Donald Trump may have been awarded the Fifa Peace Prize but the president doesn’t yet have a whole day named after him. For now, that type of tribute goes to Victor Montagliani, the Canadian President of Concacaf.

“Victor’s story is a Vancouver story,” Mayor Ken Sim told an audience at Vancouver city hall last year announcing that 12 September will officially be known as Victor Montagliani Day in the city. The room was filled with Montagliani’s family, friends, and dignitaries including Fifa General Secretary Mattias Grafström, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia Wendy Cocchia, and Anthony von Mandl, a Vancouver billionaire whose businesses include White Claw Hard Seltzer, Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Más+ by Messi. MLS commissioner Don Garber sent his congratulations from across the continent.

Indeed, Montagliani is a Vancouver story. A kid who grew up in an immigrant neighborhood, played soccer for his local team, then took his teammates along for the ride as he rose to become one of the most powerful men in soccer. Montagliani is a man of many layers and, today, can claim credit for masterminding North America as host of the 2026 World Cup an eye on eventually the biggest job of all - FIFA President.

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Born in East Vancouver (colloquially known as East Van) in 1960, Vittorio Montagliani was immersed in soccer from birth. His father was a founder of the Italian Canadian Sports Federation and President of Columbus FC, a local club with deep roots in Vancouver’s sizable Italian diaspora. Montagliani, who uses an Anglicized version of his first name professionally, played for Columbus, and even made Canada’s national futsal team until an ankle injury saw him quit playing competitively. He graduated from university with a degree in political science and added French and Spanish to his English and Italian. He took a job as a flight attendant (“He’s probably going to kill me for telling you this,” Montagliani’s friend Franco Iuele said in one interview) and then ended up working in insurance and risk management.

In 2002, Montagliani joined the board of the Vancouver Metro Soccer League. Within two years he was president of BC Soccer, the regional governing body for British Columbia, overseeing a dramatic increase in revenue for the non-profit and serving as a board member of Canada Soccer, the national governing body. In 2012, he was elected president of Canada Soccer.

It was in that capacity that Motangliani was in Zurich on the morning of 27 May 2015, when he answered an unexpected early morning phone call in his hotel room. On the other end of the line was Sunil Gulati, president of the US Soccer Federation, telling Montagliani to turn on the TV. Swiss law enforcement had raided the Baur-Au-Lac Hotel and arrested soccer officials on fraud and racketeering charges.

Those arrested included Jefferey Webb, the President of Concacaf, whose headquarters in Miami was raided simultaneously. By the end of 2015, a total of 41 defendants were indicted on multiple corruption-related charges. Concacaf corruption ran so deep that Webb’s replacement as President, Alfredo Hawit, lasted barely six months in the job before he, too, was arrested on his own corruption charges.

Montagliani chaired a committee to run Concacaf for a year while it recovered from the chaos and in 2016 ran for president and won to become the first non-Caribbean to hold the role since 1969.

“Like anything, when I decide to go, I go,” he told the BC Business website. “I campaigned on my own dime for three months, went to see all 41 countries, from the US to Bonaire, a little island off Venezuela.”

The job came with a bonus – he was now one of eight highly powerful and influential vice-presidents of Fifa.

Today, Montagliani counts some of the biggest names in football within his circle. Carlo Ancelotti, who is leading Brazil at this year’s World Cup, is a friend and sometimes neighbor. Ancelotti’s wife is from Vancouver and the couple keep a house in the city. Montagliani was close enough with Pelé to greet the icon with a kiss on the head. Diego Maradona would refer to Montgliani as “Papi.”

The kid from East Van had done good. Yet in his wake, the Canadian left behind plenty of new controversy.

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Others do not hold Montagliani in as high esteem as some of football’s greats, living or dead. In 2021, Vancouver Whitecaps women’s team players called for the Concacaf boss to be suspended over Canada Soccer’s failure to appropriately deal with allegations against Bob Birarda, a senior Vancouver Whitecaps and Canada under-20s women’s team coach who would ultimately be jailed for sexual assault offences committed against players over decades.

Players had reported concerns about Birarda to the Vancouver Whitecaps and Canada Soccer in 2008. Weeks before the U-20 World Cup, after a cursory investigation by a local lawyer, Canada Soccer announced it had parted ways with Birarda with the “best wishes” of the national body and the Whitecaps.

As a Canada Soccer vice-president, Montagliani led a meeting where players were told Birarda’s departure was for unspecified health reasons. Neither the serious allegations against him nor the results of the investigation were mentioned in the meeting nor publicly. Birarda continued to coach women and girls locally for another decade.

“Victor Montagliani and [Canada Soccer General Secretary] Peter Montopoli covered up a sexual predator,” a former player, one of several who ultimately filed police reports that resulted in Birarda’s criminal conviction, told the Guardian in 2023. The player first encountered Birarda as a 17-year-old. “Canada Soccer did more to protect the predator than they have ever done to protect us, the players,” she said.

