Sepp Blatter says Gianni Infantino relationship with Donald Trump wrong for football
Former Fifa president Sepp Blatter believes the 2026 World Cup should not be hosted by a country as hostile to foreigners as the United States.
This summer’s edition of football’s showpiece event will be held in three countries in North America: the US, Canada and Mexico, with most games played in the US.
However, the American nation under Donald Trump’s government has also become excessively hostile to foreigners, establishing an armed task force called ICE for the purpose of expelling people from the country, and placing travel bans on various countries around the world, including Senegal, Ivory Coast, Iran and Haiti, four countries who have qualified for the World Cup and whose fans will be needing visas to travel to support their teams.
Blatter, who was Fifa president from 1998 to 2015, criticised the US as a host country for an event that brings together people from all over the world, saying “it’s not right”.
“In this World Cup, the great profiteer will be the United States, but not the spectators,” Blatter said in an interview with Radio Canada. “A World Cup should not be organised in a country that does not grant visas.”
The 89-year-old also criticised current Fifa president Gianni Infantino’s close relationship with Donald Trump, whom he went as far as awarding a Fifa Peace Prize last year, an awarded also created last year.
Blatter said their relationship “changed the game for the World Cup” and he blasted the Fifa Peace Prize.
“We have never seen anything like it,” said Blatter. “We play for peace. It is not up to [Fifa] to give out a Peace Prize. Football is a social, cultural and grassroots event.
“Turning football into politics – because that is largely what is happening now – is, for me, incomprehensible.”
