As global soccer fans prepare for the quadrennial World Cup tournament, hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada and starting on Thursday, FIFA President Gianni Infantino is riding high.Sadly, one major reason Infantino is riding high is that he has made this World Cup a triumph of FIFA greed. With staggered ticket sales and dynamic pricing, ticket prices have varied wildly since they were first offered. But they have generally been far more expensive than in previous tournaments. This has meant both that too many fans have been priced out of attending the tournament and that some games still have many empty seats to fill. Infantino says he is boosting FIFA revenues to support soccer development efforts across the world. But given the president’s and his fellow FIFA executives’ penchant for living like kings, that excuse deserves deep skepticism.Still, what Infantino has done since he became president in 2016 should have prepared us for this debacle.
Speaking just before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, for example, Infantino declared, “Today, I feel Qatari, I feel Arab, I feel African, I feel gay, I feel disabled, I feel a migrant worker. … As a child, I was bullied because I had red hair and freckles. I was bullied for that.”
