation seated nearby. A shocked U.S. delegation decamped to the restaurant where they had planned to celebrate because the alcohol had already been purchased. Then Clinton and actor Morgan Freeman went to a smaller group dinner at the Savoy Hotel. “It was so sad. It was like a death,” said Buethe. “Nobody was really talking at first.” Later in his hotel room, Clinton reached for an ornament on a table and threw it at a wall mirror in a fit of rage, shattering the glass, the Telegraph reported. It was hard to know where the U.S. bid had gone wrong. Obama received a courtesy call a few days before the vote and was told the U.S. was likely to lose, according to a FIFA insider’s memoir, but the result caught most of the bid team by total surprise. All the Americans knew was that they had lost 14 votes to 8. “I was undecided with whether I never wanted to see these people ever again, because we had a pretty good idea of what had happened,” said U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati. “Or if I want to start bidding the next hour.” CHAPTER 2 The rat in Trump Tower Events over the next year would feed American suspicions that the vote to award the 2022 tournament had never been fully on the level. In June 2011, one of the architects of Qatar’s bid was booted from FIFA’s presidential elections after whistleblowers alleged he had attempted to bribe 24 Caribbean delegates for their votes, offering unmarked brown envelopes containing $40,000 cash each. Most Read The revelations opened up a wide-ranging probe of corruption in global soccer. FIFA Vice President Jack Warner resigned in 2011, threatening a “tsunami” of revelations and was later accused of receiving $1.65 million from Asian Football Confederation President Mohammed bin Hammam, which Warner denied influenced his vote. FIFA responded by establishing a series of governance initiatives intended to restore confidence in the organization. Between 2011 and 2013, the organization created committees, task forces and an Independent Governance Committee, but the core power remained concentrated around Blatter and the Executive Committee. U.S. officials criticized the narrow set of reforms that were implemented as cosmetic. The United States made reform a litmus test during the next campaign for FIFA’s presidency, making it clear the United States would put itself forward as a World Cup host again only if there were changes that made the process more transparent and accountable. Gulati, a former World Bank economist, pushed for commitments that would oblige FIFA to abide by its technical standards on issues like stadium capacity along with public disclosure of how each country voted. In May 2015, American soccer officials threw their support behind a challenge to Blatter. Carlos Cordeiro, then a vice president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, worked for the campaign of Jordanian Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein. “We knew it would hurt us going against the favorite,” Gulati said of his federation’s decision to support Al-Hussein rather than Blatter. “There are some things more important than hosting a World Cup.” But Blatter would not remain in office long. In the early morning hours of May 27, 2015, Swiss police arrived at the Baur au Lac, where top FIFA officials had gathered for the organization’s annual congress. Guests awoke to flashing lights outside the lakeside hotel as plainclothes officers escorted bleary-eyed soccer executives through the lobby and into waiting vehicles. The police were, it soon became clear, working at the behest of the U.S. government. Later that day, at a Brooklyn press conference, Attorney General Loretta Lynch released a 47-count indictment against 14 defendants, accusing senior FIFA-linked officials of racketeering, wire fraud and decades of systemic bribery tied to marketing rights and international tournaments. The key to the five-year Eastern District of New York investigation was Chuck Blazer, a longtime American soccer executive who occupied two Trump Tower apartments, one reportedly just for his cats. After coming under scrutiny for tax evasion and financial misconduct, he pleaded guilty in 2013 and became an FBI informant as they probed world soccer’s financial workings. Blazer covertly recorded conversations with fellow soccer officials, helping prosecutors expose a culture in which bribes and backroom deals were treated as routine business. While the initial U.S. indictment announced by Lynch the day of the Zurich raid focused largely on marketing and media-rights corruption, subsequent probes — including one initiated by Swiss authorities — came to focus on the process FIFA used to choose World Cup host countries. Blatter went on to win reelection for FIFA president that Friday, May 29, before resigning the following Monday, as it became clear the investigation would continue and even widen. Blatter’s resignation set up a wide-open race for FIFA’s presidency early the next year. Subsequent indictments revealed that executive-committee votes to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar had been tainted by vote-buying. Within days of the raid, FIFA suspended the 2026 World Cup bidding process, arguing that it was impossible to proceed with another host-selection process while the process was under such scrutiny. In December 2015, FIFA’s Reform Committee issued a 12-page blueprint for overhauling the organization, including by replacing the Executive Committee with an expanded FIFA Council. Over the next year, the organization fundamentally reshaped the World Cup bidding process. The 2026 host would be chosen by all 211 member associations, replacing