My boy Gianni: Infantino and Trump
The Slow Newscast
Alice Sandelson
4.6 • 894 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Gianni Infantino is the most powerful man in world football but in the run up to the 2026 men's World Cup, his relationship with US president Donald Trump has grown very friendly. It's led to questions whether Infantino still has football's best interests at heart.
Reporter: Rory Smith
Producer: Ada Barumé
Artwork: Lola Williams
Sound Design: Dominic Delargy
Editor: Jasper Corbett
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Observer |
| 0:05.6 | Hello, it's Claudia here and you're listening to the slow newscast from The Observer. |
| 0:15.6 | This week, the Pope and the Emperor. |
| 0:19.3 | Gianni Infantino is the head of FIFA, overseeing a sport watched by |
| 0:24.0 | half the planet and an industry worth billions each year. He was elected following years of the |
| 0:30.7 | organisation being beset by scandals and allegations of corruption, a bureaucratic lawyer, he was |
| 0:37.1 | meant to be a safe pair of hands. |
| 0:39.6 | But over the past couple of years, he has developed a relationship, maybe even a friendship, |
| 0:45.0 | with Donald Trump. And there have been some suggestions it might compromise the independence |
| 0:50.8 | of one of the world's most popular sports. So how did the most powerful man in football get caught up in Donald Trump's orbit? |
| 1:00.2 | And what does their relationship tell us about the forces at play in global football? |
| 1:05.2 | My colleagues Rory Smith and Ada Barumet investigate. Over to Rory. |
| 1:13.0 | In October, the Gaza Peace Summit was called at short notice. |
| 1:19.0 | We were made aware of the trip on the Saturday, lunchtime, and by lunchtime on Sunday, |
| 1:25.4 | we were in the air on our way to Chargesh. |
| 1:31.3 | Will Edwards is a journalist for the news agency AFP. He was on the plane that took Prime Minister Kirstama to Egypt, |
| 1:35.3 | one of more than 20 world leaders descending on Shamel Sheikh. |
| 1:39.3 | It was quite a sort of beach resort style hotel, |
| 1:43.3 | not the sort of place that journalists would always go to. |
| 1:48.0 | They spent a few hours hanging around the hotel, and then motorcades carrying kings, presidents, emirs and prime ministers |
| 1:55.0 | snaked into the desert, heading for a gigantic conference centre, all trailed by their press packs and their security details. |
| 2:01.9 | You could see across the desert plain to the mountains, quite stark landscape. There were these |
... |
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