Take a random moment from Trump’s second term—his inauguration, a state visit to the Middle East, a meeting of the preposterous “Board of Peace,” even just a random day when cameras are allowed into the Oval Office—and there is a decent chance that Gianni Infantino will be somewhere in the frame. From practically the moment Trump returned to office, the FIFA president has slavishly followed him, like an Italian golden retriever, practically everywhere.
Infantino likes to pitch himself as a partner, which to some extent he is: Beginning in June, he and Trump will put on the 2026 World Cup, the majority of which will take place in the United States. Together, the FIFA boss said when Trump was inaugurated, they will “make not only America great again, but also the entire world.” Over the last 15 months, Infantino has backed Trump as he has has gone to war with one World Cup qualifying nation (Iran), placed severe travel restrictions on several others, and threatened more or less the entire world, including World Cup co-hosts Mexico and Canada. In October, Infantino donned a red MAGA hat and pledged FIFA money to Trump’s offensive Gaza redevelopment plan; two months later, he handed him the inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize,” which may be the most ridiculous prize in human history. Infantino has even started to talk like Trump: The World Cup, he said shortly before handing Trump the gilded FIFA Peace Prize in December, is “simply the greatest event that humanity, that mankind, has ever seen and will ever see.”
Trump and Infantino are two peas in a rotten pod: They’re both greedy, corrupt international leaders who lie to get what they want, flout the rules, and gouge everyday people. It’s no surprise, then, that their respective domains have come to resemble each other, too. Ostensibly a celebration of global diversity, harmony, and sport, the 2026 World Cup under Infantino has become a lot like the U.S. under Trump: chaotic, divisive, and increasingly derailed by scandal and conflict. What deeper level of hell awaits us when these two forces converge in June?
Infantino is fond of describing the World Cup in messianic terms. The tournament, he said in 2024, “is a unique catalyst ... for positive social change and unity.” In New Jersey, at least, the tournament is proving to be exactly the opposite. The state reportedly is going to charge World Cup fans close to $150 for the 15-minute train ride from Penn Station in Manhattan to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey—a trip usually costs $12.90. But this is not a case of a blue state trying to get rich off of World Cup fans. Rather, New Jersey is just trying to cover the onerous cost of hosting eight of the tournament’s matches.
“You may have seen some recent headlines about transportation costs for World Cup games in New Jersey,” New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill said in a video posted on social media on Thursday. “Our administration inherited an agreement where FIFA is providing $0 for transportation to the World Cup. Zero.” She explained that it will cost New Jersey Transit $48 million “to safely get 40,000 fans to and from every game. At the same time, FIFA is making $11 billion off of this World Cup, and charging fans up to $10,000 for a single ticket for the final. I won’t stick New Jersey commuters for that tab for years to come, that’s not fair. So here’s the bottom line: FIFA should pay for the rides, but if they don’t I’m not going to let New Jersey commuters get taken for one.”
In a statement issued hours later, FIFA said it was “quite surprised” by the attack—on Friday the organization went even further, absurdly accusing New Jersey of a “chilling effect” on the tournament— and laboriously detailed negotiations over transit costs, effectively arguing that it’s not FIFA’s fault that Sherrill’s predecessors struck a deal she doesn’t like. FIFA also said it “is not aware of any other major event at [MetLife] where organizers were required to pay for fan transportation.”
But hosting the World Cup is hardly the same as, say, a New York Giants game or a Beyoncé concert. Parking will be extremely limited at the stadium because FIFA insisted on an unprecedented security cordon that will envelop the entirety of the stadium’s massive parking lots—which also means there will be no tailgating at the World Cup. (Oh, by the way, FIFA is operating the limited parking that is available and charging $200-$300 for the privilege.) States and municipalities also must cover security costs both generally and for FIFA officials, meaning that New Jersey will foot the bill whenever Infantino deigns to show up at a game. So New Jersey did what Massachusetts did before it, deciding that the fans who are already shelling out hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for tickets can afford to pay a little more.
Who are these fans? We can guess who they’re not. Fans from four qualifying countries—Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, and Senegal—currently face travel bans. If Ivorian and Senegalese fans do make it through customs, they will be required to submit bonds of up to $15,000, a burden that is also placed on those from Cape Verde and Algeria. As for Iran, its participation is still far from guaranteed, though FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, has repeatedly said that the team will compete despite the U.S. war against the country. (Trump has been far less welcoming: Last month he warned the Iranian team to stay away “for their own life and safety.”) Of course, many fans from countries that aren’t facing travel bans or onerous entry requirements may nonetheless be wary of traveling to the U.S. because of Trump’s belligerence toward other countries and his increasingly authoritarian immigration enforcement at home.
Even FIFA is worried about the latter. The Athletic reported earlier this week that senior managers in the organization may urge Infantino to ask Trump to halt all ICE raids during the tournament. It would be bad optics, to say the least, for foreign fans to witness such raids—and immeasurably worse if any fans got rounded up themselves. But FIFA might have other reasons for seeking a pause: In Los Angeles, UNITE Here Local 11—which represents food service workers at SoFi Stadium, which will host eight World Cup matches—have said they will go on strike unless FIFA assures them that ICE agents will not be present at their workplace during the tournament. “The World Cup can’t happen at SoFi if there’s no food, if there’s no drinks—those are amenities that are essential,” Local 11 co-president Kurt Petersen told me. “Someone needs to hold them accountable—who better than the workers who make the games possible.”
Where these conflicts go from here is anyone’s guess, but FIFA undoubtedly is taking the long view. It has been here before, and survived relatively unscathed. The lead-up to the 2022 tournament was also a public relations nightmare for its host nation, Qatar. In the weeks before kickoff, there was a flood of stories highlighting its exploitation of foreign workers (many of whom died building stadiums), its abysmal treatment of its LGBTQ population and women, and its generally poor human rights record. The situation grew so dire that Infantino had to step in. “Today I feel Qatari, I feel Arab, I feel African, I feel gay, I feel disabled, I feel a migrant worker,” he said at a press conference where he defended the host nation.
If the goal was to create a distraction by delivering one of the most embarrassing statements in history, it worked. Once the tournament was underway, the negative stories slowed to a trickle and the focus shifted to soccer. The final, in which Argentina’s Lionel Messi prevailed over France to lift his first World Cup trophy, was perhaps the best in the tournament’s history. If you still think about that tournament at all, you probably think about that game—not Qatar’s abysmal treatment of migrants. It took time to get there, in other words, but Qatar got what it wanted out of the World Cup: to been seen as a modern economic power that is welcoming to people from all over the world and capable of hosting the most important sporting event in the world.
Qatar, of course, is an authoritarian country, so it was eager to launder its reputation through the riveting spectacle of the World Cup—just like Russia in 2018. But with two months before the start of the 2026 tournament, it’s not clear what the United States wants from the tournament. The U.S. is not yet Qatar, but it’s a lot more authoritarian than it was when, just a few weeks before the 2016 election, it won its bid as a co-host. For Trump and his administration, the World Cup is an opportunity not so much to launder his unsavory reputation as to embrace it: to take center stage as a global strongman. For Infantino and FIFA, it is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rake in a fortune, as the tournament may never be held in such an unrestrained cesspool of capitalism again. But what does everyone else get out of it?
Americans are increasingly asking that question—but not Infantino and Trump. That question simply never has occurred to them.