a system in which a small group of executives made the decision. The logic was simple: Influencing the larger, more diverse electorate would be far more difficult than swaying a handful of insiders. Bid requirements became more rigorous, while disclosure, transparency and ethics rules were tightened. “FIFA underwent deep-rooted governance and management reforms over the last decade with a clear focus on transparency and on its mandate to develop football all around the world,” the organization said in an emailed statement. Infantino, a Swiss-Italian lawyer who had helped lead soccer’s European confederation, used his work on the reform committee as a launchpad for a run to succeed Blatter. The United States went into the February 2016 vote again backing Prince Ali, but he finished a distant third in the first round. The U.S. then threw its support to Infantino, triggering a stampede from other countries in the hemisphere, helping deliver a conclusive 115-vote majority. A fourth candidate, former French diplomat Jérome Champagne, attributed Infantino’s victory to “a strong alliance between Europe and North America and the Anglo-Saxon world.” One of Infantino’s earliest moves was leading the newly created FIFA Council to block European and Asian confederation members from bidding again so soon after Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup and Qatar the 2022 tournament. The move eliminated half the potential host countries, and dramatically tilted the odds in favor of the World Cup returning to North America. CHAPTER 3 A coalition of the willing In May 2016, FIFA gathered in Mexico City for its first annual congress under Infantino’s leadership. For the Americans, whose interest in seeking the tournament again had been satisfied by FIFA’s reforms, the Mexico City gathering represented a chance to cultivate support for an entirely different theory for how to win hosting rights. “We knew we could host it alone, but a combined bid would be stronger,” Gulati later acknowledged. Joining with Canada and Mexico had both a practical and symbolic logic. Given the potential importance of regional blocs under the new voting system, three federations would have a stronger chance together than if they competed against one another. There also could be something powerful about seeing the United States partnering with its neighbors as a time then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was questioning whether the country should even bother with NATO, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal or Paris Climate Agreement. That case was made by Canadian Soccer Association President Victor Montagliani, who argued that a multi-country bid would be more politically attractive to FIFA than a purely American one. There was some opportunism to the argument: Canada lacked the capacity to mount a competitive bid for a men’s World Cup of its own, and a partnership with the United States was likely the only route to getting one in the near future. “Victor’s comments, which pulled some truth, literally was: ‘Listen, you guys aren’t particularly liked around the world,’” said Gulati. “Canada, on the diplomatic level, was more well-liked.” The Mexicans had different considerations. Gulati’s negotiating partner, Emilio Azcárraga Jean, was chair of the powerful mass-media company Televisa, and he had a patrimony that spoke to Mexico’s experience around the World Cup. Azcárraga’s father had served as local organizing committee chair for two World Cups, and Azcárraga sat atop the company that owned Estadio Azteca, the Mexico City stadium that had hosted Pelé’s Brazil team in 1970 and Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal in 1986. As Azcárraga stood next to Gulati on the pitch of one of the most iconic venues in soccer history, he mentioned to Gulati that he wanted any jointly hosted tournament’s opening match to take place there. Gulati jokingly threatened to walk away from the entire bid, leaving the Mexicans to coordinate with the Canadians alone, if Azcárraga insisted again. “You guys can do it together,” Gulati recalled telling Azcárraga, “but you can’t use American airspace either.” But the three countries still had to determine the internal balance of power between them in a joint bid. Gulati, Montagliani and Mexican Federation President Decio de María — who had taken over for Azcárraga as his country’s point person in the negotiations — debated how many matches would take place in each country. During the only other jointly hosted World Cup, in 2002, Japan and South Korea split the schedule evenly. Over the next few months, on the sidelines of soccer-governance meetings in Zurich, Hawaii and Aruba, representatives of the three countries came to an agreement: Three-quarters of the tournament matches would go to the United States, including all decisive contests in the quarterfinals and beyond. In April, the countries’ soccer officials decided they were ready to tell the world that the United States, Mexico and Canada would jointly pursue the 2026 World Cup. They scrambled to secure a venue for an event that would give the appearance of a carefully orchestrated international announcement. But the off-stage politics were more complicated, especially as Trump entered 2017 planning to withdraw from the primary vehicle for cooperation between the U.S. and its neighbors — the quarter-century-old North American Free Trade Agreement — and spent the year sparring with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. A single negative comment from Trump about partnering with them on the World Cup could easily torpedo the bid. Gulati asked Boston sports executive Bob Kraft, a