Adam Crofton

Well, it's a World Cup, so it's always rocky in the preparation.

We should say that, first of all, with previous ones, Qatar, Russia.

But this has been a pretty extraordinary kind of runway to the World Cup.

It kind of started with...

Most famously, the Trump Peace Prize in December given by the FIFA president.

And then, you know, since then, there's just been this series of issues, whether it's around the cost and the prices of the World Cup, of course, Iran's involvement or potential non-involvement in the World Cup.

The issues of Mexican cartels earlier in the year as well.

It really has just felt like one thing after another, one news story after another.

Like to the extent where, you know, if you're a reporter just trying to sort of get on with a long term feature ahead of this World Cup, it's just been impossible because every single day there is new stuff breaking on it.

Well, it's really interesting because when FIFA travel, I mean, so this is this is kind of blown up around FIFA's annual congress this year in Vancouver, which has been taking place this week.

And when FIFA travel to these events, they really do like take cities over.

I mean, I was in the one in Asuncion in Paraguay last year.

And it was like Asunción became a militarized city for the kind of 48, 72 hours that FIFA were in town.

There was just police, state police absolutely everywhere.

And I think FIFA has sort of become quite used to this.

Now, FIFA have denied this week that they made this request or that Infantino was involved in this request.

But these kind of police escorts, I mean, it was kind of compared by the Vancouver police to like a Pope level or head of state level police motorcade escort where you're allowed to go through red lights and all of that kind of thing.

And they basically said, we don't think this is necessary based on our security assessment or a good use of taxpayer money.

But it is written into a lot of the

host city contracts during the World Cup that FIFA VIPs FIFA president will be given police escorts I'm not sure it will be on the level of heads of state but that is the treatment that you know FIFA have become very used to it makes me think