When Donny met Gianni: how the World Cup led to an unlikely bromance - and a new peace prize

Out in the Egyptian desert, the world’s leaders were waiting.

- By Rory Smith in New York and Ada Barume

They had been summoned to the resort town of Sharm El Sheikh at short notice over the weekend of 11 October: presidents and prime ministers and at least two kings, gathered at the behest of US President Donald Trump to discuss his plan to end the war in Gaza.That morning they had been swept out of their hotels to the vast conference centre where the summit would take place, a convoy of power-brokers, snaking across the sand. The roads were lined with images of Trump and his Egyptian counterpart and co-host, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Yet they found themselves at a loose end: Trump, who had been in Israel, making a speech to the Knesset, was still travelling. Nothing could start without the master of ceremonies. Keir Starmer held a bilateral meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president. They were soon joined by Emmanuel Macron. Others popped in too, to pass the time.

Only one invitee appeared to have been kept fully abreast of Trump's schedule. Gianni Infantino’s arrival, on a private jet owned by the state of Qatar, dovetailed much more neatly with Trump's. Soon, he was posing for photos alongside the US president, both giving a thumbs-up, and El-Sisi.

He was present in the “family photo” too, the image of all 30 or so delegates, standing behind Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, and Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish premier.