The World Cup’s Maga makeover

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, Trump, FIFA and the Phony Football Peace Prize.

0:22This is the day that people across the region and around the world have been working... Back in October, as world leaders gathered in Sharm al-Sheikh to herald Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza, there were some familiar faces. The Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. Oh, Viktor. Where is Viktor? Viktor. Viktor, I call him. The Saudi Foreign Minister. Erdogan, the President of Turkey. He's such a tough guy. He is tough as you can be. But we love him. The Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz. He's easy to spot because he's very tall. Even Tony Blair. The European Union, to a lot of countries.

1:04France. But there was one face that really stuck out. Well, football's role has to be to support, has to be to unite, has to be to give hope in Gaza and Palestine. Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA.

1:26Many people wondered what the heck he was doing there. To them, the job of a FIFA president is to pull numbered balls out of a big hat, not taking part in a peace summit to determine the fate of the Middle East. But Infantino sees himself as far more important than a glorified bingo caller. He made that somewhat unlikely appearance in Egypt after courting Trump for years. And today, the crowning moment in this odd friendship. A star-studded event in Washington to reveal the draws for next year's World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada. And the guest of honour? Donald J. Trump.

2:11Ready not only to see who will be playing who, but maybe, maybe receive a very special prize. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. Why Trump suddenly cares about football. The proper one.

2:30Jonathan Liu, welcome back to Today in Focus. It's been a while, hasn't it? When were you last on? I think it was last year when we were on our darts odyssey. Oh yes, when you infused me with the spirit of darts. Starting again next week. Can't wait. And you, of course, are a Guardian sports writer and a columnist for The Guardian. And you're a very familiar voice to listeners of our sister show, Football Weekly. So today, Friday the 5th of December, is a big day for football fans and also a big day for highly strong world leaders who feel snubbed by conventional peace prices. What is happening today?

3:07It's the World Cup draw, which will be taking place in Washington, D.C. and for the 48 teams involved, we don't know all of them yet, but England are going to be there, obviously, along with the hosts, America, Mexico, Canada, basically discovering who they're going to be playing, making summer plans, working out their opponents. And for football fans, it's like an early Christmas. But obviously, this time, this tournament in particular, it's been a little bit more complicated. And why is that? Well, you know, there's a nutter in charge of the USA and there's a nutter in charge of FIFA. We probably can't use those terms.

3:43But ever since the tournament was awarded to the United States, and particularly since the start of Trump's second term, we've seen this extraordinary blossoming romance, you might call it, a geopolitical romance, between Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, and Donald Trump. You all know Gianni. He came all the way from Italy, the beautiful country of Italy, to be with us. and he just got off the plane. And so this draw that is happening later today, it looks like it's going to be quite a star-studded event. And the fact that it's in Washington, D.C., presumably that's so that Donald Trump can be there himself.

4:21Yes, that's exactly it. It's even being held at the Kennedy Centre, which, again, some of your listeners might know that it's been Trumpified, basically. It's been Trump-washed and filled the board with his acolytes. On December 5th of this year, the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw will take place at the Kennedy Center. Some people refer to it as the Trump Kennedy Center, but we're not prepared to do that quite yet, maybe in a week or so. So this is a venue that has a lot of symbolic value. There are, you know, I've just got a press release this morning about some of the entertainment acts that are going to be performing.

4:54I mean, it seems tailor-made for Trump's ears. The village people are going to be performing his favourite band. And they're not only going to be drawing the teams, are they, for the World Cup, there's something else happening on Friday. Yes, this is the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. We have to support anyone who is doing something special. So we thought we have to bring to life the FIFA Peace Prize. The first edition will be happening this year. Which is a special award that Infantino has pulled out of his backside when a devastated Trump failed to get the Nobel Peace Prize that he so coveted. And Gianni, as ever, wanting to massage that ego, has decided to create an extra special award.

5:43Yeah, and Infantino, when he was announcing this award, he said it will recognise the enormous efforts of those individuals who unite people, bringing hope for future generations. Is there, I mean, whether Trump fits that bill is extremely questionable, of course, but is there any sense in which this prize could go to anybody other than Donald J. Trump? I'd love it to happen. I'd love Trump and all his entourage to turn up and sitting in the front row, cameras on him, they open the envelope and it's someone like Malala or Greta Thunberg. For me, that would be great television. But no, this is essentially, it's a gigantic vanity project.

