World Cup 2026: Blowing the Whistle on FIFA
As the World Cup begins, campaigners call for sanctions on the President of world football's governing body – Nick McGeehan of advocacy group Fair Square talks to the Byline Times Podcast
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It’s a commonplace of World Cup reporting that once the action starts, political controversies melt away. Concerns about the rights of migrant workers in Qatar in 2022, and Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperial ambitions when Russia hosted four years earlier were conveniently sidestepped for the duration of their respective tournaments. Nick McGeehan of advocacy group Fair Square is hoping the same doesn’t happen when the final whistle blows on the current tournament, which is just about to kick off in Mexico, Canada and – crucially – Donald Trump’s United States, which will host the majority of matches.
McGeehan told the Byline Times Podcast he’s targeting Gianni Infantino, President of football’s world governing body FIFA, who handed Trump his organisation’s newly created ‘Peace Prize’, just weeks before the US military captured Venezuela’s head of state Nicolas Maduro and attacked Iran. Infantino had previously lobbied publicly for Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and accepted an invitation to the President’s inauguration in January 2025, after which he posted a video on Instagram, appearing to endorse MAGA’s political programme, saying, “Together we will make not only America great again but also the entire world.”
In McGeehan’s view, this blatant flattery was the latest betrayal of the sport in the interests of tyrants, dictators and other authoritarian leaders. He says, “It’s funny to look back four years ago when the Qatar tournament was ongoing, and the swirl of controversies around that. I remember people at the time saying, ‘are you going to say anything about the US in 2026 – and of course the response was, ‘well, let’s see how that pans out.’ I don’t think anyone could really have imagined it playing out this way – the politicisation of the event, the extent to which FIFA has hitched its wagon to the MAGA project, with all the sexism and the racism and the violence that underpins it. FIFA is an entirely dysfunctional organisation when it comes to the governance of the game but it is this politicisation, the Peace Prize being the most obvious example of that, that I think marks this out as being quite different. When Infantino gave the prize to Trump, he said this was on behalf of the entire global football community. How dare you say something like that?”
McGeehan cites FIFA’s own statutes, which require football officials to “remain politically neutral,” with those who fall foul running the risk of a two-year ban from the game and a fine of “at least” 10,000 Swiss Francs. He has now reported Infantino to the organisation’s Ethics Committee with the backing of Lisa Klaveness, President of the Norwegian Football Federation. These concerns have only been amplified by the high admission prices for the current tournament, which have priced out supporters in developed countries as well as those from less affluent nations. The strategy has backfired, with thousands of tickets now being offered via resale sites.
FIFA, says McGeehan, is “entirely a commercial operation, it’s about monetising content and product. It’s not about football as something that serves the people who play it, or the people who watch it. They’ve misappropriated it, they’ve claimed ownership of it.”
Alongside his alliance with Trump, Infantino has cultivated close ties with the Saudi Arabian Government, long criticised for its human rights abuses, but which has also continued to pump sponsorship money into FIFA via its state owned Public Investment Fund and the Aramaco oil firm. Its reward will be to host the 2034 World Cup – a goal achieved without even being put to the vote. McGeehan says that the costly realities of hosting such a large tournament are more easily negotiated in countries lacking in democratic accountability – not least because while FIFA keeps the tournament’s ticket revenues, broadcast income and the bulk of sponsorship, host nations pick up the huge infrastructure costs. “The business model works much easier in authoritarian states, where this doesn’t have to be run past voters who might object to all this money being blown on overpriced stadiums and the various [other] things that are required. I think it’s very clear Infantino is cleaving close to authoritarians. People talk about his affection for the authoritarians whose power he admires. I think it’s probably true to an extent, but I think it’s more obviously a business decision. He knows that they’ll give him what he wants.”
FIFA says that the projected $9 billion profits from the World Cup will be used to sustain and develop football globally, but McGeehan is calling for greater accountability on where it comes from – citing what he describes as “the world’s largest polluter”, Saudi Aramco – as well as greater transparency on where it is spent. “I think the danger is that what you’re seeing FIFA become is not just a dysfunctional organisation, but a profoundly dangerous one – one that is happy to play handmaid to authoritarians of whatever stripe around the world.”
FIFA has responded by saying that it, “underwent deep-rooted governance and management reforms over the last decade with a clear focus on transparency and on its mandate to develop football all around the world. This has been acknowledged by a number of international institutions, for instance by the Association of Summer Olympic Federations.
“In the last decade Fifa has distributed more than $5bn to grow the game globally in development funding. There’s been an eight-fold increase in investment in football development…a result of the new Fifa being more efficient, well-governed and fit for purpose. That is the clear evidence the organisation has been transformed and is now considered a trusted partner for international agencies, NGOs and leading global brands.”