THE MAN WHO OWNS THE WORLD CUP

In English, the tournament is simply called the World Cup, but I have always preferred the names it carries in other European languages—Mundial, Mondiali, Weltmeisterschaft. Those names seem to capture its essence more fully, for the World Cup is far more than a sporting event; it is an entire universe of meaning and emotion.

My earliest World Cup memory dates back to when I was six years old, and it is one of childish anger and disappointment. In the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, Diego Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” knocked England out of the tournament.

Twenty years later, I watched the final between Italy and France in a pub in London’s East End, and it unfolded like a grand opera. Zinedine Zidane, provoked by Marco Materazzi’s taunts, drove his head into the Italian defender’s chest. Sent off in disgrace, Zidane left the field, and France ultimately fell short. It was a summer night in London. The smell of parched grass from the roadside verges mingled with car exhaust fumes and lingered in the air. I leaned against the bar, beside a girlfriend who had no interest in football whatsoever, and whom I loved deeply.

To this day, I can still feel the two conflicting currents of emotion that pulled at me that night: on one hand, I was captivated by the shock, drama, and absurdity of Zidane’s headbutt; on the other, my thoughts kept drifting back to her. The two feelings stretched outward in directions that seemed impossible to reconcile. (We broke up not long afterwards. She is now my wife.)



The World Cup has always been a spectacle of immense complexity, and the 2026 tournament in the United States, Canada, and Mexico is no exception. It will be the first World Cup jointly hosted by three nations, with the field expanded from 32 to 48 teams and the total number of matches rising to 104. The tournament will be longer, its venues will span a far wider range of climates, and its revenues are expected to reach unprecedented heights.

The football will undoubtedly be captivating, but things may also go wrong. Yet, for better or worse, most Americans are unlikely ever to feel the World Cup in quite the same way as much of the rest of the world. Millions will marvel at its truly global reach—on the evening of June 27, for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo will face Uzbekistan in Atlanta. Even so, the tournament is unlikely to become woven into the fabric of American time and collective memory in the way that Italy’s triumph in 1982 did for Italians.

In the summer of 1982, the man who now governs world football and presides over the World Cup, FIFA President Gianni Infantino, was just twelve years old and living in Brig, a small town nestled in the Swiss Alps. Infantino’s parents were Italian immigrants: his father worked on overnight trains that crossed Europe, while his mother ran a newsstand at the railway station. During his childhood, Italian working-class immigrants in Switzerland often faced discrimination, but the Azzurri’s victory at the World Cup helped transform their social standing.

As Infantino recalled in a speech in 2021: “The 1982 World Cup was madness. It made football part of my life, part of my very being.”



Among Infantino’s generation of Swiss-Italians, the euphoria of that summer is often described as a moment of collective redemption and emotional liberation. Brig lies only a few miles from the Italian border. Infantino likes to say that his character combines Italian creativity with Swiss discipline. After one of Italy’s matches, he crossed the border with his family to celebrate in the Italian town of Domodossola. Finding no Italian flags for sale, his mother bought red, white, and green fabric and stitched one together by hand.

Brig is located in Upper Valais, a rugged and conservative region where people speak Walser German, an Alpine dialect that most Swiss citizens cannot understand. Six miles down the valley lies Visp, the hometown of Infantino’s predecessor, former FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Before Infantino took office, Blatter was widely regarded as the most notorious administrator in the history of world football. He began his career in public relations and even worked as a wedding master of ceremonies before becoming a pioneer in the commercialization of football through sponsorship deals and broadcasting rights. In 1975, Blatter joined FIFA and remained there for four decades. Under his leadership, FIFA amassed enormous wealth and influence, while corruption became deeply embedded within the organization.

FIFA is made up of 211 national football associations and their representatives. For decades, officials accepted bribes from sports marketing companies in exchange for selling the broadcasting rights to major tournaments at preferential rates. At a press conference near the end of Blatter’s tenure, a prankster stormed the stage and showered him with banknotes.

Despite wielding immense power, Blatter rarely sought the spotlight. In his book Football Against the Enemy (published in some editions as World Cup Fever), author Simon Kuper compared him to the chief concierge of a luxury Swiss hotel: someone who knew every guest’s peculiar habits and always had enough money at hand to settle their bills. Patrick Oberli, a Swiss journalist and documentary filmmaker who has covered FIFA for years, once told me: “Blatter’s real talent was knowing exactly who was paying the bribes and who was receiving them.”