Trump friend, to make introductions to White House staff so he could brief the administration on the intention to mount a joint bid. Gulati explained that the bid process was more transparent under FIFA’s new leadership, and stood a greater chance of success than the effort to win the 2018 cup had. The White House designated Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to serve as its point person on the effort, and the bid committee began to prepare monthly updates on its progress to the White House. “The president of the United States is fully supportive,” Gulati declared from a stage on the 102nd-floor observatory of One World Trade Center days later. “He is especially pleased that Mexico is a part of this bid, and in the last few days we’ve gotten further encouragement on that. We are not at all concerned about some of the issues that other people may raise. We looked at bidding alone and decided in the end, we wanted to bid with our partners in North America and we have strong encouragement from President Trump to that end.” CHAPTER 4 Campaign kickoff Veterans of the failed bid for the 2018 tournament returned to the Midtown Manhattan headquarters of Major League Soccer to begin the process of preparing a new bid. They were under a far more grueling timeline than the previous effort, which had taken more than two years to prepare. It had generated tens of thousands of contracts, thousands of pages of technical documents and countless political negotiations. This time there would be just eight months, the result of an “expedited” bidding process imposed by FIFA even as it expanded the tournament in search of greater revenue opportunities: increasing the number of teams from 32 to 48, doubling the number of required venues from eight to 16. The North Americans named their project the United Bid. The ultimate product it would present to FIFA would be a prospectus known as a “bid book” — a sales and marketing pitch for the three-country project filled with data addressing FIFA’s technical requirements around issues like transportation infrastructure and stadium accessibility. For months, the United Bid proceeded without any competition. Then, on the August 2017 date that FIFA set as a deadline for countries to express interest, that changed. Morocco entered the fray, and while the country would go months without disclosing much about its plans, the North Americans knew it would rely on promises of ambitious stadium construction and new infrastructure plans they did not intend to match. For John Kristick, who had been managing director of the bid in 2010, memories of losing out to Qatar had never fully passed. He had moved on to a successful career at WPP, the global advertising giant, where a copy of the 2022 bid book sat on a shelf in his office. Photographs from the experience still hung on the walls. “They taunted me every day,” he recalled. The team working on the bid resembled a presidential campaign crossed with an Olympic organizing committee. Former FIFA competitions executive Jim Brown became managing director, an Al Gore speechwriter named Brian Reich took charge of communications, and former manager of stadium operations for the 1994 World Cup Tim Larkin led on stadiums. Around them grew an ecosystem of lawyers, lobbyists, communications operatives, stadium consultants and city officials. One internal presentation described the operation as encompassing more than 750 people across dozens of cities, who had to commit as prospective hosts before the bid book itself could be drafted. “The democracy that we live in required us to essentially marshal that out across the federal government. It’s not like any one signature. It’s a series of commitments and we had to do the same in Canada and Mexico,” Cordeiro said. After losing the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, many of the people involved in the American bid assumed it would be difficult to persuade cities to sign up. The failed campaign had consumed years of work. Mayors had held press conferences. Sports commissions had spent money. Local organizers had rallied business leaders and stadium owners. Then they had all watched FIFA hand the tournament to Qatar. Kristick worried that many cities would simply refuse to go through the process again. It was a weariness matched among United Bid strategists whose lingering distrust of FIFA led them to wonder whether anyone in Zurich would actually care about the hotel-occupancy rates detailed in their bid book. “We didn’t trust the competence or the process,” recalled a senior participant in the bid. “I didn’t think their reforms were serious reforms.” One moment stuck with that person, who traveled to FIFA headquarters in Zurich as preparations for the 2026 process slowly took shape. At one meeting, FIFA officials proudly introduced outside auditors sitting at the end of the table who were supposedly monitoring the integrity of the process. Then the meeting broke for coffee and a smoke break. “And the auditors disappeared for a break, too,” the person recalled. “The whole thing was so obviously window-dressing.” CHAPTER 5 The idiot ratio Kristick’s first call was to Dallas, which had hosted matches at the Cotton Bowl in 1994. He was surprised by the speed with which Monica Paul, the longtime executive who led the city’s sports commission and had been part of the failed 2022 effort, said “We’re in.” The response repeated itself across North America, with more than 50 cities across the continent expressing preliminary interest in hosting matches, an enthusiasm that reflected how much the sport had changed since 2010. Major League Soccer had grown significantly, through