Miguel Delaney

I mean, I wrote a year and a half ago how it was being seen as the MAGA World Cup.

And that is, of course, of a piece with these...

visa issues and the visa issue is so central to what this world cup is i think it's so telling a controversy and like if you think about it outside migrant labor at the last world cup it's a bigger controversy i think than anything we saw in the immediate bill like this is bigger than beer being not being sold in stadiums like despite like that wasn't really a problem it was more about what the kind of the u-turn suddenly represented but with this why it's so important is

FIFA have contractual provisions that government guarantees have to be given on the free movement of participants.

As Infantino himself said in 2017, a World Cup can't take place without it.

And as recently as 2025, he was talking about misconceptions and how everyone would be welcome in Canada, Mexico, and USA.

Well, that evidently isn't the case.

now within FIFA the official stance came out last night about how FIFA doesn't get involved in host nation processes in this regard I mean for one that's

I think that's a bad faith reframing of the issue, given this doesn't come from kind of cause, effect and getting.

This comes from... These kind of guarantees come from long-term relationships with the hosts.

And there's never been a stronger relationship, at least in public, as Infantino and Trump.

So what was he doing all this time?

And also, there's another precinct there that needs to be mentioned.

FIFA's talking about... It's basically washing its hands of this issue.

Well...

That approach, and also the language they've used in terms of this hardline approach, we don't get involved, that's quite a contrast to the actual precedent here, which is from as recently as 2023, when Indonesia didn't... I don't think it even...

There was outright denial.

It talked of not allowing the Israeli team in for the under-20 World Cup.

And what did FIFA do?

It immediately stripped them of hosting rights, talking about current circumstances.