When Infantino succeeded him as FIFA president in 2016, many of his subsequent initiatives would make even the corruption of the Blatter era seem almost modest by comparison.



Infantino has remade FIFA in his own image, and with remarkable effectiveness. He has amassed 4.2 million followers on his personal social-media accounts—where comments are tightly controlled—and turned them into FIFA’s primary channel for public communication. He has transformed himself from a football administrator into a highly accomplished political operator. (Donald Trump once referred to him as “the king of soccer.”) At the same time, he has dramatically expanded FIFA’s revenues and global reach.

This summer, Infantino will be everywhere.

During the World Cup in Qatar, reports emerged that host broadcasters had been instructed to ensure that every match included at least one shot of Infantino in the stands—though cameras were specifically told not to catch him looking down at his phone. With the 2026 tournament spread across three countries, it will be impossible for him to attend every venue in person, but traces of his presence will be everywhere. As one former senior FIFA official told me: “It’s fair to say that every major decision connected to this World Cup has involved Gianni directly.”

Infantino has already overseen two men’s World Cups during his presidency. But the 2026 edition is the first tournament whose hosting rights, planning, and execution have all taken place entirely under his watch. From beginning to end, it has been shaped according to his vision, and he has long proclaimed it will be the greatest World Cup in history.

His promotional campaign is relentless, operating with the tireless efficiency of a 3D printer. Infantino is particularly fond of the number eleven—the number of players on a football team. In his hands, almost anything can be described as historic, unprecedented, or transformative. He likes to refer to FIFA as “the provider of happiness for all humanity.”

Yet despite wielding immense authority, Infantino often appears oddly uneasy. The former FIFA official said: “He doesn’t trust people. His inner circle is very small.” The Swiss journalist Patrick Oberli, who has interviewed him four times (Infantino declined my own request for an interview), recalled: “Every time I met him, I could sense a deep anxiety. It was a strange feeling, as if he were sitting an examination.”

In 2023, after securing re-election unopposed, Infantino held a rare press conference. He opened by rebuking the journalists in attendance:

“I don’t understand why some of you are so harsh. Why? Why? I truly don’t understand.”



The modern history of FIFA began on a spring morning eleven years ago, when Swiss police raided the Baur au Lac, a grand nineteenth-century hotel in Zurich, and arrested FIFA delegates who had gathered for the organization’s annual congress.

The operation, carried out on May 27, 2015, was the culmination of years of investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI. In the end, more than forty FIFA executives and business associates were charged with various counts of fraud, while twenty-seven pleaded guilty.

As delegates were escorted from their hotel rooms, investigators simultaneously arrived at FIFA’s global headquarters, a complex built into a hillside on the outskirts of Zurich with six underground floors. Acting under a Swiss search warrant, police sealed off the building from 7:50 a.m. until 9:30 p.m., removing hundreds of boxes of bidding documents, World Cup contracts, and USB drives.
Six days later, Sepp Blatter announced his resignation as FIFA president.

For years, the widely accepted heir apparent had been Michel Platini, the former captain of the French national team and president of UEFA. Blatter was a master political operator; Platini, by contrast, was direct, pragmatic, and unmistakably a football man. During the 1980s, he won the Ballon d’Or three consecutive times. As the former FIFA official mentioned earlier recalled: “Everything was in place. Platini was destined to become FIFA president.”

Then a single invoice changed everything.

On the afternoon of September 25, four months after the Zurich raids, Olivier Thormann, head of Switzerland’s Economic Crimes Division, returned to FIFA headquarters to question Blatter and Platini about a payment of two million Swiss francs—roughly two million U.S. dollars.

Officially, the money was compensation for consulting work Platini had carried out for Blatter in the late 1990s. Yet the payment had been made only in 2011, conveniently just before Blatter’s re-election campaign. The timing raised suspicions. Compared with the bribery and money-laundering schemes uncovered by the FBI, the payment initially appeared relatively minor and was not widely regarded as criminal. Swiss prosecutors, however, took a different view.

The two most powerful figures in world football were taken into separate rooms for questioning. According to a former FIFA employee, as Blatter was being escorted away, Thormann turned to the receptionist and asked: “Do you have a defibrillator? Mr. Blatter may need one.”

