How the U.S. Government Broke FIFA and Built It Back Bigger

“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.

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.

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 obse