To the jailed dissidents of Russia and migrant workers of Qatar, we can add the imagined enemies of the Trump White House: Senegalese supporters, reporters asking questions, or a Somali referee on the greatest honor of his professional life.
The only meaningful solution – a smaller, more modest World Cup less beholden to autocratic power – is also the only solution that can be ruled out.
This power imbalance may set a template for subsequent events.
Saudi Arabia 2034 will have noted FIFA's prostration, its spinelessness in the face of hard autocratic power and commercial imperative.
For a generation, FIFA participated in what academic Martin Müller described as “event seizure” – big sporting events taking possession of host cities, rewriting laws, emptying budgets.
Here, the opposite has occurred.
The World Cup has not seized control of the US.
Instead, the US has seized control of the World Cup, turning this cherished global heirloom a shade of MAGA.
If you still regard sporting spectacle as an escape from politics, enjoy your World Cup of games split into four quarters, decimated by heat and exhaustion, compromised by an unfair qualification process.
Enjoy the largely meaningless group stage, thousands of empty seats, masked police standing just at the edge of shot, and long lingering shots of Infantino and JD Vance in the stands.
Infantino is the symptom rather than the disease.
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Yet, given his self-image as a messianic pan-global statesman, there is irony that this summer will cement his legacy as one of sport's greatest cowards: a weak man who lost control of his own tournament.
