Today, I am tired.Today, I have just flown in from Los Angeles.Today, my evasiveness will be delivered cold.On a muggy Mexico City lunchtime, FIFA president Gianni Infantino entered the giant cow shed that is the press area at the Estadio Azteca and waved through a gap between a giant television and a temporary wall. No one waved back. A few moments later, as music blared unnecessarily, he strode onto the stage for the latest of his World Cup opening acts.Three and half years ago, in Qatar, this was appointment viewing. It gave us one of the all-time great quotes, that indelible masterpiece of tone-deaf hubris.“Today I have very strong feelings, I can tell you. Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker.”Here, Infantino did not quite hit full frontier-preacher mode. He leaned back in his chair, slipped into little reveries about the ball on the desk in front of him, the trophy, the stadium visible through the window. As the chatter from the other side of this cavernous room bled into the press conference, it all felt vaguely sleepy.Maybe that was the idea.“It’s a moment of joy, of celebration,” Infantino began. “This trophy and this ball make people dream all over the world. I hope today we can speak a little bit about football. That’s what we’re here for, right?”It wasn’t. The background noise before the start of this World Cup has been too grim, too unrelentingly bleak for anyone with a conscience to care much about Infantino’s views on Argentine fans or Erling Haaland’s Norway side. When the floor was opened to questions, after half an hour of freeform rambling, there were not too many softballs.Infantino holds the World Cup during his press conference on Wednesday (Alfredo ESTRELLA / AFP via Getty Images)Infantino had, by that stage, begun to sketch out his position over a few of the big issues. On the situation of the Iran national team, granted access to the USA to play its matches but very little additional grace, he went for misdirection, playing down “issues we are still dealing with” and interpreting it as a success story — with him, of course, at its heart.“People were saying it would be impossible,” he said. “I promised them that they would come, even if I had to drive the bus from Tehran. They qualified and are here today. I don’t know who else would have been able to ensure that.”He was bullish on tickets prices. “We want to bring the World Cup to every football fan; this is what dynamic pricing is as well,” he said, one of those lines that makes you despair about the modern age. He also dropped in a moan about Zohran Mamdani being celebrated for selling New Yorkers tickets for $50. “We put 130,000 tickets up at $60 and we didn’t get great (coverage),” said Infantino. “He probably has better communication people.”Then there was his take on Omar Abdulkadir Artan, the Somali FIFA referee denied entry to the US due to alleged links to ‘terror organisations’. “It’s unfortunate what happened to Omar,” said Infantino. “But we don’t control everything. Maybe it’s good to just chill, relax. Sometimes screaming and shouting has the opposite effect.”He did, in fairness, clarify his point later in the piece. “I don’t mean chill and do nothing,” he said. “Trust us, we are working behind the scenes. We always try to make the situation as positive as possible and find solutions. Sometimes we manage, others not.”That was not the only such admission. “It’s true we are confronted with challenges we’d rather not confront,” he said at one point. It was put to him that most of the curveballs have come from the U.S., rather than the other two co-hosts Mexico and Canada. Here, of course, Infantino’s hand-in-glove relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump came into focus.“I don’t regret anything,” he said when asked about the choice of the U.S. as principal World Cup host. Then: “I have a great relationship with President Trump. Without his engagement and involvement, it would have been impossible to organise a World Cup in the U.S.”The thought occurred that maybe it actually was impossible; that the concessions and frictions and human costs have already gone over an invisible threshold; that there will, when it comes to it, be no turning back from this knotty, loaded, Death Star World Cup, no retreat into the before times.For Infantino, though, these are all just talking points, kinks to iron out on the way to our glorious FIFA future.And so, stroking “the most incredible cup,” cooing about “the magic and the power of the ball” and “giving children dreams,” Infantino kept coming back to his happy place.“We want to unite the world,” he said. “It’ll be a fiesta. Let’s get the party started.”Jun 10, 2026Connections: Sports EditionSpot the pattern. Connect the termsFind the hidden link between sports terms