The criminal investigation effectively ended the football careers of both Blatter and Platini. They were charged with forgery and fraud, though both were ultimately acquitted years later. More importantly, the case disrupted FIFA’s planned succession.

At the time, Gianni Infantino was forty-five years old. He had previously served as UEFA’s chief legal officer and was then the organization’s general secretary. For years, he had worked under Platini.

Platini possessed the charisma of a star player. Infantino, by contrast, was an energetic administrator with a gift for languages and a reputation for getting things done. As one former FIFA executive told me:

“It was a bit like Pinky and the Brain.”

The executive laughed before adding:

“Platini was the one who entertained the room. Infantino was the mastermind behind everything.”


The 2007 UEFA Champions League final: Blatter, Platini, and Infantino (from left to right)

Most football fans first came to know Gianni Infantino through his role as master of ceremonies at UEFA draws for the Champions League and other competitions. As former football stars reached into glass bowls to pull out numbered balls and determine matchups, Infantino stood beside them, cracking jokes and effortlessly reciting obscure statistics from tournaments past.
“He was exceptionally capable and incredibly hardworking,” one of his former UEFA colleagues recalled. “He knew every rule and every regulation.”

When UEFA nominated Infantino as its candidate for the FIFA presidency, many insiders assumed he would merely serve as a caretaker until Platini could eventually return. But, as veteran French football journalist Philippe Auclair remembered, “His campaign was flawless. He went everywhere and met everyone.”

Backed by UEFA’s resources, Infantino traveled the globe—from Montserrat to Papua New Guinea—courting football officials one federation at a time. “He was like an unstoppable machine,” Auclair said. “Nobody saw it coming.”

His principal rival was Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, the Bahraini prince who was then president of the Asian Football Confederation and a formidable negotiator within FIFA’s political and commercial circles.

On election day in Zurich, Infantino delivered a concise but powerful thirteen-minute speech. He began in English before seamlessly switching into Italian, German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. He confronted FIFA’s recent scandals head-on, stressing the need for reform.

“In recent months,” he said, “we have spoken again and again about corruption, courts, lawyers, and police.”

Yet the heart of his message was far more ambitious: he promised wealth.

Under his leadership, the development funds FIFA distributed to national football associations would double, reaching a total of $1.2 billion.

“FIFA’s money does not belong to the president,” he declared. “It belongs to you.”

The hall erupted in applause.

One former FIFA employee who was present immediately sensed that the election was over.

“There was no point continuing the vote,” he recalled. “He had just promised everyone more money.”

If there is a single principle that defines Infantino’s approach to leadership, it is that more is always better.

During the first seventy-three years of its existence, FIFA organized only two major competitions: the men’s World Cup and the Olympic football tournament. Today, it oversees roughly twenty competitions, ranging from the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup to its esports eSeries events.

In Infantino’s view, FIFA’s expansion is not merely a commercial project; it carries a kind of moral legitimacy as well. He speaks about football the way others speak about access to water or the distribution of global wealth.

“The moment you have a ball at your feet, you smile,” he told a business forum in Miami last year. “It is a magical object that makes everyone happy.”

In 2022, speaking before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Infantino even suggested that holding the World Cup more frequently might help prevent African migrants from drowning while attempting to cross the Mediterranean.


The strategy that brought Gianni Infantino to the FIFA presidency in 2016 has profoundly reshaped the organization

Since he took office, FIFA’s total revenue—measured over its four-year World Cup cycle—has doubled. By the end of the next cycle in 2030, FIFA expects to have $14 billion in available funds, of which $2.7 billion will be distributed to member associations through the FIFA Forward Programme to support domestic football development.

The concept of “football development” dates back to the 1970s, when Sepp Blatter championed the idea of channeling revenue from ticket sales, sponsorships, and broadcasting rights into stadium construction, equipment purchases, and youth academies around the world. Critics, however, argue that the vast expansion of development funding under Infantino—roughly eight times larger than before—has functioned less as a reform initiative than as a means of dispensing favors, cultivating loyalty among member associations, and strengthening his grip on power.

The contrast can be striking. Brazil, a nation of 213 million people, where roughly a quarter of the population lives in poverty and whose national team has won five World Cups, received just $6.35 million through the program between 2023 and 2025. San Marino, by comparison—a wealthy microstate of only 34,000 people and the lowest-ranked team in international football—received $94,000 more than Brazil.