television audiences and attendance in dedicated stadiums across the country. Soccer finally felt like a sport of the American present, rather than of its perpetual future, and the World Cup no longer a speculative investment. Representatives from 32 candidate cities, a mix of sports administrators and city managers, descended on Houston in November 2017 for a host-city conference, in which United Bid staffers laid out a set of contractual requirements that FIFA treated as rigid and nonnegotiable. (The documents outlining those standards had arrived from Zurich later than expected, compressing an already impossible schedule.) Cities had to commit to sweeping legal guarantees, transportation obligations, stadium modifications and security arrangements, while indemnifying FIFA against potentially enormous liabilities. In other words, if something went wrong during the tournament, FIFA wanted cities to absorb much of the risk. “It was sort of take it or leave it with FIFA,” one person involved in the process said. The cities wanted to know what was in the contracts and whether they should sign them, cycling through a conference room in a series of hourlong meetings with United Bid personnel that another participant likened to “speed dating.” “We were the intermediary between the cities on the one hand and FIFA on the other,” said Michael Kuh, the bid’s top attorney, who now leads the sports practice at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. “I just kept telling the cities that if they wanted to participate they would have to take a leap of faith, which is advice lawyers only reserve for rare occasions.” Three of the five finalists for the 2024 Olympics, whose countries had already spent millions to get that far, abandoned their bids before the final selection was made, in two cases (Hamburg and Budapest) once voters expressed their disapproval in referenda. Already, American candidate city Boston had withdrawn after activists aroused popular opposition. Municipal officials returned to their cities from Houston having to sell elected officials on why they should buck that trend. Some simply struggled to explain why taxpayers should assume enormous risks without a clear guarantee of financial return. Over time, some cities dropped out. Others revolted at the terms. Chicago, which carried scars from another failed international bid, did both. In 2009, the city had mounted an expensive campaign to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Obama had personally lobbied the International Olympic Committee to bring its games to his hometown. Nonetheless, the city was eliminated in the first round of voting. Years later, Chicago officials remained skeptical of global sporting organizations and the promises they made. Chicago had sent its representatives to Houston, where they offered assurances the city would join the bid. But when the contractual documents were returned to the United Bid office, they included handwritten caveats next to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s signature. “Chicago would take all the risk and FIFA would get 60 percent of the reward,” said Emanuel, who served as Obama’s chief of staff in 2009 before becoming mayor. “Only idiots do transactions with those ratios.” FIFA disputes the characterization that host cities were asked to shoulder disproportionate risk. A FIFA spokesperson said host cities were responsible for a defined set of obligations, and noted that host cities in all three host countries received government assistance. The spokesperson added that FIFA is covering expenses including stadium and venue rentals, temporary infrastructure, power requirements, broadcasting operations, private security and venue operations. FIFA also emphasized that, unlike many previous World Cups, the 2026 tournament requires little new infrastructure investment because existing stadiums are being used largely in their current configuration. When Emanuel was told that such changes would not pass muster with FIFA, he eventually withdrew the city from the process, releasing a public statement that criticized the bid and FIFA. United Bid strategists worried about the potential precedent: If one city publicly rejected FIFA’s terms, others might follow, throwing the entire bid into jeopardy. “We were only as strong as our weakest link,” said Kristick, who assuaged the anxieties of another U.S. city that considered withdrawing after Chicago did. Kristick declined to name the city. Vancouver, which had withstood an organized left-wing opposition to its decision to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, had its own qualms. The provincial government of British Columbia, which controlled the BC Place stadium, worried about exposure to financial risk. Vancouver asked for an extension, and got one. Vancouver promised the paperwork was coming, but nothing made it to New York. As the late January deadline approached to finalize the 1,000-page bid book, officials printed out two different versions: one including Vancouver as a host city and one without. A bid official was relieved to finally find a package from Vancouver arrive by mail. But when he opened it, every document was unsigned. Months of negotiations had ended with a box full of blank paperwork. “It wasn’t just that they declined to participate,” the official recalled years later. “It felt like a real ‘fuck you.’” The bid book, sans Vancouver, was organized along with other necessary components of the United Bid submission. One was a letter from the U.S. State Department authorizing visa access in compliance with requirements set by FIFA, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had