City AM Football Power List 2026: Who really runs the world’s most popular sport?
The City AM Football Power List seeks to answer a simple question: ahead of the 2026 World Cup, who really runs the planet’s favourite sport?
To answer it, we assembled a panel of experts from across the sports industry and picked their brains for nominations and, ultimately, a top 25. You can read more about the voting process here, or just dive into the rankings below.
25. Dawn Airey
The media grandee is the chair of the Women’s Super League and Championship board and edged out CEO Nikki Doucet as the representative from the WSL, the biggest women’s domestic league in Europe and the closest challenger to the NWSL.
24. Patrice Motsepe
Africa is seen in the game as the next coming power, with Morocco in line for a key hosting role at the 2030 World Cup, and South African minerals billionaire Motsepe, as president of the continental confederation CAF, is the single most important person in African football, especially at Fifa level.
23. Maheta Molango
Our judges felt strongly that a representative from the player union movement should be included in our top 25 and Molango, the chair of England’s PFA, got the nod in recognition of his important contributions at a worldwide level with international body Fifpro.
22. Jean-Louis Dupont
The godfather of the Bosman ruling continues to play a leading role in shaping the legal framework in which football exists. Dupont’s latest big case, the Diarra ruling, has forced Fifa to redraft its global transfer rules in a move that is still ongoing.
21. Bjorn Gulden
The CEO of Adidas exercises huge power over how the sports giant deploys its marketing budgets across the game, with clients including Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal, Jude Bellingham, David Beckham, Real Madrid, Arsenal and Manchester United.
20. Jessica Berman
The commissioner of the NWSL, the top women’s domestic football league by valuation of the franchises that comprise it despite the growth enjoyed by England’s Women’s Super League, Berman is also chair of the Women’s World Leagues Forum.
19. Arsene Wenger
The long-serving former Arsenal manager has stayed in the game as Fifa’s chief of global football development, a wide-reaching role that takes in not only influence over refereeing policy but also tournament organisation and growing the sport in non-traditional markets.
18. Ferran Soriano
The CEO of City Football Group is credited with being the mastermind behind the creation and development of the leading multi-club ownership group in football, with 12 teams in five different continents, and, most prominently, Manchester City.
17. Javier Tebas
The president of LaLiga’s influence extends beyond Spanish football due to his vocal and sometimes belligerent criticism of rival power brokers, and his organisation’s ambitions to take domestic league games to overseas territories including the US.
16. John Henry
The principal owner of Fenway Sports Group, whose wide portfolio includes the Boston Red Sox and investments in golf’s PGA Tour as well as Liverpool FC, who have reclaimed past glories – and the top domestic and European honours – during his 16-year tenure.
15. Dana Strong
While not a household name, Strong has wide-reaching influence in football as CEO of Sky plc, the biggest single independent financial backer – and promoter – of the Premier League, the world’s biggest domestic competition, through its multi-billion-pound media rights deals.
14. Lionel Messi
Having won every major honour with Barcelona and Argentina, and forged an enduring rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi rocked up to David Beckham’s Inter Miami and promptly turned them into MLS champions for the first time. The on-pitch stuff still matters too.
13. Donald Trump
The President of the United States would not ordinarily be anywhere near this list but then 2026 is no ordinary year.
The looming World Cup is due to take place mostly in the US and Trump’s policies on everything from immigration to funding for host cities could shape the tournament for players, fans and those watching from home.
12. David Beckham
Britain’s first billionaire sportsman has translated his status as one of the world’s top players into off-field success through his co-ownership of Major League Soccer’s Inter Miami.
Despite being 13 years retired, the former England captain retains a close relationship with long-time sponsor Adidas, which also happens to be partner of Inter Miami and their star player, Lionel Messi.
Beckham is also a huge source of soft power not only for luxury brands but also for those seeking football clout, as seen in his lucrative ambassadorial role for Qatar when it hosted the 2022 World Cup.
11. Michele Kang
The US billionaire is both the highest ranked woman in the list and the most prominent person who is primarily involved with the women’s game.
Through her multi-club group she owns three prominent teams in Washington Spirit, recent Champions League finalists OL Lyonnes and ambitious London City Lionesses, while her donations have also helped US Soccer to invest heavily in developing women’s and girls’ football in North America.
More recently, Kang has also become a key figure at Lyon’s men’s team and the wider Eagle Football Group following their related financial difficulties.
10. Richard Masters
The Premier League is by far the most powerful domestic competition in world football, with gargantuan media rights deals that have helped to place England’s top teams in a financial bracket all of their own.
While there is some debate over the extent to which the CEO can be said to control a league in which major decisions must be approved by a majority of its member clubs, Masters’ steady hand has kept it at the top of the game despite a barrage of challenges including the Super League, Manchester City’s legal cases and, now, legislation-backed regulation.
9. Joan Laporta
The president of FC Barcelona is riding high after the club achieved successive domestic league titles and he won re-election to the second most powerful club role on the planet.
Laporta has navigated the Catalan institution through some testing financial times, not always smoothly, but the worst of their troubles appear to be behind them and the transformation of their Camp Nou stadium should, once fully completed, generate even more revenue – and power – for Barcelona and Laporta.