“The concentration of enormous financial resources at the top creates two fundamental problems,” Miguel Poiares Maduro, the Portuguese scholar of governance and public policy, told me. “First, those in power can use funding to keep voting associations firmly under control. No one wants to overturn the table. Second, FIFA simultaneously acts as both the regulator of football and a beneficiary of football’s commercialization. That creates a structural conflict of interest.”

In May 2016, Maduro was appointed chairman of FIFA’s Governance and Review Committee, charged with overseeing elections and senior appointments. Following FIFA’s corruption crisis, he joined a group of prominent reformers—including former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay—brought in to restore the organization’s credibility.

Within a year, however, Maduro, Pillay, and the New York University law professor Joseph Weiler had all left the committee. The immediate trigger was their refusal to approve the appointment of Vitaly Mutko, then Russia’s deputy prime minister, to FIFA’s governing council on the grounds that he remained a serving government official.

Maduro recalled:

“Once we started making decisions that could potentially threaten Infantino’s system of power, he faced a choice between reform and maintaining control. He didn’t hesitate for a second.”

Former FIFA employees often describe the organization as a uniquely seductive world of prestige, privilege, and influence.

Mark Goddard, who spent thirteen years at FIFA, once asked me:

“If you work for a major investment bank, are there other banks in the world? Of course there are. But there is only one FIFA. There has only ever been one FIFA, and there will only ever be one FIFA.”

The former FIFA executive I spoke with had witnessed the transformation of new recruits firsthand.

“After six to twelve months, people change.”

“You suddenly see individuals behaving as if they possess special privileges. They become obsessed with trivial matters: ‘Why does that person have a ticket?’ ‘Why is that person sitting there?’ ‘How did that person get that watch?’”

Although FIFA presents itself as a non-profit organization, its officials and representatives generally enjoy an exceptionally comfortable lifestyle. Members of the FIFA Council and many committee chairs are required to attend only a handful of meetings each year, yet receive annual compensation worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, in addition to travel expenses and allowances.
Under Infantino, the number of FIFA committees expanded from seven to thirty-five.

“Nobody promotes modesty or restraint,” the former executive said. “You travel to exotic destinations, fly business class, and stay in five-star hotels overlooking Copacabana Beach.”

Maduro offered a similar observation:

“It’s very easy to become absorbed into the culture. You barely need to take your job seriously.”

Every FIFA president, in some sense, reflects the era that produced him.

The founder of the World Cup, Jules Rimet, was the son of a grocer and came of age in turn-of-the-century Paris. He believed passionately that football could reduce hostility between nations. As Simon Kuper recounts in World Cup Fever, Rimet volunteered for military service at the age of forty-one and spent four years fighting in the First World War, earning the French Croix de Guerre on three separate occasions. Even while shivering in frozen trenches, he continued writing letters outlining plans for future international football competitions.

Blatter and his predecessor, the Brazilian businessman João Havelange, were products of the twentieth century’s faith in commerce, markets, and globalization. Infantino, by contrast, belongs to the post-liberal era: outwardly ordinary, even dull at times, yet difficult to read and remarkably calculating.

One of his former UEFA colleagues put it bluntly:

“His objective in football has always been to expand FIFA’s influence and expand his own power. His logic is simple: if something benefits me and benefits FIFA, then it must also benefit football.”

Earlier this year, FIFA’s official social-media accounts marked the tenth anniversary of Infantino’s arrival at the organization with a campaign branded “INFANTIN10.” The celebration included a thirty-minute documentary tribute, more than five minutes of which consisted solely of congratulatory video messages from football stars, administrators, and prominent figures across the sport.



Although Gianni Infantino bears the unmistakable imprint of Europe, he frequently criticizes the continent that remains football’s center of gravity—more than 70 percent of the players at the last World Cup were employed by European clubs. In his presidential campaign speech, he argued that “Europe must do more,” calling on the continent to share football’s wealth with the rest of the world.

Many within European football have grown deeply critical of him. In Infantino’s rhetoric, the values Europe prides itself on—democracy, human rights, and the broader liberal order—are often portrayed as fading relics of a bygone age.

Six months before the opening of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, he remarked at a press conference in Moscow:

“On our side, people too often try to discredit Russia and the Arab world by condemning everything about them.”