signed and dated on March 12. By the time it arrived, via FedEx, the next morning in New York, Tillerson had been fired by Trump via Twitter. Signing the official bid was likely Tillerson’s last act as secretary of State. Chapter 6 The battle against Morocco The American play to become a soccer power was derailed by an on-field defeat. The men’s national team lost to Trinidad and Tobago in their final match of the World Cup qualifying campaign in October 2017, denying the United States a spot at the sport’s leading tournament for the first time since 1986. The shock result caused a leadership crisis at U.S. Soccer, the nonprofit federation that serves as the sport’s governing body in the United States. Facing criticism for the team’s failure, Gulati — who had served as the federation’s president since 2006 and had spent years laying the groundwork for the 2026 bid — decided not to seek reelection. A wide-open race to be U.S. Soccer’s top official loomed, featuring a number of retired players who promised a break from the status quo. Cordeiro, who had served on the U.S. Soccer board since 2007, was the establishment candidate in an election dominated by reformers promising to blow up the system. When he won the presidency in February 2018, he inherited responsibility for the World Cup bid. Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs executive, knew that the early days of his presidency would be measured on the success of the bid and approached the bid like a high-stakes corporate merger. “There was an intensity shift,” a person working on the bid said of the change in leadership from Gulati to Cordeiro. “Carlos came in and this was going to be his thing. It was helpful in a sense — new energy, new ideas — but it was also a lot.” The day after winning the presidency, Cordeiro flew from Orlando to New York for meetings at Major League Soccer’s offices and onward to Bratislava, where European soccer officials were gathering for a UEFA meeting. There Cordeiro heard something that startled him: The United Bid was in trouble. North American officials felt that they possessed a stronger technical case than Morocco could offer. The United States, Mexico and Canada had stadiums, airports, training sites, hotels, transportation networks and corporate infrastructure — strengths that FIFA’s own revamped process was supposed to reward. “Everybody knew that the infrastructure was going to be very good. All the stadiums were there, all the facilities to train were there, all the hotels were there,” said de María. But Morocco represented serious competition, in part due to geographical advantages. The new process meant that the 2026 vote would be decided by more than 200 national federations rather than a select group of FIFA insiders. Morocco had substantial support from across the more than 50 members of the Confederation of African Football — CONCACAF, which includes North America, had just over 40 — and a foothold in the Middle East. Morocco also seemed to be making inroads in Europe, through appeals based on ties of language, culture and colonial history. France had become one of Morocco’s most important sporting allies in Europe, Cordeiro believed, because French architects, engineers and construction firms stood to benefit from Morocco’s need to build or renovate stadiums and transportation infrastructure. “Europe was the toughest,” Cordeiro recalled. “France was not supporting the U.S. for one particular reason: They saw a unique opportunity to get all the business that would follow had Morocco won.” Cordeiro wanted the bid team to be more proactive in its outreach to the 211 federations who would have a say in who was awarded the World Cup. They started a tracking sheet based on where each country stood: likely United Bid supporters in green, persuadable targets in yellow and likely Morocco backers in red. The vote would be won, Cordeiro believed, in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, with crucial swing votes from the former Soviet bloc split across the regional confederations. The North Americans could argue that their tournament would generate more revenue than any World Cup in history, producing larger distributions for FIFA member nations. But they also knew they could not rely on technical superiority alone, outlined through facts in the bid book. To assuage members who could be worried about the impact of Trump’s policies — especially the travel ban on majority-Muslim nations upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2017 — the United Bid asked Kushner to extract a commitment from Trump about free travel around the World Cup. Over three letters addressed to Infantino, Trump vowed that foreign teams, officials and fans from qualifying countries would face no restrictions entering the United States for the tournament. But Trump’s increasing enthusiasm for securing the World Cup also risked generating backlash. “The U.S. has put together a STRONG bid w/ Canada & Mexico for the 2026 World Cup,” he wrote in an April 26, 2018, social media post. “It would be a shame if countries that we always support were to lobby against the U.S. bid. Why should we be supporting these countries when they don’t support us (including at the United Nations)?” FIFA responded by obliquely pointing out that Trump had likely defied its bidding rules, which are supposed to keep the process immune from external political influence. One member of Morocco’s 2026 bid committee told CNN, “I think the Donald Trump factor is helping Morocco.” If they were going to sell the world on awarding its tournament to Trump’s America, they needed to launch FIFA’s first global political campaign. Chapter 7 The three amigos The campaign had to acknowledge the reality of the Trump era, Cordeiro concluded upon his return from Europe. He envisioned one major messaging shift: The bid that had launched at an iconic New York location would no longer present itself as a U.S.