Montagliani, a key decision maker at the national governing body, has consistently pushed back against claims he – or Canada Soccer – did not take appropriate action when multiple players made complaints about the coach’s behavior. He was a member of the Canada Soccer board that approved a lawyer to investigate the complaints on behalf of the organization. “Absolutely, the allegations were treated seriously,” he told the Guardian in a 2019 interview. Concacaf and Fifa also consistently distanced Montagliani from Birarda.

The Canada Soccer-funded 2022 McLaren Report, a 125-page investigation by legal firm McLaren Global Sports Solutions, laid out his role in Birarda’s departure: there was “no acknowledgment of Birarda’s harassment … and no mention of any decision to terminate Birarda in scripted notes given to Montagliani for the meeting with players.” The McLaren Report found that “Canada Soccer’s failure to terminate Birarda afforded him the opportunity to continue… putting other players at potential risk.”

Montagliani has said he was not interviewed by the Fifa ethics committee in a review of how Birada’s case was handled by Canada Soccer, but he did appear before a parliamentary committee investigating the Birarda incidents in March 2023. Montagliani said he was unaware of the depth of Birada’s actions.

Montagliani declined an invitation to comment on why the departure of Birarda from Canada Soccer was mischaracterized and why Birarda was allowed to continue to work with girls and young women in British Columbia and Canada after his departure from the organization.

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The Birarda scandal is not the only history that binds Canada Soccer and the Vancouver Whitecaps. Vancouver soccer has been described as a village. “Everyone knew each other,” Sandi Leroux, mother of USWNT star Sydney Leroux, said. Her daughter was part of Canada’s national youth program before switching allegiance to the US.

“It was horrible,” Sandi Leroux said of her Vancouver soccer experience. “You felt that it was the men’s club… You couldn’t speak. You couldn’t complain to anybody. You would be too scared. I’m still worried about saying things about Sydney. They all cover for each other.”

There was some element of that dynamic in Montagliani’s most significant business decision as president of Canada Soccer. Soon after taking the post, Montagliani went in search of ways to raise revenue, and in service of this he served as an architect of Canada Soccer Business (CSB), a private company created to manage the media and marketing rights for the federation. CSB’s owners also own the Canadian Premier League and multiple lower tier leagues, plus OneSoccer, Canada’s soccer streaming service.

Under the agreement, CSB was granted exclusive rights to sell all sponsorship and broadcast rights for Canada Soccer, effectively until 2037 if CSB unilaterally decided to take up any extensions. In return, Canada Soccer was paid just $3m in 2019 with payments increasing annually by approximately $500,000.

The original deal’s lopsided terms received scrutiny from across Canada, and was tied to a labor dispute with men’s and women’s national team players. According to evidence presented during a 2023 Parliamentary inquiry, the CSB deal also raised major governance red flags. Montagliani told the inquiry he had nothing to do with the deal after he left for Concacaf and that “the principle of this agreement is no different from what happens throughout the world.”

In February this year, the deal was renegotiated by new Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue and James Johnson, a former Football Australia CEO, City Football Group and Fifa executive, who renamed CSB to become Canadian Soccer Media & Entertainment. The new 12-year agreement gave Canada Soccer “well over $100m“, according to Blue with the new arrangement suggesting the money had always been there – just not going into channels to broadly benefit the sport.

A month before the World Cup’s opening game, Johnson proudly announced Montagliani’s “friends and colleagues” had raised CDN$100,000 to honor Montagliani with a “Leadership In Sport” scholarship for students at Templeton High School in Vancouver – the Concacaf President’s alma mater. “A meaningful moment,” Johnson posted on social media.

Montagliani was in the spotlight the last time Canada hosted a World Cup. Prior to the 2015 Women’s World Cup, 80 players sued Fifa and Canada Soccer for gender discrimination over the use of artificial turf fields for the tournament. As President of Canada Soccer and head of the organizing committee, Montagliani was a focus of the complaint. Stars Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, Veronica Boquete and Marta all put their names to the lawsuit and. Actor Tom Hanks and basketball star Kobe Bryant added their support to the women’s cause.

“That is the biggest form of misinformation I have ever heard in my life,” Montagliani said about the complaints. “Those of you who know me know there would (usually) be a few more adjectives before that.”

The complaint was withdrawn by the women prior to the start of the tournament.

Controversial deals have continued under Montagliani’s current role. In 2024, Concacaf entered into a commercial partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the majority owners of Newcastle United, with the claim the relationship would “increase the number of youth tournaments and community programs [Concacaf] manages in its region”. Riyadh Air and oil company Aramco are Concacaf sponsors. The Saudi national team competed in the 2025 Gold Cup. The deals have not been welcomed by everyone.

“The sponsorship of Concacaf serves to sportswash and to cover up and launder these human rights abuses by Saudi Arabia that include repression of women, murder of journalists, and include the repression of human rights defenders,” Minky Worden, Director of Global Initiatives for Human Rights Watch told the Guardian in 2024. At the time, Concacaf defended the partnership, claiming the Saudi companies had an “established track record of sponsorship in a range of global sports”, and that it would create a “grassroots football program” that benefitting young players in Central America and the Caribbean.