6:20Yeah. And people who don't care about football, even the World Cup, might sort of shrug their shoulders at this whole slightly tawdry romance between Trump and Infantino and say, oh God, I mean, there's silly phony peace prides. Who cares? But why does this story matter? It matters because this is the world's game. You could argue it's the single most popular thing that there's ever been in the world. And in theory, of course, this is something that should belong to everybody. But I think there is a really bitter irony in the fact that the people in charge of football, who are the custodians of this incredible cultural artefact, seem to care so little for it and seem to care so little for the people who watch it.

7:06And this is ultimately who owns football, whose game is this, who gets to make the decisions that affect everyone. And so I think it's a parable for power more generally. And I guess the increasing impotence of the ordinary citizen in the face of incredible autocratic power. Get ready for the greatest FIFA World Cup ever. 2026 is set to be the most exciting and inclusive FIFA World Cup of all time.

7:36And so this is going to be the biggest World Cup ever, right? There's three countries hosting it. So the USA, Mexico and Canada. And there's going to be 48 teams instead of the usual 32, is it? Yeah. And this does, unsurprisingly, seem to be very much a Trump-centered event. We did a little for Canada. We did a little for Mexico. We thought, see, I'm a good citizen. I said, let them have a little peace. So we gave a little to Canada. See how nice I am. And we gave a little bit to Mexico. And Johnny, please say a few words. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, President. Great honor. Thanks in no small part to Gianni Infantino, who has spent his first few years at the helm of FIFA doing what can only be described as love bombing Trump.

8:20And you recently wrote a great piece about this perhaps unlikely relationship. How did it all begin? Well, Infantino comes in to the president of FIFA in 2016.

8:35And you remember he came in in the wake of massive FIFA corruption scandal that brought down Zep Blato and a lot of the people around him. Yes. And his job was essentially to clean up FIFA, to rid the organisation of the stench and the perception of corruption. In order to restore and rebuild a new era in FIFA, a new era in FIFA where we can put again football in the centre of the stage. But also to bolster the finances, because that is ultimately what keeps him in power. It is the largesse, it is the development funds, to use the term that FIFA use, that are given out to all of the 200 odd member associations.

9:18And that's the basis of his power. So the more revenue he can generate from, you know, mainly the Men's World Cup, the stronger his power base. And so in order to do that, he has courted not just Trump, you know, before Trump, obviously, it was Putin when Russia hosted the 2018 World Cup. The second thing that has changed, the perception that the world has about Russia. It was Qatar in 2022. Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel gay. The Saudis, who were basically awarded the 2034 World Cup just as a little present. Riyadh is becoming not just a seat of government. The World Cup is here. Johnny, just stand up, Johnny.

10:09Johnny. Thank you, Johnny. Nobody else was realistically given a chance to bid for it. Yeah. So it is part of a pattern of behaviour where Infantino, I think, seeks out the most powerful people in the world, the people with the greatest ability to generate revenue for the World Cup and for FIFA. And Trump is part of this. You know, Trump famously, you know, not a soccer guy, not a football man. Yeah, I was going to ask. showed comparatively little interest in it. I'm a respected man. In fact, when my son heard he was going to be here, he said, Dad, I'd like to meet him. So you're pretty famous, right?

10:50The important thing is what he's like. He likes, my son Barron loves soccer. His son Barron is credited with turning him onto the game a little bit. But early in the, I think it's the first Trump term, maybe it's 2070, something like that, Infantino meets Trump in the Oval Office and tells him how many people around the world watch the World Cup. It's three or four billion. Okay. I can see how Trump would be like, now we're talking. Okay. Yeah. And that is the transformative moment, certainly in Trump's mind, when he realises the incredible platform as a president who is obsessed with ratings and television figures.

11:28That was always going to be the root to his heart. And didn't they meet again in 2018? I seem to remember seeing something on YouTube where Infantino gave Trump these souvenir red and yellow cards? Yes. So Infantino has been very successful at not just massaging his ego, but also playing on his favoured talking points. You know, he's used the MAGA slogan in his own rhetoric. One more thing that could be useful for you. You know, in soccer... So yes, he visits Trump in the Oval Office and he gives them these souvenir yellow and red cards and they need jokes, you might be able to use them on the press.

12:07And when you want to kick out someone...

12:17Which, frankly, is an extraordinary thing for the president of a non-governmental, you know, supposedly apolitical body to say. And it certainly rankles with a lot of us in the media who for years have been trying and failing to hold Infantino to account to get face-to-face time with him, to get him to answer any kind of questions at all. And so, as you say, he has continued, hasn't he, over the years, to really appeal to Donald Trump's most sort of, I don't know if it's basic instincts, but basically his love of gold, for one thing, hasn't he? Well, yes. So this summer, we had the Club World Cup, which is, again, FIFA's new...

