{"id":493477,"date":"2026-06-11T01:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T01:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/493477\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T01:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T01:57:08","slug":"ken-early-gianni-infantino-rolls-out-the-platitudes-and-gratitudes-in-press-conference-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/493477\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Early: Gianni Infantino rolls out the platitudes and gratitudes in press conference \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gianni Infantino<\/a> tends to avoid sarcasm in his public appearances but there came a point in Wednesday\u2019s World Cup<\/a> opening press conference in Mexico City when he couldn\u2019t help himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to congratulate Mayor Mamdani [of New York]. I was with him the day before yesterday. I have to congratulate him. He put on sale 1,000 tickets at 50 dollars \u2013 since then he has had fantastic news. We put on sale 130,000 tickets at 60 dollars, and we don\u2019t get good news. He probably has better communication than us …\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point it seemed Infantino realised he was inadvertently insulting his communications chief, Bryan Swanson, who was sitting next to him on the podium. He turned to his colleague with a faintly apologetic smile, to which Swanson responded with a smile that said, \u201cnone taken\u201d. <\/p>\n

Actually, Swanson had been doing a tremendous job, carefully curating the questions from the assembled reporters to ensure that his boss got to spend more time rhapsodising about fun topics such as the wonderful fans of Argentina (\u201cspectacular!\u201d) than confronting awkward questions from more critical elements of the press. <\/p>\n

Infantino\u2019s big press conferences are usually held in purpose-built auditoriums with great sound and cinema-style seats but, the Azteca stadium apparently lacking such a feature, this one happened in the stadium\u2019s prefab media centre, an aircraft-hangar-sized factory for journalists. <\/p>\n

Between the hum of the air-conditioning and the hubbub of conversation in the background from the many journalists who were in the vast room but not actually seated at the press conference, the Fifa president occasionally struggled to make himself heard. <\/p>\n

The conference lasted just over an hour, the first half of which was taken up with Infantino\u2019s introductory remarks. These failed to hit the dramatic heights of his \u201ctoday I feel African etc\u201d press conference that opened the Qatar World Cup. Infantino rolled out platitudes, gratitudes, filibustering and some preliminary defensive points on the more difficult issues he expected might arise. <\/p>\n

According to Infantino, these three topics were Iran, tickets and visas. <\/p>\n

He began by praising himself for getting Iran to the World Cup. \u201cI don\u2019t know who else would have been able to ensure that in these circumstances \u2013 which we do not influence \u2013 Iran could come and play.\u201d<\/p>\n

On tickets, he claimed that Fifa<\/a> had sold more than six million so far, that the prices on the resale market suggested that Fifa\u2019s original high prices were fair prices, that all the money Fifa makes from tickets is reinvested into the game, often in luckless places where nobody else is investing, and that Fifa\u2019s prices were reasonable compared to the prices charged in American sports, even though those sports were much less popular. <\/p>\n

He did not mention that the US franchises charging those prices are profit-maximising companies, whereas Fifa is registered as an association with a non-commercial purpose under the Swiss civil code, with a preferential tax rate of 4.25 per cent. <\/p>\n

On the visas \u2013 the difficulties presented by rigorous US border control \u2013 he suggested it would be a good idea for people to \u201cchill\u201d and \u201crelax\u201d, and trust that Fifa is working behind the scenes to make things better. \u201cSometimes immediately to start dreaming and shouting has the opposite effect to find a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPromote the unity of the world,\u201d he urged the assembled reporters. \u201cPromote people coming to the World Cup. Feel those emotions that all of you have been feeling when you were children, and I hope you can feel now. Because we want to unite the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

Among the questions that followed, only three could be considered \u201cawkward\u201d.<\/p>\n

Infantino was asked whether he regrets having the US as hosts. His response: \u201cNo, I don\u2019t regret anything.\u201d He reminded everyone that he had made an incredible speech at the same event 3\u00bd years ago in Qatar when \u201cI was feeling I had to give the voice to all those who are unheard, the Global South or whatever.\u201d <\/p>\n

He was asked whether he felt US president Donald Trump and UK prime minister Keir Starmer were wrong to question the high prices of World Cup tickets. That was the question that drew his waspish response about Zohran Mamdani\u2019s good press. He then reiterated some of his earlier defensive claims about why high ticket prices are justified and where the money goes, and complained that he doesn\u2019t get any credit for not putting the World Cup on pay TV. <\/p>\n

Then he said something interesting: \u201cAs Fifa president I have the statutory responsibility to generate the income which allows Fifa to invest in all of these countries.\u201d But he does not have a statutory responsibility to generate [more] income. He has a statutory responsibility to promote the best interests of football. Pretending these are the same thing does not make them so. <\/p>\n

He was asked whether he found it embarrassing that after promising the \u201cmost inclusive\u201d World Cup, people such as the Somali referee Omar Artan<\/a> had been denied entry due to US immigration policies. He replied by asking his questioner, who was from the BBC, whether he would think it was okay for Fifa to dictate UK immigration policy if the Women\u2019s World Cup were to be hosted there in 2035. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in a very aggressive world, security is everything,\u201d Infantino said, before again referring to the fact that Iran will participate in the World Cup and that this should be understood as quite a considerable achievement by himself. <\/p>\n

It would have been interesting to ask Infantino what his feelings had been on the morning of February 28th, when he learned that the person to whom he had awarded the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize had launched the United States into war on Iran. Did it occur to him then that he might have exposed Fifa to ridicule? <\/p>\n

But a question along those lines did not arise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gianni Infantino tends to avoid sarcasm in his public appearances but there came a point in Wednesday\u2019s World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2956,53114,61,11829,60,112,4018,20922],"class_list":["post-493477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-fifa","tag-gianni-infantino","tag-ie","tag-iran","tag-ireland","tag-sports","tag-world-cup","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}