8. Jorge Mendes
The most influential agent working in the game today, Mendes and his Gestifute stable manage the careers of some of its biggest stars both on the field and in the dugout, from Ronaldo to Lamine Yamal and Jose Mourinho to Enzo Maresca.
While corporate behemoths such as The Team (formerly Wasserman) and CAA Stellar may have larger portfolios, Gestifute’s focus on top-tier talent means its average client value is sky-high and it is front and centre of many of the biggest deals in any given transfer window.
7. Cristiano Ronaldo
The Portuguese superstar’s light may finally be dimming but his unparalleled profile – he is the most followed individual on social media by a distance, with an audience of more than 1bn – means he still has a huge gravitational pull.
Ronaldo’s transfers to Juventus and Manchester United moved share prices, while his signing for Al-Nassr has done more than anything to put the Saudi Pro League on the map – and burnish the country’s football credentials at a time when it was bidding for the men’s World Cup.
Now a co-owner of Spanish side Almeria, he has been explicit about his ambition to amass his own multi-club network.
6. Florentino Perez
The president of Real Madrid has been the driving force behind the world’s biggest football club and, although this has been far from a vintage season for the Spanish giants, Perez and the club retain huge clout in the game.
They remain the highest-revenue generating club in the world, having been at the forefront of the commercialisation of both their brand and stadium, the Santiago Bernabeu.
Just as significantly, Perez’s agitating has been a thorn in the side of both the Spanish league and Uefa, and though his determination to force through the Super League has failed so far, he remains a force to be reckoned with for the European game’s top administrators.
5. Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud
Similarly to Abu Dhabi and City Football Group, there is debate to be had over whether MBS or governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan are responsible for Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and its activities in football, such as owning Newcastle United and bankrolling star signings such as Cristiano Ronaldo to the Saudi Pro League.
Our judges agreed it made more sense to pool votes for both men to the Crown Prince, who has the power to overrule any PIF decisions. MBS is also chair of the Higher Authority for Hosting the 2034 World Cup and, as such, may have an increasingly prominent and visible role in the game in the coming years.
4. Sheikh Mansour
Manchester City’s rise to the apex of European football under the stewardship of their Abu Dhabi owners attracted nominations for both Sheikh Mansour and chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak.
Both can be credited with the success of City Football Group but the judges agreed it made more sense to pool their votes and attribute them to the royal, who, despite reportedly having attended only two City games, holds the ultimate power to shape its footballing objectives.
City’s influence on the game extends beyond their trophies, of course, with their long-running legal battles with both the Premier League and, previously, Uefa, leaving significant marks on the landscape.
3. Aleksander Ceferin
The Uefa president lacks the larger-than-life persona of his Fifa counterpart but nonetheless marshalls an organisation that generates more money even than the world governing body.
The Slovenian lawyer found his voice during the European Super League crisis, forming a powerful alliance with Nasser Al-Khelaifi and cementing Uefa’s position as the rulers of European football and, perhaps most importantly, the Champions League.
That competition has gone from strength to strength commercially, while the women’s version has developed considerably and is the leading tournament of its kind.
While the influence of Asian and African confederations has grown, European football remains the undisputed pinnacle and the engine that drives the game – and Ceferin holds the keys.
2. Nasser Al-Khelaifi
Being president of the back-to-back champions of European men’s club football, Paris Saint-Germain, would probably have been enough by itself for a high ranking in this list, but Al-Khelaifi has many, many more strings to his bow.
The Qatari minister is chair of European Football Clubs, the representative group which has wrestled more and more commercial power away from Uefa, where he is also on the executive committee and a key ally of president Aleksander Ceferin.
In addition, Al-Khelaifi chairs both major rights buyer BeIn Media and Qatar Sports Investments, which owns PSG and a stake in Portuguese team Braga, and sits on the Fifa Council and the board of the French league.
Inevitably, such a suite of roles has attracted conflict of interest claims, which he has denied. What is indisputable is that the 52-year-old is formidable enough to rank higher than all but one person.
1. Gianni Infantino
In a World Cup year it had to be the Fifa president, who has overseen a series of radical and controversial moves since taking the hotseat at football’s global governing body a decade ago.
Under Infantino, Fifa has greatly expanded its match inventory, resulting in this summer’s first 48-team men’s World Cup, and muscled in on its own member confederations’ action by reinventing the men’s Club World Cup as a 32-team competition every four years.
He has also seized more power over tournament ticketing and organisation – and thus, revenue generation – and targeted new frontiers, opening Fifa offices in Miami and New York while courting major new players in Saudi Arabia and Africa.
Infantino’s invention of a peace prize to award to President Trump and much-trumpeted boast that “football unites the world” were cast in an even more unfavourable light when the US and Israel began bombing Iran earlier this year, while the sky-high ticket prices at this World Cup have also attracted widespread condemnation.
But whether you love or loathe the state of modern football, much of it has been shaped by Infantino’s policies and perhaps never more so than this summer.
