Let's be honest with each other. When the draw for the 2026 World Cup was made, there was a part of us that hoped the football would do the talking. T...
Let's be honest with each other. When the draw for the 2026 World Cup was made, there was a part of us that hoped the football would do the talking. That the sheer spectacle of a tournament spanning three nations might distract from the moral squalor of its hosts. But the Omar Artan scandal has ripped that fantasy apart, and it has done something far more damning: it has revealed Gianni Infantino for what he has always been. One of the greatest cowards in the history of sport.Infantino, the man who promised to clean up Fifa, has instead prostrated the organisation before Donald Trump with an enthusiasm that borders on the sycophantic. He has lost control of his own tournament, and worse, he has shown he does not even care enough to pretend otherwise. The Artan case is merely the most recent, most grotesque symptom of a deeper rot. A rot that begins at the very top.You want to talk about historical perspective Fine. Even the Nazis understood the value of a facade. Before the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the Third Reich went to great lengths to sanitise its image. They removed antisemitic signs from shop windows. They took Der Stürmer off the newsstands. They temporarily suspended Paragraph 175, the law that criminalised homosexuality. They knew that the world was watching, and they were ashamed enough to try and hide the worst of themselves.Now compare that to the United States of Donald Trump in 2026. This is a host nation that is not merely indifferent to what foreign visitors might think. It is a nation that actively wants you to see the darkness. It revels in your revulsion. The inhumanity is not a bug; it is the feature. And Infantino, rather than standing up for the values his organisation claims to uphold, has chosen to kneel. He has chosen to smile and shake hands and pretend that a tournament built on the backs of migrant workers and staged in a country tearing itself apart over race and rights is somehow a victory for the game.This is not about one individual, although Artan's case is a tragedy that deserves justice. This is about the structural cowardice that allows such tragedies to be ignored. Infantino could have drawn a line. He could have insisted on basic standards of decency from his co. hosts. Instead, he has become the bag carrier for a political regime that sees football not as a unifying force, but as a prop for its own ugly agenda. The game deserves better. The fans deserve better. And if Infantino cannot find the backbone to do his job, then the question is not whether he should resign, but why he hasn't already.
