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FIFA president Gianni Infantino held a press conference in Mexico City on Wednesday, a day before the World Cup opener between Mexico and South Africa.Eduardo Verdugo/The Associated Press
Four years ago, FIFA president Gianni Infantino got a little spun out in his media session before the start of the World Cup in Qatar. His organization had come under pre-tournament criticism on issues like migrant worker abuse and sex discrimination.
Going full Howard Beale in his prepared remarks, Infantino declared, “Today I feel Arabic. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled.”
On Wednesday, Infantino showed that he’d spent the years since taking better stock of the world and how it works right now. His takeaway from that study – no more apologies.
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This World Cup has its own problems. Speaking with media in Mexico City, where the tournament will begin on Thursday, Infantino waved those problems away.
On ticket prices: “We could give the tickets probably for the matches for free and they would still end in the black market.”
On gouging in general: “We invest in all the countries where nobody wants to invest. Who’s investing in South Sudan? Who’s investing in Sierra Leone?”
On African referee Omar Artan, who was just denied admittance to the U.S.: “It is unfortunate what has happened as well to Omar, the referee from Somalia. But again, we don’t control everything.”
And on his overarching approach to all problems: “Maybe sometimes it’s good as well to, you know, chill, relax.”
Every major sports tournament has its theme. Welcome to the eat-what-you-kill World Cup.
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Responding to many of the issues raised by reporters, from ticket pricing to human rights, Infantino said, ‘Maybe sometimes it’s good as well to, you know, chill, relax.’Henry Romero/Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump started it. The rest of the world is picking up his vibe.
It begins with the expansion to 48 teams, building a de facto pre-season into the tournament. The major powers can spend the first little while building support back home by beating up on the shrimps of global football. Sound geopolitically familiar?
Then there’s the shocking greed. The list price for tickets to the final cap out around US$32,000. Remember, you can’t know who’s playing in that game beforehand.
Imagine going to the Apple Store and saying, “Give me your most expensive piece of hardware. I don’t care what it is or what it does. Just make sure it costs far more than it’s worth.”
This is fandom? No, it’s Versailles with a scoreboard and seat-side drink service.
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Then there is the constant harping on unity. On Wednesday, Infantino said the word so often that one began to lose track of its definition. Unity was his excuse for everything.
“We want to unite the world, and if I can ask you one thing … promote the unity of the World Cup. Promote people coming to the World Cup,” Infantino beseeched, the first time in my career that has seemed like the correct verb.
We are talking here about a private enterprise claiming a basic human virtue as its intellectual property, which it packages and resells. It’s a hell of a business model. And it works.
This is what the World Cup has always been. Borrowing a line from one of the greats, FIFA has always been so crooked it needs to be screwed into its pants.
It’s just never been quite so obvious before. That is Trump’s dual gift – exposing all the grifts to which he is a party for what they are, and freeing his confederates from the constraints of shame.
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Infantino will oversee a World Cup that has nations competing not just to win, but prove themselves on a shifting world stage, Cathal Kelly writes.Henry Romero/Reuters
The hood is off the machinery of international sport and no one can ever say again they don’t see how it works.
But this is the cost of seeing the best on best. If they did it for unity, minus the co-branding opportunities, who’d show up?
So you have a World Cup choice – watch angrily, or watch with cynical detachment. I choose the latter.
Once this starts, this will be the first full-bore World Cup in a while. The old world order isn’t collapsing, but it’s shifting on its foundations. Everyone must find stable ground. An easy way to declare your vitality is to win this thing.
What do you think it would mean to England – where they’ll soon be reduced to giving Dadaists or Jacobites a chance to form government – to win this thing? If they could buy that boost to national esteem, at whatever cost, they would.
Same thing in Germany. Same in Japan. Same in Iran. This World Cup is a chance for several nations to prove they aren’t just one of the pack, trailing after the superpowers, hoping not to be tariffed or bombed into oblivion. For those who can’t actually fight back, this is the place you can at least show your fighting spirit.
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There were reports this week that the Bosnians – who play Canada in Toronto on Friday – have been playing silly games with the Canadian press. Moving official engagements. Chucking them off the field early. Even turning the sprinklers on them.
Ten years ago, that’s inexplicable bad form. Today, it’s realsportpolitik. Nobody’s here to make new friends. They’re here to show the old ones to watch it.
Best case, the international chill gooses the spectacle. We’ve been friendly with everyone, including our enemies, for so long that we’ve gotten used to the “no, after you” games. Maybe all this aggro will give the 2026 World Cup a Moscow 1980 flavour. If so, Canada has at least as much to prove as anyone else. More, actually.
Prime Minister Mark Carney could hit four would-be foreign trade partners a day until the end of his term, and not make anywhere near the same global impression as a Canadian run here into the round of 16. Those are the stakes.
As he entered the Q&A portion of his remarks on Wednesday, Infantino took a question from a journalist representing a Spanish sports newspaper.
“You’ve been talking about international issues, but we haven’t been talking much about football,” the journo asked. “Can you delve into football now?”
And with that, the controversy portion of the tournament ended, and the win-or-else portion of it began.