FIFA’s statutes require the organization to remain “neutral in matters of politics and religion.” Yet neutrality has never meant detachment.

At the 1934 World Cup in Italy, FIFA president Jules Rimet sat alongside Benito Mussolini in Rome. Afterwards, Rimet described Mussolini as “completely focused on the match, undistracted by anything around him.” In 1978, FIFA allowed Argentina’s military junta to host the World Cup. Some courageous stadium workers quietly painted the bases of the goalposts black as a tribute to the regime’s victims.

On one level, FIFA’s relationship with power is simply a matter of necessity. The organization operates within an elite global network of governments, corporations, and wealthy patrons. Hosting a World Cup requires the cooperation of people who possess immense political and financial influence.

As a former FIFA committee member explained:

“You have to flatter people and cultivate relationships. It’s no different from the way multinational companies like Coca-Cola, Siemens, or Mercedes operate.”

In 2024, the Saudi state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco became an official FIFA sponsor.

Yet Infantino’s fascination with power appears to extend well beyond the requirements of business diplomacy.

In 2021, he relocated with his family to Qatar. On the eve of the 2022 World Cup, amid widespread criticism of Qatar’s labor practices and human-rights record, he delivered his now-infamous “Today I Feel” speech. In it, he declared that he felt, simultaneously, Qatari, Arab, African, gay, disabled, and a migrant worker.

The remarks became a global punchline. Yet they represented only a fragment of a much longer address, in which he challenged assumptions about the superiority of Western values and argued that football’s essential beauty transcends the political circumstances of the countries that host it.

Infantino is especially fond of reminding audiences that FIFA has more member associations than the United Nations has member states.

Earlier this year, FIFA partnered with a peace initiative launched by Donald Trump’s foundation in Washington. At the unveiling event, Infantino presented what appeared to be an AI-generated video describing a proposed $75 million “football ecosystem.” According to him, the project would help rebuild “people, warmth, hope, and trust” in Gaza.
The occasion had an almost surreal atmosphere. Argentine president Javier Milei hummed an Elvis Presley song while Infantino swayed along enthusiastically.

In March, Infantino traveled to a sports complex in Mardin, southern Turkey, to watch an Iranian men’s national team friendly. He reiterated that Iran should participate in this year’s World Cup.

“Bringing humanity together is my responsibility,” he said, “and it is FIFA’s mission.”

Within this political worldview, the very notion of choice often seems to disappear.

Last year, Infantino delayed a FIFA Congress in Paraguay by three hours because he had a prior engagement in Doha with Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Several UEFA delegates walked out in protest, accusing him of placing his personal political ambitions above football.
Infantino showed little patience for such criticism. He dismissed the protest as an attempt to exert “pressure” on FIFA.

Speaking at a business forum in the Americas, he said that he was often surprised when he encountered negative coverage of Trump:

“He is simply delivering on his promises. So I think we should all support him, because I believe he is doing a pretty good job, don’t you?”

A month later, at a World Cup draw ceremony in Washington, D.C., Infantino presented Trump with FIFA’s inaugural Peace Medal. He also handed him a miniature replica of Broken Chair, the famous sculpture that stands outside the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.

“This is exactly the kind of leadership we hope to see,” Infantino said.

Among the few football officials willing to criticize him publicly is the president of the Norwegian Football Federation, Lise Klaveness.

Two months later, in a speech reflecting on the experience, she said:

“Sitting in a room in Washington filled with football association presidents, I felt the pain of becoming a puppet. It felt as though the emperor had no clothes, was leading us toward danger, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”



Most of the other delegates simply accepted the symbolic football, smiled, and played along.
After the ceremony, Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino were joined on stage by the leaders of the other two host nations—Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney—to conduct the World Cup draw.

Carney picked the first ball. Unscrewing the capsule, he revealed the first team assigned to the group stage.

“Oh dear!” he laughed. “It’s Canada.”

Sheinbaum opened the next one.

“¡Viva México!” she exclaimed.

At least Trump displayed the sort of natural expression—or perhaps casual indifference—that suggested he understood the absurdity of the moment.

“This is very surprising,” he said with a straight face.

Infantino, however, seemed entirely unconcerned. He had his own FIFA lectern positioned alongside those of the host nations. Moving around the stage like a hotel concierge, he directed the politicians to their places. At times, it was easy to mistake him for a guest rather than the man orchestrating the event. Before it ended, he pulled out his phone and took a group selfie.