12:56What's that? So it's the big global club competition. But FIFA decided to expand it massively this summer. You know, Chelsea won it, Manchester City were there, and it was held in the US. And the trophy sits permanently in the Oval Office. He basically gave it to Trump as a gift. Oh, wow. There is no other sports trophy like that. Oh, that is... Whoa. You should take it with me. Let's leave it here. To the stadium, to give it to the winners. They can take a picture, then we'll bring it back here after the picture. Let's do that. We'll leave it here. We'll have it in the White House quite a bit.

13:32much in keeping with i think trump's redesign of the redecoration of the white house a lot of this stuff is it's just it's just very gold and gaudy it'll be great it'll be fantastic i can't tell you how much our gold costs a lot of money there's nothing like gold and there's nothing like solid gold but but it works doesn't it didn't when tim cook of apple when he went to the white house he presented him with a golden mobile phone right it's honestly it's like um you know it's like dealing with a six-year-old, right? And just the crazy thing is that it works. You know, give Trump a shiny thing, Trump-like shiny thing, Trump sanction multi-billion pound sporting tournament that will make you a lot of money.

14:12It's crazy that that is how power works these days.

14:23I mean, in one sense, Infantino just seems to know exactly which buttons to press, when it comes to Trump. And that's part of his job, right? He's got to be wooing world leaders and why not go for the most powerful person in the world? But what is it about Infantino and his background that makes him such a shameless brown noser? How did he reach this point? I mean, there's this great anecdote. So he's from a southern Swiss town called Brig. So when he's 18, he runs for the presidency of his local, it's a tiny little football club, and he's up against the, you know, much more established grown-ups, as it were.

15:01And Infantino wins that election and he kind of shocks everyone. And the way that he does it is, you know, obviously he promises them more sponsorship, but also he promises that if he wins the election, his mum will wash all of the kits. All of the training kits and all of the football kits that all of the players use at all levels of the club for as long as he's president. And he wins the election. It is a purely, it's almost admirable in its utter shamelessness, but it also shows you how he sees power. It is ultimately a transactional exercise. You give people the thing that they really, really want and everyone's got dirty laundry, right?

15:41The real skill of Infantino, I think, and this goes all the way back to almost his childhood years. I think his superpower is being able to recognise the person in the room, like the metaphorical room, who can help him the most and being able to laser pinpoint that person. And I'm imagining that for decades now, successive FIFA bosses have tried and failed to get US presidents to care about football. Because hasn't it always been a slightly weird situation where the world's most popular game basically leaves so many Americans cold? Why do you think Infantino made it his mission to woo Trump in particular?

16:21Because, you know, America is the biggest market. You know, you might say China or India would get there. China definitely seems to have turned its back on football in the last decade or so. But Infantino spent a lot of time trying to woo China and trying to get them involved, trying to get them to bid for a World Cup without much success. But currently, America is the biggest market, not just because of the revenue you can unlock in terms of commercial partnerships and sponsorships, but also the cultural power. I think there is a sense in which, you know, for all the rise of China and India and the BRIC nations, American money is still the key to unlocking football's commercial potential.

16:59And so it sounds like for Infantino, this is basically all about money. And the World Cup, as I understand it, is FIFA's only real revenue source. And that only happens every four years. And in terms of holding the World Cup in the States, does that mean they can make more money than if they did it in a more developing, less rich country? Well, yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, Qatar is a tiny country. It's a limited market. A lot of fans simply didn't want to go to Qatar. A lot of fans are going to want to go to America and Mexico and Canada and you can charge them more for doing it simply because of the nature of the American economy I came across this this figure I think 150 pounds or 130 pounds for a parking pass at the World Cup final just to park your car not a not a thing you could probably blow five figures on a ticket a lot of the the match tickets for games at the World Cup are run into four figures there's a very controversial dynamic pricing model oh we all remember that from Oasis from Oasis right and but you know that is the modus operandi for the World Cup essentially trying to trying to generate as much as as you can and you do wonder you know if you're a family in Houston or or New Jersey or whatever or Miami and you're going to see a game you don't know what game you're paying you know four grand to take the whole family to plus parking and hot dogs and whatever so I think a lot of people are going to be buying tickets for this World Cup imagining that you know it's going to be Ronaldo and Messi and whatever But as we're going to discover in today's draw, there are a lot of teams now in the World Cup that are, frankly speaking, not very good.