-led effort supported by its smaller neighbors, but as a North American partnership. The three countries would campaign as equals. “We elevated Canada and Mexico presidents to co-chairs as equals with me to demonstrate to the world that this was a truly joint bid,” Cordeiro said. From then on, the bid’s lobbying teams traveled in threes whenever possible: one representative from the United States, one from Mexico and one from Canada. Cordeiro believed the visual mattered, showing skeptical federations that the bid was not simply the United States asking for the World Cup again. “What we were putting together was a North American face in which the three countries can work together,” said de María. The campaign set up its headquarters in London, where strategists tailored regional approaches off the color-coded list. Cordeiro asked Brown, a former FIFA executive with African relationships, to look for places where the United Bid could pick off votes from Morocco on its home continent. In the Maghreb and Francophone Africa, Morocco’s support was locked down, but Brown saw a plausible opening beyond: English-speaking southern Africa, Portuguese-speaking countries and Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea. “Get us 10 to 15 votes,” Cordeiro recalled telling Brown. “That’s all we need.” In Europe, where the bid team had to work beyond France’s sphere of influence, the bid officials tried to get in front of all 55 members of the continental confederation UEFA to make their case. A vote from Montenegro or Malta counted exactly the same as one from Germany. “There was a collective effort not to ignore anybody,” Buethe said. “No one was too small.” For nearly a month, the bid’s leadership team used London as the hub of a global lobbying campaign, dispatching delegations across continents for whirlwind meetings that often lasted just a day before the next flight. At one point, one team met with representatives from four countries in a single day. In Belarus, the delegation arrived without visas and was barred from leaving the airport, so federation officials came to them instead, gathering in a VIP lounge for an impromptu pitch session. The campaign soon became a blur of red-eye flights, hotel conference rooms and federation headquarters, with staffers sometimes learning their next destination only hours before departure. “We’d come back to London and regroup,” Buethe recalled. “Then we’d find out where we were going next.” Personal familiarity with the United States was a huge source of advantage. Foreign officials who had attended American universities reminisced about bars in Washington. Latvian federation president Kaspars Gorkšs, a former captain of the country’s national team, recalled watching the 1994 World Cup as a young player. When Gorkšs invoked Alexi Lalas, the defender who was among the most recognizable members of the U.S. team, Buethe promised to introduce them. The United Bid made its first major breakthrough in the Nordic bloc. In the spring of 2018, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland convened a meeting near the Copenhagen airport to hear from both campaigns.“The fact that the U.S. was prepared to share the World Cup with its two neighbors during a time of heightened political tension was very well received,” Cordeiro said. The Scandinavians endorsed the United Bid, which began a rush of favorable announcements. England was supportive and Germany was, too. As the June 13 vote approached, bid strategists were confident of backing from a majority of the 211 voting members. But after their experience in 2010, they worried about the possibility that some federations would change their vote at the last minute, triggering a rush away from the frontrunner. “You lose a few dozen votes and all of a sudden it’s a tie game,” Cordeiro said. In London, the United Bid delegation prepared for a trip to the FIFA Congress in Moscow, which would take place as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation intensified its focus on the role of Russian security services in the 2016 U.S. election. Security advisers walked delegation members through the process of using burner phones, laptops and hard drives, a routine demand complicated by the large file size of the bid materials themselves. The team, whose members had been spread across the continents, gathered for their farewell dinner the night before they would fly together to Moscow. Cordeiro arrived at River Cafe with a version of deal toys — soccer-themed Hermès ties. He handed one to each of the three federation presidents, who would dress for the FIFA Congress in identical ties but for different national colors: de María in green, Cordeiro in blue and Montagliani in red. The final pitch to the FIFA Congress reflected the United Bid’s delicate navigation of the moment’s politics. Instead of showcasing the countries’ elected leaders — who were then frequently sparring over issues from a border wall to dairy and aluminum tariffs — the presentation featured three young players, one from each country. This time, when Infantino read out the name of the winning bid, there were no surprises: The United Bid carried 134 votes to Morocco’s 65. (In Washington, Kushner’s allies quickly claimed credit for his contributions to winning over Persian Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.) It was not lost on any members of the bid team — who were were delighted when The Washington Post editorial page approvingly called it ”the NAFTA World Cup” — that their undertaking represented the type of cross-border venture that Trump’s vow to sever the continent’s free-trade pact could make a thing of the past. “Prior to this project, Mexico and Canada and the U.S. had the NAFTA agreement, so we worked together for many years with the U.S. and Canada on a commercial basis,” reflected de María. “What we were putting together was a North American face in which the three countries can work together to put together their abilities to handle an event like this.” Chapter 8 Trump takes the field Later that summer, Infantino made the first of what would be many trips to the Oval Office. He presented Trump with a referee’s red card and a soccer jersey emblazoned TRUMP 26, even though it was then unimaginable that Trump would be in office during the year when the tournament took place. Nonetheless, it was clear from the zest with which Trump brandished the red card for the cameras and associated himself with the bidding process — “it only took one call because when I heard ‘World Cup,’ I wanted to do it,” he recounted — that he was ready to claim the tournament as his own. It was a dynamic that would repeat itself just two weeks later, when the 2028 Summer Olympics were formally assigned to Los Angeles. FIFA turned its attention to the 2022 tournament in Qatar, which had to be staged under pandemic conditions (and in the winter due to the country’s hot climate). Meanwhile, North American cities jostled for the right to be one of the 16 that would get to host matches in 2026. In 2022, Montreal withdrew from contention after the provincial government refused to fund stadium renovations, allowing FIFA to replace it with Vancouver, which was also Montagliani’s hometown. (Washington, D.C., also dropped out of contention as a solo city during this period, merging its bid with Baltimore.) While both Mexico and Canada have sports ministries, the United States does not have a major federal office set up to coordinate the country’s participation in global competitions. In 1994, a single national committee run out of the U.S. Soccer Federation served as the domestic organization responsible for actually putting on the World Cup, leasing stadiums and selling tickets. But for the 2026 tournament, FIFA changed its approach. Each of the 11 U.S. cities selected by FIFA in June 2022 to host matches developed an individual contractual relationship with the organization, managed through a so-called host city committee. The set-up gave FIFA, which opened a Miami office to oversee tournament planning, more control and access to match revenue. That left open the question of who would serve as a point of contact for both FIFA and the cities on nationwide policy concerns that were sure to affect tournament planning, touching on security, infrastructure and immigration. Then-President Joe Biden designated Secretary of Cabinet Affairs Evan Ryan to lead an interagency working group that would consider what role there was for the federal government to play. FIFA gingerly attempted to build relationships with Biden, hiring former administration staffers at the lobbying firm Foley & Lardner to help navigate Washington. “There were very early discussions about visas, for example, and how would you go from one country to another country and come back in here,” said Cordeiro, who after resigning from the U.S. Soccer foundation in 2020 joined FIFA as a senior adviser to Infantino and his primary liaison to the U.S. government. When U.S. voters decided to send Trump back to the White House in 2024, Cordeiro saw an opening for a different relationship with the federal government. Infantino joined the trail of world leaders to Mar-a-Lago during the transition period, where he told Trump about the first-ever FIFA Club World Cup that would come to the United States in the summer of 2025 as something of a logistical dry run for the World Cup a year later. The night before Trump’s inauguration, Infantino sat in the audience for a rally in Washington where Trump mentioned him by name five times. During the swearing-in ceremony the next day, Infantino sat just a few rows behind Trump, the rare foreigner visible to television cameras during the transfer of American power. A decade after plans for it were first hatched, the 2026 World Cup would be Trump’s tournament. Chapter 9 Meet me at the Meadowlands In March 2025, Trump welcomed Infantino back to the Oval Office, calling him “the king of soccer.” This time, Infantino was not there just for pleasantries: He had already secured the White House’s commitment on FIFA’s first major procedural demand of his administration. Infantino, who had overseen tournaments in Russia and Qatar, was used to dealing with a strong central authority in World Cup host countries rather than 11 different private-sector entities in communities as different as Boston, Miami and Kansas City. When Infantino asked Trump in early 2025 to establish a body within the White House that would lead the federal government’s role in World Cup preparations, the president immediately agreed. Trump appointed Andrew Giuliani, a former pro golfer, failed New York gubernatorial candidate and son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to lead the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup. The body included Cabinet secretaries from the departments of State, Transportation and Homeland Security, where it set up an office to coordinate efforts across government at all levels. “I think it’s really helpful that the decision-makers in that room are also task force