The World Cup presentation with Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino revealed how FIFA converts football’s collective wealth into patronage, reducing supporters to customers and participation to spectacle.

There was something revealing in the way FIFA President Gianni Infantino attended to Donald Trump during the presentation of the World Cup.

He hovered beside him, guided him through the ceremony and appeared to manage his reluctance to surrender the stage to the players who had actually earned it. Trump looked less like the leader of the host nation than an overindulged child being supervised by an exceptionally attentive minder.

At first glance, it appeared to show FIFA submitting itself and the world game to American political power. But Infantino was not simply looking after Trump. He was looking after FIFA’s investment in Trump.

Trump needed to occupy the stage. Infantino needed only to stand beside the man who occupied it. Of the two, Infantino may have better understood how power works.

Perhaps FIFA had not merely been captured by American political power. Perhaps it had become exceptionally skilled at capturing political power through flattery.

The presentation culminated a relationship cultivated well before the tournament. Infantino repeatedly placed himself within Trump’s political orbit, while FIFA created its first Peace Prize and awarded it to him. During the World Cup, Trump intervened after United States forward Folarin Balogun received a one-match suspension. FIFA placed the penalty on hold.

Sporting integrity depends upon a belief that the same rules apply to everyone. The apparent influence of presidential access was therefore damaging in itself. It also exposed a familiar hierarchy: FIFA moved quickly for a powerful political leader while complaints from Palestinian football authorities disappeared into legal complexity and procedural delay.

But blaming Infantino alone would mistake the president for........

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