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Like any strong leader, Montagliani is loyal. Old friends have joined him on soccer trips, others have been appointed to Fifa committees.

Former Canada Soccer president Nick Bontis now sits on Concacaf’s executive council while former Canada Soccer General Secretary Peter Montopoli is a senior executive for the 2026 World Cup. The deputy chair of the Fifa Ethics Committee Investigative Chamber since 2016 is Bruno De Vita, a renowned Vancouver attorney and East Van native whose résumé also boasts his senior role with the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He is a partner at Alexander Holburn Beaudin and Lang, which BC Soccer lists as its primary legal partner and corporate sponsor. Fifa told The Guardian its regulations require Ethics Committee members to recuse themselves from any cases involving their home country. CAS guidelines state arbitrators must be “independent and have no connection to the Parties involved in a procedure, nor have played any role in the dispute in question.”

East Van native Charlie Cuzzetto, the former general manager of Columbus FC during the 1980s, served as President of BC Soccer and was a Canada Soccer director. In 2017, he was elected to the Fifa disciplinary committee and currently sits on Fifa’s football tribunal. He’s also deputy chair of the Concacaf appeals committee.

Montagliani runs a tight ship. Correspondence seen by the Guardian between Montagliani and a former Canada Soccer director sent during his reign as federation president reveals an iron fist if a director dissents from the party line. The director was concerned by lack of transparency, financial governance, and the treatment of former players by board members. In the exchange, Montagliani countered that speaking publicly damaged the reputation of Canada Soccer and that Canada Soccer’s business needed to be kept private. Montagliani declined to comment to the Guardian about the correspondence.

Montagliani will, however, strongly support those who share his vision. He lobbied hard for five-time track and field Olympian Charmaine Crooks to be elected Canada Soccer president in 2023. The Toronto Star reported one source claiming: “This really boils down to Victor wanting his way, Victor wanting to control things, and again, flexing his muscles by saying that Concacaf and Fifa are going to [be hostile to Canada Soccer] if somebody else gets in that they don’t want.” Another said: “Every guy from their 40s to their 70s expects to be working in Canada for the rest of their lives. And they know if they cross Victor, they’re putting their livelihood at risk.” Concacaf declined to comment on the reporting.

Asked at the Canadian parliamentary committee hearing if Montagliani made calls on her behalf Crooks replied: “I do not understand that to be the case.”

During an interview with the Guardian earlier this month Montagliani said: “I think when you govern and run an organisation you’re going to get people that will criticise you, that’s just part of your job.”

Now, Montagliani has brought the World Cup to North America. It was always part of the plan. In 2010, Montagliani and his longtime side-kick Montopoli (Montagliani has referred to their partnership as “Batman and Robin”) sat down to dinner in Vancouver with Walter Sieber, a longtime Canadian Olympics administrator who in 1976 was told by then-Fifa President João Havelange that Canada should host the World Cup after being impressed with the Montreal Olympic Games. Montagliani was still only vice-president of Canada Soccer at the time.

“Listen, once you become president, I think the time is right for Canada to look at bidding (for the men’s World Cup),’” Sieber told Montagliani. “I looked at Peter at that moment and I said ‘Peter, we’re going to do it.”

The US, of course, was also looking at 2026 after failing to land the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. No problem. Montagliani straight-talked Gulati into agreeing to a joint bid.

“I said, ‘You just lost the last two bids, got your ass kicked. And you’re going to lose again – in fact, we’ll beat you. You know why? Because [the other Fifa nations] don’t care about stadiums or money. They care about how you make them feel. And they hate your guts, dude.’

“[Gulati] is a good buddy of mine,” Montagliani added. “That’s why I can say those words.”

Montagliani claims adding Mexico to the joint bid made North America a certainty. “If we can put maple syrup and churros on your attitude, we’ll win,” he says he told Gulati.

Vancouver hosted the Fifa Congress in April and has two of its seven World Cup matches still to come this summer. The city was left out of the initial bid document when the British Columbia government was aghast at costs and Fifa’s demands for venue control. But when Montreal dropped out in 2021 – citing similar concerns – Vancouver found itself back on the map.

Montagliani was unanimously reelected to Concacaf President in 2023. His current term ends in 2027 where he will seek reelection. Gianni Infantino can have one more four-year term as president from 2027 under Fifa statutes. Montagliani was deferential to Infantino during his welcome speech at the Fifa Congress in Vancouver in April. “Leadership is not about power. Leadership is about service,” Montagliani said in his remarks.

It is unlikely Montagliani will challenge Infantino in 2027 but he has previous history in not supporting an incumbent, declining to support Sepp Blatter after the Baur-Au-Lac fiasco.

Montagliani did not rule out a 2031 bid for the top in the interview with the Guardian before the World Cup. “The future will be the future, whatever that is,” he said.

Montagliani declined an invitation for an interview to revisit issues raised in this story with a Concacaf spokesperson saying: “We have no comment for publication”.

A successful World Cup and the guy from East Van gets a big win this year. The biggest game – the Fifa presidency – is now within sight.