The Fifa president sought influence with the US leader. Instead, Fifa\u2019s president has entangled football in politics and wounded the game\u2019s credibility<\/p>\n
Ever since the United States won the rights to co-host the 2026 World Cup, Fifa president Gianni Infantino has worked to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump at all costs, supposedly to secure preferential treatment for Fifa from the American government. Predictably, he suffered the same fate as everyone who has made a Faustian bargain with the US president: he learned that cozying up to Trump always backfires, tarnishing the entire sport along the way.<\/p>\n
I love soccer because, at its best, it is inclusive, democratic and accessible to everyone. So do billions of other people; the sport\u2019s universal cultural impact truly lends it the potential to be a force for good that \u201cunites the world\u201d, as Fifa loves to say<\/a>. We saw this force in action at the start of the World Cup when, despite Trump\u2019s hardline anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner policies, the prevailing sentiment showed that visiting teams and fans found most Americans really are warm<\/a> and welcoming<\/a> people.<\/p>\n Nath\u00e1n Goldberg Crenier serves as the elected vice-president of the US Soccer Federation. This editorial represents his personal opinions and does not necessarily reflect the positions or views of US Soccer.<\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Fifa president sought influence with the US leader. Instead, Fifa\u2019s president has entangled football in politics and wounded the game\u2019s credibility Ever since the United States won the rights to co-host the 2026 World Cup, Fifa president Gianni Infantino has worked to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump at all costs, supposedly to secure preferential … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}