members,” Giuliani told POLITICO in January of the complexities of preparing to welcome millions of visitors with global conflicts going on. The task force ensured that host cities could access the $625 million in security funding in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” through a grant program managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It worked with the Pentagon to organize tabletop exercises anticipating security threats and FBI on counter-drone training for local law enforcement officials. “The task force did one thing for us,” said a FIFA official, “which was it gave us a credibility that we didn’t have and a visibility that we didn’t have before this administration.” Infantino, meanwhile, embarked on his own efforts to win over the American political class. Repeating the mantra “You have to be local to be global,” he set off on a campaign-style tour barnstorming governors’ mansions, city halls and tribal authorities, pledging donations to their causes along the way. He used last summer’s FIFA Club World Cup as an occasion to raise his public profile. He hosted Trump during the tournament’s final at MetLife Stadium, in New Jersey’s Meadowlands, with the two men sitting together during the match and Infantino leading Trump out on the field at its conclusion. Some members of London-based Chelsea were visibly confused to find themselves sharing the winner’s platform with an American politician. But Infantino’s sustained attention remained on the man in the White House. (The World Cup host committees abandoned their Democratic-led lobbying team in favor of one headed by former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman that specialized in outreach to Republicans.) Infantino appeared more frequently in public with Trump than any other world leader over the course of 2025, with the two men seeming to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. In December, Infantino appeared to program the lottery draw that set the World Cup’s match schedule with Trump foremost in mind, booking the Village People to perform “Y.M.C.A.” as a finale. Most notably, Infantino used the occasion at Washington’s Kennedy Center to present Trump with a novel confection known as the FIFA Peace Prize, without first consulting the FIFA Council that is supposed to set policy, as POLITICO reported at the time. At least three of FIFA’s eight vice presidents publicly or privately expressed their concerns about the lengths Infantino was willing to go to please Trump. “I have a great relationship with President Trump. I’m very happy about that. I got to know him during his first mandate and we have been working very closely together now in his second term,” Infantino said at a pre-tournament press conference in Mexico City on Wednesday. “Without his engagement and his involvement, I think it would have been impossible — simple as that — it would have been impossible to organize a World Cup in the United States. He understood immediately the magnitude of the World Cup, the impact of the World Cup and instructed as well, of course, the administration to help and assist.” Infantino and Trump are likely to be back together in the Meadowlands next month, when the World Cup wraps up with its final match on July 19. At that point, both men are likely to consider themselves winners. Infantino will likely be able to claim he has staged the most lucrative single event in sports history, with estimated tournament revenues of $9 billion to his nonprofit. Trump will have been able to preside over one of humanity’s great uniting cultural pageants, a worldly complement to the United States’ 250th birthday celebrations and precursor to the 2028 Olympics. Yet for all of Infantino’s highly personalized political outreach, he has remarkably little to show for it. The run-up to the tournament has been marred by distractions caused by Trump’s policy choices and FIFA’s financial priorities. Politicians of both parties are alleging that high prices to attend the World Cup are a function of FIFA’s manipulative and opaque ticket-selling procedures, while the global soccer establishment has been aghast to see players, team support staff and referees denied entry to the United States due to immigration rules. “We are not the kings of the world who can rule over governments and police forces,” Infantino said in Mexico City, one of the rare instances where he has faced adversarial questioning. “We are a sports organization. We do our best with the means that we have to do as much as possible.” Lost on the road to the 2026 World Cup was the dream that animated the original architects of the United Bid: a truly North American experience. The World Cup has begun to resemble three separate tournaments played in parallel, due to national policy choices that FIFA has been unable to smooth out. After the United States could not negotiate security assurances for Iran’s delegation — the first time a country has played in a World Cup while at war with its host — Mexico scrambled to set up a training camp in Tijuana, from which the team will fly to U.S. cities where they are legally forbidden from staying the night under the terms of their limited visas. When a Somali referee was turned away this week by border officials at the Miami airport without clear explanation, the B.C. premier said he was welcome to officiate a match in Vancouver. Still, the only time Trump has appeared together with the neighboring heads of state was at the lottery draw in December. While the event began with the three leaders sharing a photo op as equals, it ended with Trump dancing to his favorite song. Shia Kapos contributed to this article.