Morning all.
England’s World Cup warm-up continued last night with a game against Costa Rica which saw Declan Rice open the scoring [video], and Noni Madueke go full Noni Madueke. They eventually won 3-0, with Eberechi Eze and Bukayo Saka appearing in the second half.
It’s sort of mad to think the World Cup kicks off this evening, and this is perhaps the first time I’ve mentioned it on this blog in the last few weeks. Like everyone else, I’m sure, this tournament has been a cornerstone of my football life. I mentioned the 1978 final the other day, but I remember Northern Ireland in 1982, staying up late to watch Mexico in 1986, and Italia 90 was huge from an Irish perspective.
1994 saw Ireland beat Italy at Giant’s Stadium, Ray Houghton scored but Paul McGrath put in an all-time defensive performance. 1998 was when Arsenal won the World Cup, Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit combining for the goal which sealed it for France after Zinedine Zidane’s two goals and the whole Ronaldo drama. 2002 Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy, Zidane’s headbutt in 2006, Spain doing it in 2010 despite Howard Webb trying to make it about it him, and in 2014 Germany won it in Brazil after destroying Brazil in the semi-final and making David Luiz cry.
Since then there has been increased focus on the location, and while 2018 and 2022 had their moments – like any big tournament – scrutiny of Russia and Qatar as hosts was completely justified. Not simply because of how those countries operate, but how it forced us to reckon with our own moral compromise, particularly in the west. Perhaps there wasn’t enough of that, especially with regard to Qatar, but uncomfortable conversations are often necessary to widen our world views.
Now, with Mexico, Canada and the USA, we’re forced to reckon with that even further. I think if criticism of Russia and Qatar was necessary, then you can’t turn a blind eye to what is going on in America in particular. People often say you shouldn’t mix politics and sport, but that’s bullshit. Typically it comes from people whose own political views just can’t be reconciled with the beauty of sport and often football in particular. Anyway, how can anyone justify that stance when FIFA, the body that organises the World Cup, consistently and explicitly links the two?
It hasn’t been subtle either. This isn’t under the table, behind the scenes, cosying up to this US administration, it’s been a public courtship that is cringe-worthy and deranged in equal measure. Inventing a nonsensical peace prize and a peace prize ceremony to placate Donald Trump after he didn’t get one from Nobel was, perhaps, the most obsequious piece of brown nosing I’ve ever seen. Weeks later, the recipient of this peace prize started an unnecessary war that continues to impact that region and the global economy. It’s like giving Jack the Ripper a Not a Murderer Prize before he says ‘Thank you very much, just off for an uneventful walk around Whitechapel for a bit!’.
And sadly that’s just the tip of the iceberg. A FIFA chosen delegate, the best referee in Africa, is not allowed entry to the US because he has a name vaguely similar to someone on one of their watch-lists, and Infantino tells people to ‘chill and relax’. If you host a World Cup, surely it’s a prerequisite that the officials are allowed in to do their jobs. Infantino essentially said there’s nothing they could do, and made a banal point to a BBC journalist about how they couldn’t dictate to the UK government if they chose not to allow someone in for the Women’s World Cup in 2035. The logical conclusion of this is some other autocrat hosting the World Cup and to give his country a better chance of success, denying entry to the best players from elsewhere. It’s fine though, we should just chill and relax. Slippery slopes, and it just illustrates how craven and pathetic the FIFA President is, and by extension the people with profile who work for FIFA or are FIFA adjacent and say nothing.
Ticket prices through the roof, justified by supply and demand because of the American market, but which are as much as 10 times more expensive than Qatar. Let’s see how that manifests itself with empty seats during these group stages in an extended tournament nobody asked for and which undermines its sporting integrity. Fans being denied entry. Players being denied entry. Visas being cancelled. FIFA block booking hotels then cancelling them all because of a lack of demand. FIFA, as reported by The Athletic, taking offices in a Trump owned building but leaving them essentially vacant, a bribe by any other name.
I think it’s important to make the distinction between this US administration and the many US football fans who I know are appalled and horrified by so much of what has gone on, and continues to go on. Sport and politics have been mixed, there’s no escaping this unfortunate cocktail over the next few weeks, and I feel for them. But I want to make clear my contempt in this context is primarily focused on Infantino. We all know the kinds of politicians that exist, and not just in America, but if you choose you to make it your business to be their friends, and to hand-wave the harm they do for your own personal ambition, you ought to be judged by that choice.
Infantino is driven by a desire for profit, he sees that as the total justification for anything he does regardless of how it is achieved. If FIFA makes money, he is doing a good job in his mind. It doesn’t matter if the game is damaged, if the teams and players are treated like criminals (subjected to security checks on the tarmac, for example), if fans pay the price with their wallets and everything else, if the people who ostensibly work for FIFA are arbitrarily prevented from doing their jobs on the whim of some authoritarian, none of it matters as long as the bottom line goes up. He doesn’t care about football, he cares about money.
But there’s one thing he cares more about than than that – himself. His insatiable desire for fame and his gigantic ego has stripped away any last vestiges of normal humanity. He is the biggest reality TV star in the world. FIFA is the show, and he is the main man. A football Kardashian. It’s vampiric, the more fame he gets, the more he needs. He must feed at every opportunity, even if he has to make up his own pathetic prizes to be the master of ceremonies.
A man so devoid of self-awareness he told us he felt gay and African and Asian and like a migrant worker and disabled, when of course he’s none of those things and his experience of life is nothing like that. Private jets, champagne, luxury apartments and hotels, wining and dining and bribing and always in the spotlight, always there for a photo opportunity, always justifying his existence and working behind the scenes to ensure it carries on for as long as possible. You don’t get this much and then let someone else have it.
After the last World Cup, when Lionel Messi finally won it with Argentina, he somehow found himself on the pitch with the trophy in his hands … alongside that sprinkly salt meat wanker. It was, frankly, shameful that this dismal grifter was there to take any of the spotlight away from the greatest player that ever lived in perhaps his proudest moment as an international player. His shameless insertion of himself into that scene, having done nothing to deserve it, was emblematic of the world we live in where fame and spotlight, regardless of how it is achieved, is a powerful currency in the feeble minds of people like that. All style, zero substance. Welcome to the 2026 World Cup, brought to you by footballing Salt Bae, Gianni Infantino.
Like everything, football has its problems, issues we all have to reckon with to some degree or another, but the game needs and deserves better than this man. Maybe he is just a symptom of how everything operates these days, but that still doesn’t mean there can’t be a remedy.
