"Sometimes you just have to relax." That was Gianni Infantino's message to the world on the eve of the 2026 World Cup — a tournament already defined, before a single ball has been kicked, by denied visas, blocked journalists, and the most expensive tickets in the competition's history.
The FIFA president held court in Mexico City on Wednesday, one day before Mexico kicks off the tournament against South Africa. His press conference was always going to be a damage limitation exercise. It turned into a masterclass in diplomatic deflection.
The referee who never made it
The most pointed symbol of the tournament's problems walked through Miami International Airport and got sent home. Omar Abdulkadir Artan, a Somali referee selected by FIFA as one of 52 officials for the World Cup — and the CAF Referee of the Year in 2025 — was denied entry into the United States due to "issues related to background checks." He returned to Istanbul without blowing a single whistle. The first Somali referee ever appointed to a World Cup, gone before the tournament began.
Infantino called it "unfortunate" and said FIFA was "trying to find a solution." What he couldn't say — or wouldn't — is that FIFA handed the U.S. government a co-hosting role and then discovered it had limited power over how that government actually operates.
Artan isn't alone. Iran's football federation reported that 15 of its officials were barred from entering the U.S. The Iranian national team, based in Tijuana, will only be permitted into U.S. territory for specific match windows. Citizens of Iran and Haiti are barred from attending as fans entirely. Journalists from Iran and multiple African nations were denied visas or given restricted access — blocked from covering matches across the border in Canada or Mexico and then returning to the States.
Infantino's defence of Trump, and his own position
Infantino was direct about where he stands on the Trump administration. "Without his involvement, it would not have been possible to host the World Cup in the United States," he said. "He immediately understood the magnitude of the World Cup and instructed his administration to help." It reads less like a statement of fact and more like a man reminding himself why certain compromises were worth making.
"We don't live on the moon. We live on planet Earth, and we try to do our best." That's the FIFA president's answer to a Somali referee being turned away at the door. Make of that what you will.
On ticket prices — the subject of attorney general inquiries in the United States — Infantino argued that lower prices would simply have fed the resale market. "Where would that money have gone? Not to soccer," he said, insisting profits would be reinvested in football development in underserved markets. It's a reasonable argument wrapped around an uncomfortable truth: this is the most expensive World Cup ever staged, and a significant portion of the traditional football world has been priced or blocked out of attending.
A 38-day, three-country tournament was always going to be logistically complex. But the chaos surrounding visas, accreditation, and access wasn't an accident of complexity — it was a foreseeable consequence of staging the world's most-watched sporting event in a country with specific, well-documented restrictions on who gets in. FIFA signed up for that. Now it's asking everyone else to be patient about it.
"There are things they tell us," Infantino said, referring to the U.S. administration, "and there are other things they don't."
That might be the most honest thing he said all day.
