The first week of the 2026 World Cup exposed, in the article’s telling, a tournament dominated not by football but by Gianni Infantino, FIFA, and the politics around Donald Trump. The piece argues that Infantino, once elected as a reformer, has become an absolute ruler who ignores FIFA’s political neutrality rules, silences criticism, and runs the sport as a private corporate asset. It quotes investigative journalist Sam Conti, who wrote that the host country is dragging the World Cup into Trump’s inhumane policies and FIFA’s deception, “selling football’s soul.”
At a news conference in Mexico City, Infantino’s first in three years, he spoke for 35 of the 69 minutes and dismissed criticism with “Just relax.” He defended extreme ticket prices by comparing them to NBA Finals pricing, despite FIFA’s projected $14 billion in revenue and the launch of dynamic pricing that sent official final tickets in New Jersey to $33,000. The article says FIFA has also aligned itself with dubious prediction-betting platforms such as ADI PredictStreet, while Infantino appeared at official events in a red cap marked “USA,” echoing Trump’s MAGA branding, and later gave Trump FIFA’s invented first “Peace Prize.”
The piece says the tournament has immediately run into geopolitical and human-rights conflicts. Iran’s team was forced out of its Arizona training camp and moved to Tijuana, an Iraqi team photographer was denied entry, a star Iraqi player was held at border control for hours, and Somali referee Omar Artan was blocked from entering. In Mexico, the report says the World Cup is being used to mask a crisis involving more than 130,000 missing people and 70,000 unidentified bodies, with remains of 500 people found near the Guadalajara stadium. It also says local communities near Estadio Azteca were diverted water to FIFA VIP areas, while the host government granted broad tax exemptions.
The article adds that FIFA quickly cleared Australian VAR official Shaun Evans after German media reported he made a white-supremacist hand gesture during Germany’s match against Curaçao in Dallas, accepting his claim that it was an involuntary finger distortion while holding a pen. It concludes that Infantino’s patronage system keeps FIFA’s 211 member associations largely quiet, with board members paid $250,000 to $300,000 a year for a handful of meetings, and that he has centralized power by removing or bypassing internal critics, backing a European Super League project, ignoring calls for a $440 million compensation fund for dead migrant workers in Qatar, and already reserving the 2034 World Cup for Saudi Arabia. The author warns that outside intervention may be needed before the game’s legitimacy is destroyed.
