Donald Trump's alliance with Gianni Infantino has already given the FIFA president an office in Trump Tower and a seat of honour at the World Cup he helped stage. Now, according to a New York Post report picked up by Sport5, the U.S. president wants to hand him one of the most powerful jobs in global diplomacy: United Nations Secretary-General.
The post falls vacant at the end of the year. António Guterres, in the role since 2017, is due to complete his second term on December 31, 2026, and the process to choose his successor — who would take office on January 1, 2027 — is already under way at UN headquarters in New York.
Trump's reported thinking, per the Post, is straightforward: he sees the 56-year-old Infantino as "respected worldwide" and gifted at "bringing people together," qualities forged, in the president's view, through Infantino's stewardship of the expanded, 48-team World Cup that the United States co-hosted this year.
The two men have built an unusually close relationship since Trump returned to office. Infantino has visited the Oval Office repeatedly, FIFA opened a satellite office inside Trump Tower, and in December the governing body handed Trump its brand-new, inaugural FIFA Peace Prize — a gesture Infantino defended publicly, saying the president deserved recognition for his role in brokering a Gaza ceasefire.
None of that affection translates automatically into a UN post, however. A Secretary-General cannot simply be nominated by one head of state; the appointment requires the backing of the UN Security Council, where any one of the five permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — can kill a candidacy with a single veto, before the choice goes to the General Assembly for confirmation.
That gauntlet already appears to be shaping the wider race. Other names floated for the job, including former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and Argentina's Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, are each said to face their own veto risks — Bachelet reportedly facing U.S. resistance, Grossi a potential British objection tied to the Falklands dispute.
There is also an obvious tension in the idea. Trump has long been one of the UN's sharpest critics, once dismissing it as a club where "people talk, people have a good time, but nothing gets solved." His administration pulled the U.S. out of the UN Human Rights Council and UNESCO and cut funding to UNRWA — hardly the resume of a president eager to strengthen the body he now reportedly wants Infantino to lead.
Infantino himself has not publicly addressed the report. FIFA's presidency is an elected position, and he would presumably need to give up football's top job to pursue a UN role — a step with no indication, so far, that he is willing or able to take.
For now, this reads as a Trump-driven idea rather than a formal nomination: floated through the press, resting on a friendship built around a World Cup and a Peace Prize, and facing a Security Council process built specifically to stop any single leader from installing his preferred candidate unopposed.
