President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, will serve as the executive director of the President’s Task Force on the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The United States will co-host the tournament alongside Canada and Mexico next year, marking the first time the U.S. has hosted the event since 1994 and the first time it has been co-hosted by multiple countries since 2002. The 2022 World Cup was played through November and December due to extreme summer heat, but it will return to its typical schedule in 2026.
In a statement on Truth Social, posted just moments before an event in the White House’s East Room with FIFA’s executive leadership team, the president credited the younger Giuliani’s tenure during Trump’s first term as the associate director of the White House’s Office of Public Liaison as “playing a key role in creating the system that enabled athletes from around the World to re-enter the United States during the Reopening of America in 2020.”
Trump also announced that senior FIFA adviser Carlos Cordeiro will serve alongside Giuliani on the task force. Cordeiro was the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation when the joint-winning bid for 2026 was announced.
“I know Andrew and Carlos will work tirelessly to make the 2026 FIFA World Cup an unprecedented success,” the president wrote.
Following the announcement, Trump held a roundtable in the White House’s East Room with FIFA’s leadership team.
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“He’s going to be great,” Trump reiterated of Giuliani at the event. “I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a highly competitive golfer — I mean really good — and he’s also a highly competitive person, and he loves what we’re doing.”
“Together, this group will help plan the biggest, safest, and most extraordinary soccer tournament in history, and that’s what it’s going to be,” the president continued. “This is going to blow them all away. I don’t want to insult my other friends from other countries, but we’re going to blow them away.”