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\n

FIFA President Gianni Infantino is working on his third World Cup, which spreads across North America this weekend. His first tournaments were held in autocratic countries with governments willing to splash cash<\/a> and use the games to sportswash their tarnished image<\/a> on the global stage.<\/p>\n

In America, where 78 of the 104 matches will be played, he\u2019s dealing with something dramatically different \u2014 democratically elected leaders spread across 11 host communities.<\/p>\n

Infantino at first seemed to approach North America largely the same way he did Russia and Qatar: Win over the head of state and go from there. He went so far as to court President Donald Trump by giving him a peace prize before he started a war with Iran.<\/p>\n

State and local politicians, however, had their own priorities.<\/p>\n

In America, Infantino has found himself foiled not only by democracy but the country\u2019s federalism \u2014 the separation of national and state power that gives local officials unique power. He can blame Thomas Jefferson for that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s just a big difference, even compared to other western democracies, our federalism is a huge difference,\u201d said Alex Lasry, the CEO of the New York New Jersey Host Committee.<\/p>\n

As a result, FIFA\u2019s national partners in Mexico and Canada have more say over how the World Cup is playing out in their countries than the White House does in America, a country that does not even have a sports minister.<\/p>\n

In practice, this has meant that even as FIFA presented itself as the world government of the globe\u2019s most beloved sport, local officials in America started standing in its way.<\/p>\n

A senior FIFA official earlier this year said it was exaggerated to say one person in Qatar or Russia snapped their fingers and things got done, but the official did describe America as more decentralized.<\/p>\n

Back in 2023, one of Infantino\u2019s longtime advisers spoke at length about the FIFA president\u2019s public image. \u201cThis whole idea of shoulder-rubbing with dictators? It\u2019s not real. Sometimes the U.S. president is Joe Biden, sometimes it\u2019s Donald Trump. Gianni can\u2019t change that,\u201d the adviser told Tim R\u00f6hn of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes Blue Light News. \u201cHe\u2019s not interested in politics \u2014 only in football.\u201d<\/p>\n

But those politics have been creating roadblocks for months, leading up to the first American game on Friday in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

There was a five-member special board in Massachusetts that had to sign off on a license to allow FIFA to play seven matches there, a power it used to extract concessions<\/a> from the local host committee.<\/p>\n

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill \u2014 one of the newly elected politicians who didn\u2019t bid for the World Cup but now has to pay to put it on, despite having other priorities \u2014 got in a public scrape with FIFA over transportation costs. FIFA didn\u2019t budge, but the fight was ugly.<\/p>\n

When it tried to ban water bottles from stadiums, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attacked and FIFA backed down.<\/p>\n

On the legal front, a quartet of attorneys general \u2014 three from blue states and one from red Texas \u2014 are now investigating the soccer body\u2019s ticketing practices.<\/p>\n

Alas, there isn\u2019t one person Infantino can call to smooth things over. He isn\u2019t the first European to puzzle over America\u2019s decentralized governance, but this 21st-century Alexis de Tocqueville seems to be learning the hard way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FIFA President Gianni Infantino is working on his third World Cup, which spreads across North America this weekend. His first tournaments were held in autocratic countries with governments willing to splash cash and use the games to sportswash their tarnished image on the global stage. In America, where 78 of the 104 matches will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}