Gianni Infantino’s answer to Fifa critics? Sell the World Cup and tell them to smile
Gianni Infantino is discovering the limits of Prozac leadership, writes Professor David Collinson
The 2026 World Cup was the most commercially successful sporting event ever staged, with estimated revenues of around $15 billion.
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In an extraordinary Instagram message reposted to Fifa's eight million followers, Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, has rejected widespread criticism of the tournament.
Arguing that “football unites the world”, Infantino insisted that the 2026 World Cup “celebrated humanity at its best”, adding that this tournament was “the greatest event on earth” with “100% safety and security, only joy and happiness”.
Infantino’s defiant statement dismisses several of the tournament’s major controversies and extensive criticism from a variety of quarters, including: UEFA, the Norwegian Football Federation, the Royal Belgium Football Association, and Iran’s Head Coach.
Other major controversies included US visa policies, hydration breaks, the enormous costs for fans, political interference, a 27-minute half-time show in the final, and the event’s environmental impact.
In a 15-slide post, Infantino advised his critics to stop “spreading hate and false rumours” about his leadership and the governing body, and instead “to meditate, pray or watch a football match”.
Arguing that “our world needs love, not hate; tolerance, not division; celebration, not mourning”, Infantino’s message seeks to frame the World Cup in highly positive, glowing terms while positioning his critics as negative, biased and unfair “haters”.
Infantino’s Instagram message is a classic example of what I term “Prozac leadership”. Over the past 40 years, my research has identified leaders in many different sectors who seek to maintain power and control by using excessively positive narratives and requiring subordinates to remain upbeat and highly optimistic, regardless of what they really think and feel.
While the literature sees positivity as important for leaders in creating subordinate commitment and loyalty, my research reveals that leaders’ positivity can also become excessive. When it is unrealistic and disconnected from reality, problematic consequences can result.
Prozac leaders are reluctant to address difficult problems and to consider alternative voices. They tend to believe their own rhetoric that everything is going well and discourage subordinates from raising problems or admitting mistakes, encouraging only positive upward communication.
Refusing to heed cautionary voices and alternative views, they effectively silence criticism and, in some cases, punish those who dissent. As a result, Prozac leaders misunderstand or ignore problems entirely, leaving organisations and societies ill-prepared to deal with unexpected events and serious threats.
By insisting that subordinates’ upward communication is exclusively positive, Prozac leadership can result in over-optimistic planning projections, poor decisions, lack of timely responses to problems, detrimental unintended effects and the increased potential for organisational collapse.
While Prozac leadership can have silencing effects, subordinates do not always accept or believe leaders’ upbeat messages, often detecting inconsistencies and contradictions between leaders’ excessively positive statements and their actual practices.
Paradoxically, Prozac leadership - intended to defuse dissent - can have the opposite effect, intensifying resistance and criticism.
Opposition to Fifa is growing. Plans to increase the size of World Cups to 64 teams have sparked intense backlash. Fans, pundits and football authorities have argued that this would compromise the tournament’s quality, integrity and logistics.
Even more furious criticism has been levelled at Fifa’s highly controversial plans to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors and to create a new subsidiary - Fifa Forward Enterprise - to “unleash the commercial potential and opportunity that Fifa has”.
This new body would take control of commercial and event operations, including future men’s and women’s World Cups.
Fifa has given its 211 member associations a deadline of 19th September to decide whether to apply for an initial payment of $20m (increasing to $40m) for the proceeds of a 20% sale of this new commercial entity valued at $20bn. The financial services firm J.P. Morgan is working with Fifa on this project, while investors would include Thrive Eternal, launched by Joshua Kushner, whose brother Jared is the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.
These plans have been criticised by The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf), The Union of European Football Associations (Uefa), The European Union and the UK Football Association (FA), who are “deeply concerned about the lack of process and governance”.
This is the first time under Infantino’s leadership the UK FA has criticised Fifa, having made no comment during the World Cup about the suspension reversal of the US striker Folarin Balogun and having endorsed the award of the 2034 tournament to Saudi Arabia.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham was the first prominent world leader to condemn the Fifa proposal, stating: “Football does not belong to investors. It belongs to the people who fill the stands and who stand on the touchline week in, week out, rain or shine. The World Cup is not a product. It is the greatest competition in world sport, and it was never anyone’s to sell. Dress the deal up however you like. Once you have sold a piece of it, you have sold out. Football belongs to the fans. It always has, and it always will.”
This afternoon Uefa will hold an emergency virtual meeting of its 55 member associations to discuss Fifa’s highly controversial proposal. This could result in Uefa boycotting Fifa or even considering a breakaway.
Prozac leaders typically become hubristic and over-confident, and this can lead to serious misjudgements and over-reach. Given the furious global reaction and resistance to Infantino’s proposals to sell off the World Cup, it may well be that, as Uefa insisted, Fifa’s plan “crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross”.
Uefa’s resistance has been effective before. In 2021, the threat of a Uefa boycott resulted in Fifa abandoning a proposal to stage the World Cup every two years. Time will tell if this same deterrent to Fifa's latest plan will be effective again.
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David Collinson is Emeritus Professor of Leadership and Organisation at Lancaster University Management School.
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