America has celebrities where ancient civilisations had gods and idols.
We all need something in which to believe; if not for inspiration and to give ourselves more meaning, then at least to show us a horizon beyond our cramped little lives. Where some societies chose gods and others chose the natural world, America chose to canonise most of the invite list to Taylor Swift’s recent wedding at her local New York parish hall.
The ticket prices and hydration breaks have already shown the 2026 World Cup to be exquisitely attuned to American culture, so we should not be surprised that Fifa are also faithfully following the national scripture of celebrity. No edition of the tournament has been so in thrall to fame.
Fifa’s thirst for in-game close-ups is such that they have not discriminated according to notoriety. While the games in LA and New York can draw on a wide local pool of global stars, Atlanta and Texas have largely relied on retired American sportspeople. They have impressed the stadium crowd, if not a European TV audience left awkwardly asking: “Am I, er, meant to know him?”
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There is nothing new about celebrity close-ups during football matches, of course. Roughly half of the TV coverage of Ipswich Town’s most recent season in the Premier League was simply shots of Ed Sheeran. Other sports have long been in on the act too, whether it be cutting to shots courtside at Madison Square Garden, in Wimbledon’s Royal Box, or of Ireland’s substitute outhalf.
The difference at this World Cup is one of scale, as the close-ups are longer and more frequent than ever before. The biggest celebrity of the tournament, however, has not been an American star, but Gianni Infantino. Having made the entire Fifa organisation subordinate to his own image, he is now doing the same with the World Cup itself. Infantino gets two lengthy TV close-ups in each game he attends, usually around the 12th minute of each half. This conditions the rest of us to understand that a World Cup game is not complete without getting a glimpse at Gianni, the most famous administrator in all of sports. “Today, I feel A-list …”
If the Fifa president wants to feel famous, then so be it. Celtic Tiger veterans will understand this phenomenon, given we had maybe the highest number of celebrity sports administrators per capita in the world.
The problems arise when Fifa and the World Cup cease to promote celebrity and instead become informed and shaped by it. The 2026 tournament will be remembered for crossing this dangerous Rubicon. It happened the moment Fifa announced they were suspending Cristiano Ronaldo’s group-stage ban without giving a reason for doing so. (This was chiefly a blow for Portugal, who then had to persist with Ronaldo stiffly shambling about the front end of their team because he was too famous and powerful to drop.)
In allowing Ronaldo to play without explaining why, Fifa left themselves open to an obvious question. Were they only allowing Ronaldo to play to help sell their wildly expensive tickets?
In giving Ronaldo a dig-out, Fifa leapt from their delicate tightrope. Fifa, along with Uefa and all of football’s major governing bodies across the world, must constantly navigate a major conflict of interest as the organisers and regulators of a sport from which they are the chief profiteers.
Political lawmakers have allowed this to endure by carving out a special status for sport that inoculates it from the antitrust laws and principles of the corporate world. There is good reason for this, as it means the sport remains a single entity. Your local grassroots club in Ireland, for example, is affiliated to a league which is affiliated to the FAI who are affiliated to Uefa and Fifa. This is the bulwark against the sport splintering like professional boxing into an alphabet soup of governing bodies.
To continue to thread this delicate needle, however, football’s governing bodies must maintain the appearance of absolute neutrality, and they must follow and implement their rules with transparency. Fifa have reneged on this principle. The deferring of Folarin Balogun’s suspension is one of the great World Cup scandals because Fifa have been unable to explain it properly. They have issued a series of lengthy statements without answering the one important question: why was Balogun’s ban suspended? Was it because Donald Trump asked Gianni Infantino to make it happen?
Fifa have not done enough to disabuse the impression that they are willing to put a thumb on the scales and interfere with what happens on the pitch. This is utterly corrosive to the World Cup – already the Egyptian team have been emboldened to complain that the tournament is fixed in favour of Argentina, because keeping Lionel Messi in the tournament is good for business.
The health of the World Cup as a genuine competition relies on Fifa appearing separate to the playing of it. Their visible involvement in any World Cup match should go no further than arranging the venue and the referees. Sepp Blatter, for all of his many, many faults, knew not to be seen as synonymous with the matches themselves. This is an iron law of survival ignored by Infantino, the self-styled Lord of the World Cup who now stands accused of interfering with the games to please his friend Trump, a man who owes his life to the power of being on television.
Whatever damage this episode has done to Infantino, it has done far more to the sport.
John Updike described celebrity as a mask that eats into the face. You’ll see the World Cup’s mask at least twice during every game remaining: it is gurning and oleaginous and not easily removed.
Source: The Irish Times