One of the most distinctive features of Infantino’s reign has been his determination to expand FIFA’s authority into club football, a sphere traditionally governed by national leagues and continental confederations.

Before its reinvention, the Club World Cup was essentially a commercial exhibition tournament contested by continental champions, usually staged in Japan or the Middle East. In 2022, Infantino radically overhauled the competition. His vision was to transform it into a tournament resembling the World Cup itself: held every four years, expanded from seven teams to thirty-two, and supported by a prize fund worth $1 billion. A brand-new trophy was commissioned from Tiffany & Co.

Not long ago, I visited FIFA’s museum in Zurich, where the redesigned Club World Cup trophy was on display.

The trophy is a gold-plated silver concave disc. A concealed key unlocks the structure, allowing it to unfold into an object resembling a celestial model or astronomical instrument. Nearly every surface is covered with laser-engraved inscriptions in thirteen languages. Infantino’s favorite slogan—“Football Unites the World”—appears in Latin:

PEDILUDUS CONIUNGIT MUNDUM.

Elsewhere on the trophy are engraved excerpts from the original Laws of the Game published in 1863, including provisions prohibiting boots fitted with metal studs, hard rubber projections, or other dangerous protrusions.

Infantino’s own name appears twice.

One inscription identifies him as the tournament’s “Founding President”; another credits him as its “Visionary.” The accompanying text is lavish in its praise:

“The pinnacle competition of club football, inspired by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, whose vision brought about the inaugural tournament in 2025—a competition surpassing all that came before.”

The language is striking not merely for its celebratory tone, but because it encapsulates a defining characteristic of the Infantino era: the tendency to present FIFA’s expansion, and Infantino’s role within it, as both historical destiny and personal achievement.



The inaugural edition of the expanded Club World Cup kicked off in the United States last summer, and the results were decidedly mixed.

There were moments of spectacle: Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich demolished Auckland City 10–0. But there were also signs of indifference. A match between South Korea’s Ulsan Hyundai and South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns attracted a crowd of barely 3,000 spectators.

Expansion produced more matches, but not necessarily better ones. The enlarged format created a number of lopsided and uninspiring contests, while the summer heat further diminished the quality of play. Players from European giants such as Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain arrived in North America after already completing seasons of around sixty matches, only to find themselves competing in temperatures approaching 36°C amid oppressive humidity.

After one match, Marcos Llorente complained:

“It was unbearable. Even my toenails felt like they were burning.”

On the eve of the tournament, the European members of the international footballers’ union filed a legal complaint against FIFA, accusing it of abusing its dominant position in scheduling competitions and forcing players into year-round competition without meaningful breaks.

Supporters suffered as well. Fans endured extreme heat, thunderstorms, and FIFA’s new system of dynamic ticket pricing. Before Chelsea’s semifinal against Brazil’s Fluminense, ticket prices reportedly collapsed from $473 to just $13 in a matter of days.

Yet Infantino enthusiastically recited glowing statistics and proclaimed the competition the most successful club tournament in the world. Chelsea, the eventual champions, collected more than $100 million in prize money.

The Club World Cup served as a rehearsal for this summer’s World Cup.

The 2026 tournament will feature roughly 60 percent more matches than previous editions. A study published in the March issue of Sports Medicine warned that no major football tournament in history has combined so many environmental challenges. Mexico City and Guadalajara sit at high altitude. Venues on the American West Coast face risks from ozone pollution and wildfire smoke.

Stadiums hosting matches around midday could expose players to temperatures capable of triggering heat exhaustion, heatstroke, or other serious medical emergencies.

According to estimates by players’ unions and the American College of Sports Medicine, more than half of the sixteen host venues are expected to exceed recommended safety thresholds for high-intensity athletic performance during parts of the tournament.

FIFA’s response has been to raise the temperature threshold used to determine safety measures.

Last December, FIFA announced that every match would include two mandatory cooling breaks regardless of weather conditions. Critics speculated that the rule was designed less to protect players than to provide broadcasters and sponsors with guaranteed advertising windows.

Ticket pricing has become equally controversial.

At the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar, the most expensive seats cost approximately $1,600. For this year’s final at MetLife Stadium, equivalent seats were initially offered in April for $10,990. Within a month, prices had reportedly tripled, approaching $33,000.

