Though his job is ostensibly to manage world football’s governing body, you’d be forgiven for assuming International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) president Gianni Infantino earns his $4.6 million annual salary exclusively for saying ridiculous bullshit.
The Swiss administrator’s most recent eyebrow-raising remark saw him call Major League Soccer’s (MLS) Inter Miami “one of the best teams in the world.” This is less a reflection of his deep-rooted passion for US club football than a half-hearted attempt to justify his recent move to shoehorn Leo Messi’s team into the upcoming Club World Cup.
Infantino has pushed for an expanded, thirty-two-team tournament for years, and now that it’s finally happening in early 2025, he’s clearly willing to bend the rules to ensure it’s a success. Given Inter Miami’s early playoff exit means they aren’t even the best team in MLS, it’s hard to argue they’re one of the thirty-two best on the planet. But then again, even a vague attempt to find justifications for making up the rules as you go along actually improves on Infantino’s normal behavior.
Infantino once claimed to understand migrant workers in Qatar’s plight (thousands of whom died in the construction boom leading to the 2022 World Cup), arguing “I know what it means to be discriminated, to be bullied, as a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child I was bullied — because I had red hair and freckles. Plus, I was Italian, so imagine.”
His response to dozens of women in Tehran being arrested just for trying to watch a match he was attending with the stated goal of improving gender equity in Iranian football was, “We cannot solve all the problems of the world in FIFA. But we can always bring a…
Auteur: Dave Braneck
