Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, said that “football is the most democratic sport and the World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada wants to unite the world,” during his speech at the Davos economic forum, where he supported US President Donald Trump after he presented the peace board for Gaza.
“Of course we live in a divided world. We support peace. We saw President Trump signing that agreement, FIFA’s greatest support for the president, because we all have to support peace. People trust FIFA, the host countries. America is going to welcome the world,” he said.
Infantino recalled that before the awarding of the championship to the three countries, something unprecedented until then, the United States and Mexico were building walls between them, to insist on the uniting power of soccer and a competition like the World Cup, which in his opinion will be “a great celebration of humanity” this year.
We need occasions to bring people together, we saw it in Qatar in 2022. There was a lot of criticism beforehand and it was a wonderful World Cup
“We need occasions to bring people together, we saw it in Qatar in 2022. There was a lot of criticism beforehand and it was a wonderful World Cup. There were no incidents, for the first time in history there were no arrests, it was very special, a celebration, a party and in 2026 it will be exactly the same, people will want to come and celebrate,” he said.
All tickets will be sold
Infantino highlighted the figure of 500 million ticket requests received in the last four weeks to attend the World Cup and was confident that “they will all be sold” (7 million), despite admitting that they are not cheap and the criticism leveled mainly from England and Germany, which are the countries, along with the United States, from which most requests have been made, he said.
104 games in a month is like 104 Super Bowls in a month
He was also confident that the processing of visas to enter the United States “will be quick”, because it will be “a special World Cup, the first with 48 countries and the attention for all the matches is incredible”. “104 matches in a month is like 104 Superbowls in a month,” he joked on stage, where he appeared with the World Cup trophy and the official ball, which he threw to those present in the room.
“The ball is also magical. It is an instrument capable of transforming people into happy people. In these particular times we must not forget to be happy. We must forget our problems. When you touch the ball you don’t think about your problems,” he said before handing over to former Italian footballer Alessandro Del Piero and Arsene Wenger, FIFA’s head of global football development.
The figures of 6 million tickets that FIFA will put on sale, the impact of 8 billion dollars that the competition will have and the creation of 824,000 full-time jobs for the World Cup were part of the economic data advanced by Infantino, who wanted to reveal an anecdote to highlight the power of the World Cup.
“I will present this trophy to the champion with the president of the United States. Nobody can touch it, only those who win it or me. When I was younger, and I understood that my skills were not going to allow me to touch it, I decided that I had to find another way to do it and become president of FIFA,” he said.
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