FIFA has also introduced dynamic pricing and an official resale marketplace for the first time in World Cup history. The organization will reportedly take a 30 percent commission on secondary-market transactions, and total ticket revenue is projected to reach $2.5 billion.

A former FIFA executive reflected:

“In the past, most people could realistically afford a World Cup ticket. This time, that clearly isn’t the case.”

In early April, I visited FIFA’s official resale platform to see how the system was functioning.

Months earlier, facing criticism over soaring prices, FIFA had released several thousand low-cost tickets priced at $60 and reserved for dedicated supporters. We located one of those tickets: a seat high in the upper tier of AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, for England’s match against Croatia on June 17. Originally sold for $60, it was being resold for nearly $2,000.

For a quarterfinal in Miami on July 11, a seat high above the corner flag was listed at $5,000. One row lower in the same section, the asking price jumped to $35,000.

Last week, prosecutors in New York and New Jersey subpoenaed FIFA, requesting information about its ticketing strategy. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport described the process as:

“A system characterized by confusion, artificial scarcity, and outrageously inflated prices.”



“This is a World Cup without rules.”

That was the verdict of Ronan Evain, head of Football Supporters Europe, who told me he was deeply disappointed by the upcoming tournament in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

When I asked him what worried him most, his answer was striking.

“I’m worried about things I would never normally have to worry about.”

His first concern was immigration policy. Citizens of several qualified nations—including Senegal, Haiti, Iran, and Côte d’Ivoire—currently face varying degrees of visa restrictions when traveling to the United States.

“What exactly will the security principles be? Will people be allowed to display LGBTQ+ flags? Greenland flags? Nobody knows. Everything is uncertain.”

During Infantino’s presidency, FIFA’s permanent workforce has nearly doubled. For the 2026 World Cup, the organization has hired an additional thousand staff members, most of them based in Miami.

According to Evain, obtaining basic information has become one of the greatest challenges. Details regarding visas, accessibility arrangements for disabled supporters, parking regulations, and countless other practical matters are often difficult or impossible to find. Internally, many significant decisions reportedly require Infantino’s personal approval.

A former FIFA Council member told me:

“He decides everything himself.”

The result, critics argue, is a culture of delay and opacity.

Some FIFA employees have reportedly found themselves turning to Evain for information about their own organization.

As Evain put it:

“The boss wants to control everything, yet most of the time he isn’t actually there. Employees either stop taking initiative or spend their time trying to guess what the boss wants.”

I forwarded that remark to a former FIFA staff member who had worked closely with Infantino for years.

His reply was brief:

“Decision-making equals risk. Risk equals fear.”

The criticism directed at FIFA stands in sharp contrast to the concentration of power around its president.

Blatter, for all his authority, still had to accommodate the leaders of major continental confederations and influential national associations. Infantino, according to many of his critics, faces no such constraints.

One of his former UEFA colleagues observed:

“Blatter feared the major football nations. Infantino doesn’t care about them at all. The associations are now tied into a system they can’t easily escape.”

By 2027, when Infantino is expected to seek another term as FIFA president, few observers expect him to face a serious challenger.

The Swiss criminal-law scholar Mark Pieth once led investigations into corruption surrounding the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme, a scandal involving kickbacks linked to the regime of Saddam Hussein. During FIFA’s reform efforts in the 2010s, Pieth was invited to join an internal governance panel, though he eventually resigned after clashing with Blatter.

When I met him in his office in Basel, he offered a bleak assessment:

“Reforming FIFA is like reforming the Vatican. They simply do not want to be reformed.”

Pieth argued that modern FIFA looks impressive from the outside. It possesses an independent ethics committee, sophisticated human-rights frameworks, and a global democratic congress.

“But it’s hollow,” he said. “It’s just an empty shell.”

What particularly alarmed him was Infantino’s growing tendency to bypass both FIFA’s member associations and the wider football community in favor of direct relationships with powerful national governments.

“To be honest, the organization is moving toward an entirely new model of governance.”

The controversy surrounding World Cup hosting illustrates the point.

The dual award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar became synonymous with allegations of vote-buying and corruption. In response, FIFA revised its procedures in an effort to prevent similar scandals.

