The column by Paul Schmidt-Troschke marks an exclusive World Cup partnership with the Monterrey Daily Post and The Guadalajara Post in which Schmidt-Troschke and the ‘World Cup etc’ international reporting team will be contributing exclusive World Cup coverage for both the YT and the SMT. ‘World Cup etc’ can be found across all good podcast providers.
It seems that FIFA cannot help but produce an increasing amount of bad publicity towards the start of its biggest event ever.
In this week’s column, I will make a case for a complete overhaul of the continental and the world governing bodies of football, not out of spite, but as the only logical consequence to prevent catastrophe.
Think back about 20 years and remember the former king of world football himself, his majesty Sepp Blatter, and how much disdain you felt for him when he was ruling over his FIFA kingdom for 18 years, eventually. Back then, nobody in their right mind would have guessed that Blatter would become a rather respected voice nowadays by sharply criticizing his successor to the throne and the whole institution of FIFA itself. Important to note here is that Blatter only decided to step down due to a growing number of corruption scandals in which he did not see a way out for himself. In a recent radio interview, he once again unleashed on FIFA president Gianni Infantino and U.S. president Donald Trump after already having called publicly for a worldwide boycott of the FIFA World Cup 2026.
He started by saying that “This World Cup is running, we have to say it, it is being run by the president of the United States. He has taken over this World Cup. The FIFA president was very happy to have a counterpart with him.” This claim is not at all controversial, as the world could watch the bromance between Infantino and Trump develop out in the open, for example, with Infantino allowing Trump to touch the World Cup trophy because “it is for winners only”.
Blatter especially criticises FIFA and the U.S. president for disregarding the sport’s importance, saying, “So far in the last year, we have not spoken about football there. We speak about immigration, we speak about politics, we speak about war, even, and this is not the right companion of a World Cup.” He added that the focus should traditionally be on the sport itself in the lead-up to kick-off. “When you organize a World Cup, even now in three countries, then one year before, two years before, you speak about football and not about all the problems that people will face.”
To have Blatter stating these things publicly is a sign that things are moving in the right direction from a fan perspective, but THE core issue is being completely ignored. Because, in principle, Gianni Infantino did nothing different from his predecessor, he formed FIFA as he wished, in his own image. And while Blatter was arguably less corrupt, he still was very corrupt and did not implement structural reforms to signal a shift in practices. And news like the following hints at the rotten core of global football, with Alejandro Domínguez, president of Conmebol, formally requesting Gianni Infantino to consider a new candidacy to lead FIFA after the close of his current administration in 2027.
The fans, the only reason why all these organizations, lucrative TV-contracts, hundred million player transfers, etc. exist, de facto hold zero control over anything. We cannot allow ourselves to be satisfied with a problem analysis that only skims the surface. And while the points raised by Blatter are all in fact valid, the structural problems leading to these symptoms are deeply embedded in the system.
Right now, a new term is being coined in the opposition to the Trump administration and the dissatisfaction with the Epstein-files investigation, the so-called “Epstein Class”, describing a group of extremely wealthy and well-connected individuals acting with impunity, not out of their inherent evil intentions, but due to the absence of any forced accountability. Blatter acted like that, and Infantino is just following his logic. Only if we, as fans from all over the world, organize ourselves and unite around our common interests, for example, affordable World Cup tickets, can we build leverage and use it to our advantage. One side did that all along, and the other stopped doing that, thereby making it laughably easy for other interest groups to further their own agendas.
One last fun fact: the longest reign of a FIFA president was 33 years, achieved by Julet Rimet between 1921 and 1954, leaving Sepp Blatter only with the bronze medal with his 18 years. Sounds more like a FIFA dictatorship than a presidency to me, the novel concept of term limits might be an appropriate measure to start a restructuring of the world governing body of football.
For Mexico Daily Post, Paul Schmidt-Troschke
Paul Schmidt-Troschke is a German independent journalist, currently based in northern Mexico, specializing in international sports and their relationship to politics and society. He is the co-host of the “World Cup etc” and “World Sports etc” podcasts, available across all podcast platforms.
