The historic 48-team World Cup ended in New Jersey on Sunday with Spain defeating Argentina in the biggest, most lucrative tournament on record.
Yet its ultimate legacy may be defined by a political scandal that shattered FIFA’s claim to neutrality: revelations that a phone call from President Trump to the organization’s president, Gianni Infantino, defied the rules to favor the United States.
The two men were joined at the trophy presentation by Mark Carney and Claudia Sheinbaum, the leaders of Canada and Mexico. But it was Mr. Trump who drew the attention, and jeers from the crowd in New Jersey. And it was he who accompanied Mr. Infantino to hand the World Cup trophy to Spain’s captain, Rodri.
As the final approached, Mr. Trump called this World Cup “one of the all-time greatest sporting events in history.” It will certainly be the most profitable: FIFA, an ostensibly nonprofit organization based in Switzerland, expects to bank at least $13 billion, almost double what it made at the last World Cup.
The bonanza was built on a tournament played in Mexico, Canada and the United States, with 16 additional teams and a level of commercialization that produced record ticket prices for seats in cavernous stadiums.
Even though many fans were priced out of attending, stadiums were largely full as the quadrennial event became the center of the sporting world. Each round also set new viewership records. That was most pronounced in the United States, peaking when 30 million viewers tuned in to watch the U.S. team lose to Belgium in the round of 16 — despite the presidential intervention.
Americans will want to forget that game, and so will FIFA and Mr. Infantino. It was the crucible not only for the United States’ exit but also for what many in the sport consider one of the biggest scandals in the tournament’s history.
After Mr. Trump’s phone call to Mr. Infantino, Folarin Balogun, the United States’ star forward, was restored to the team after initially being subject to a mandatory one-game suspension for being ejected from the previous match. FIFA’s efforts to play down events and attribute the decision to what it called an independent committee were met with outrage from the soccer world and beyond.
For a few days, the matter was an international incident, with politicians and other prominent figures voicing their disgust. It also cast a pall over the officiating for the rest of the tournament, particularly in games involving Lionel Messi and Argentina, amid unfounded claims that FIFA had cleared a path for soccer’s biggest star, now 39, to end his World Cup career on the sport’s biggest stage.
FIFA’s World Cup was also shaped by the posture of the government of the United States, where most of the games were held. FIFA said little as one of its designated referees, from Somalia, was denied entry to the United States immediately after arriving in Miami. The referee, Omar Artan, later called the game the biggest opportunity of his life. American officials linked him to unspecified terrorism ties.
But it was Iran’s World Cup experience that was the most fraught.
For the first time, a World Cup host was engaged in a war with one of the participants, and for Iran’s team, that meant a number of hurdles, including effective exile in Mexico except for the days when its team played its three games in the United States. About a dozen staff officials denied visas were left behind each time the team traveled to a match. The Iranian team members departed furious at the treatment it received, believing their World Cup had been undermined.
“I’m just glad they’re done, and they’re not coming back,” Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary said, after Iran was eliminated by the slimmest of margins. “I was so happy when we were able to pull their visas and said they could leave the U.S. soil, and I might’ve sung a song or two or maybe even danced a happy dance.”
Mr. Infantino also drew the ire of soccer fans inside and outside the stadiums by instituting hydration breaks that effectively divided games into four quarters. Those breaks gave teams two additional chances to huddle, and also offered broadcasters a large financial windfall. Fox, the tournament’s U.S. broadcaster, capitalized heavily on the new format, recouping at least half of its $475 million rights fee solely from ad sales during those breaks
Across the three host countries, teams ran out to largely full stadiums even as FIFA’s ticketing system angered fans. Airline-style dynamic pricing — now the subject of at least three separate state-level consumer protection investigations — sent prices for individual games spiking to four and sometimes five-figure sums. Tickets for Sunday’s final were selling for up to $100,000.
One fan from Texas, Sergio Arratia, said he had sold his classic Mustang for $20,000 for the chance to see Messi. “I can buy another car but this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said.
FIFA is hoping its bank balance will be enough to quiet any discord among its 211 member federations. The Balogun case led to rare public rebukes in the cloistered world of global soccer, where most disputes are handled behind closed doors. In the aftermath, European soccer’s governing body said that FIFA had “crossed a red line” by overturning the suspension and that the “certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians.”
On the eve of the final, Nathán Goldberg Crenier, the vice president of U.S. Soccer, published a forceful opinion piece in The Guardian titled “Infantino’s Faustian Bargain With Trump Has Stained Football’s Biggest Stage.” In it, he called for “federations around the world find the courage to oppose Infantino’s vision for the sport.”
Mr. Infantino, first elected in 2016 after a corruption scandal that wiped out FIFA’s previous leaders, is running unopposed, so far, for a new term. Each of the previous times he has run, he has lavished more of the billions FIFA makes from the World Cup on its voters through development grants, perks and committee posts that come with luxury travel and generous per diems.
The most profitable World Cup in history promises to fuel an even bigger war chest and all but assures Mr. Infantino of four more years as the head of soccer’s governing body.
And if that isn’t enough, he may come armed with one more promise: With a 48-team World Cup successfully behind him, Mr. Infantino is now openly floating the possibility of expanding the tournament to 64 teams when it is next played in 2030.