Yet at FIFA’s Congress in May 2024, delegates approved changes that relaxed hosting requirements. Seven months later, in December, Infantino convened a special online meeting of all 211 member associations with a single item on the agenda: awarding the next two World Cups.

The 2030 tournament would span three continents, with Spain, Portugal, and Morocco serving as principal hosts while three commemorative matches would take place in South America to mark the centenary of the World Cup. The 2034 tournament would be awarded exclusively to Saudi Arabia.

Pieth believes such developments reveal how corruption has evolved.

“When people hear the word ‘corruption,’ they still imagine bribes, cash payments, and brown envelopes stuffed with money. Modern corruption has moved beyond that. Today, entire international organizations can be bought.”

Later, I watched a recording of the vote.

Infantino stood before a giant video wall connected to representatives around the world via Microsoft Teams. Rather than holding a traditional ballot, he proposed approving both host selections by acclamation.

“If you are in favor, please applaud.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he began clapping himself.

Across the screens, delegates joined in. The decision was made.



Earlier this year, I took a train to Brig, Gianni Infantino’s hometown.

For centuries, the town has stood at the gateway to the Simplon Pass, a vital trade route through the Alps linking northern Europe to the wealthy city-states of Venice and Milan. On a rainy day in August 1790, the poet William Wordsworth set out from Brig and later wrote of the landscape:

“Tumult and peace, darkness and light, springing from the same source and bearing the same face.”

I eventually found the town’s modest football ground. It lay buried beneath snow and, like many alpine pitches, remains closed throughout much of the winter. It is the home of a club that competes in the sixth tier of Swiss football.

Infantino often recounts the tactic that helped him become president of FC Brig-Glis when he was a young administrator. His campaign promise was simple: his mother would wash the team’s kits for free.

In 2017, by then president of FIFA, he returned home and invited a host of football legends—including Diego Maradona—to take part in an exhibition match. Swiss newspapers referred to the occasion simply as “Gianni’s Match.”

It was, in many ways, a testimonial staged in his own honor.



“Ultimately, the issue is one of opportunity cost.”

That was how one of Gianni Infantino’s former colleagues summed up his impact on football.

“When you possess that much power and wealth, people don’t judge you solely by what you have done. They judge you by the gap between what you could have achieved and what actually happened.”

The former colleague reflected on how FIFA has expanded with remarkably few constraints over the past decade, while football itself has become increasingly entangled with state power and political influence.

“It didn’t have to turn out this way.”

Football has never been separate from money. Jules Rimet, the visionary behind the World Cup, was a staunch advocate of professional football at a time when amateur sport was widely regarded as morally superior. When challenged by Pierre de Coubertin and his devotion to pure amateurism, Rimet replied with a simple question:

“Does anything truly perfect exist in this world?”

Infantino has led FIFA into a new era—one defined by relentless expansion, centralization, and an emphasis on top-down authority.

In this system, the game’s chief administrator has become more famous than many of the players whose sport he governs.

His position is unassailable, yet he is not widely loved. He genuinely loves football, yet he has also, in the eyes of many critics, contributed to the gradual erosion of the very game he cherishes.

This summer’s World Cup will stand as the fullest expression of the Infantino era. It may also become its greatest failure.

The French journalist Philippe Auclair put it succinctly:

“His biggest problem is that he always goes too far.”

At FIFA’s Congress in Vancouver earlier this year, Infantino invited the presidents of the Palestinian and Israeli football associations onto the stage together, hoping to project an image of football as a force capable of bringing everyone together.

The gesture did not unfold as planned. Jibril Rajoub refused to shake hands with his Israeli counterpart.

Infantino adapted quickly.

Returning to the theme that has become the defining refrain of his presidency, he told the audience:

“What would the world become if nobody worked to unite people? We must do it. We can do it. Together, we are unstoppable.”

It is a sentiment that captures both the appeal and the contradiction of the Infantino era. He has spent years presenting football as a universal language capable of transcending politics, borders, and conflict. Yet the closer FIFA has moved toward the centers of wealth and power, the harder that vision has become to sustain.

Whether the 2026 World Cup will ultimately validate Infantino’s grand project or expose its limits remains to be seen. But when the tournament begins across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, it will bear his imprint more completely than any World Cup before it. The competition may belong to the players, the supporters, and the nations that take part. Yet in many respects, it will also be Gianni Infantino’s World Cup.