18:37Well, you say that maybe they will surprise us all. Coming up, how Infantino may come to regret wooing Trump. Thank you.

19:19It sounds like, then, Infantino's charm offensive over the last, what, seven years has worked a charm. Trump is won over and he's enthusiastic for this World Cup in a sport that, let's be honest, he probably doesn't have a huge amount of personal affinity for. But obviously attaching yourself to Trump carries its own risks. What do you think Infantino might be worried about in terms of what the Trump presidency could throw up in the run-up to next year's World Cup? Well, there is, I mean, as ever with Trump, this background noise of constant chaos. The answer is yes. If somebody is doing a bad job and if I feel there's unsafe conditions, I would call Johnny, the head of FIFA, who's phenomenal, and I would say, let's move it to another location.

20:06And he would do that. I mean, he's threatened to strip cities like Seattle and Boston of games. If I thought Boston was doing something that was going to cause safety conditions for the World Cup, I would move it to another location if I had to. Obviously, it's not escaped anyone's notice that these are all democratic-run cities whose local politicians have been quite hostile to him. There's also the fact that there are countries who are qualified for the World Cup, e.g. Iran, whose fans, as it stands under current policy, are not allowed to travel to the United States. There is some talk that, you know, there will be a kind of an amnesty during the World Cup that will allow fans to travel.

20:48But simply the nature, the hostility of the U.S. immigration and customs process, the difficulty of getting a visa, the wait times, you know, the threat of ice, essentially. That, of course, everybody is welcome to come and see this incredible event. I know we'll have visitors probably from close to 100 countries. But when the time is up, they'll have to go home. Otherwise, they'll have to talk to Secretary Nelm, who I'll turn it over to now. All of that threatens to throw a spanner into the works, to make this, I think, possibly the most unfriendly, the most hostile tournament to ordinary fans that we've seen in a long time.

21:27You know, Russia and Qatar, for all of their egregious nature, they did want to show a good side to the world. They wanted to show the world that they were a lovely, peaceful, tolerant country. And Trump certainly had no interest in any of this. It's almost a kind of reverse sports washing. He wants to show the world how powerful and hostile America is. Is it not a bit problematic that the US is sharing hosting duties with two countries that Trump has started a trade war with? Yeah, I mean, it is hugely problematic. There is a story going around. I can't imagine that this is possibly true, that on some level Trump didn't notice that Mexico and Canada were hosting the tournament.

22:10He only found out that part later. I don't think that's true. But I think it is certainly quite awkward that he's essentially sitting in a press conference next to Infantino, joking about invading Mexico, invading his World Cup co-host, and Infantino sitting there laughing along. Are you also potentially launching strikes in Mexico or putting American troops or American personnel into Mexico to deal with it? Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It's okay with me. whatever we have to do to stop drugs, Mexico is... It's a real problem. One of the first things he does on taking office is threatening to annex Canada.

22:48And we go back to this Peace Prize, which FIFA awards to people who unite the world. You know, Trump is certainly trying to unite America, Mexico and Canada, but not in entirely legitimate ways. Yeah, and you say all this, but if I think back to the last World Cup in Qatar, there was a lot of talk of boycotts over Qatar's terrible human rights record, the fact that it's such a hostile country for gay people, and there was sort of tiny acts of protest, people wearing rainbow laces and so forth. Do you actually think when it comes to it, there will be any kind of resistance from within the world of football or from fans before this American and Mexican and Canadian World Cup or during it?

23:35Well, I'm not going to go. I mean, I'm not going to. Really? Literally, the Guardian would offer to pay me to go and I don't want to go. It's not something that appeals to me. You're boycotting it. Yeah, I don't. Even though you went to Russia? I went to Russia and I went to Qatar. I could have gone. I could go to America. I could have boycotted either of those. I chose not to. I think boycott's a bit strong. I just don't want to go. I just think it looks such a monumental hassle. A lot of my colleagues in the football department or other football journalists, I've seen the absolute rigmarole they have to go through to get visas, the security briefings they've had to have, the warnings about immigration and customs.

24:18I'm really looking forward to watching it, but I will be doing it from the comfort of my sofa. And finally, for so many people, and I would count myself among this number, I only get involved in football if England reaches the semifinals in a major tournament, whether that's men's or women's. And actually, despite not being interested in football, I have fantastic memories of watching some of these big games at these huge tournaments. And do you think that once a ball gets kicked and if your own team is doing well, we'll all just get swept away by it all like we do every single time? Oh yes, absolutely.