Zohran Mamdani Is Right to Call Out FIFA. But He Doesn’t Go Far Enough.

You can say the world is going to hell when politicians take over the circus. It's mixed martial arts show will soon take place on the White House lawn to honor the memory The Declaration of Independence and the birthday of an autocratic buffoon are signs of a country in grotesque decline.

Then there's FIFA chief Gianni “Johnny Boy” Infantino playing a supplicant flattering his new favorite authoritarian regime, which was humiliating to watch ahead of the 2026 World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada. Every time Johnny Boy can't say a word about the compromised safety of international travelers or even players, including after the ICE Gestapo. shot a protesting pastor in the head with a powerful “less lethal” weapon is a glimpse into the mind of a man living in a moral sewer. To see a country that committed genocide – that would be Israel –welcome to take part in his tournament is to see yet another example of Johnny Boy clapping his hands and dancing to the tune of an autocrat.

Enter Zohran Mamdani, who stood up and said Johnny Boy probably doesn't care that players' family members are being harassed. disappeared from this countrybut New Yorkers do. In a recent speech at Guardian's Football weekly podcast, the leading candidate for New York City mayor—an avid soccer fan and longtime supporter of Arsenal Football Club of the Premier League, the top division of English soccer—expressed concern that ICE would disrupt a sporting event that brings the world together. “I've already heard from so many people who are terrified at the prospect of participating in public life during the World Cup,” he said. “I have long been troubled by the way the supposed stewards of the game have time and again chosen to profit at the expense of the people who love the game.”

Whatever one may think of Mamdani at the moment, he is talking about money in this matter. It's not just talking about podcasts.

In September, his campaign launched the “Game Before Greed” campaign. campaign It criticized FIFA for denying most New Yorkers the opportunity to participate in the World Cup, another echo of Mamdani's mantra that the city faces an affordability crisis. The Game over Greed web page refutes Infantino's plan to use so-called “dynamic pricing,” which allows FIFA to raise ticket prices on the fly based on demand – such as when a ride-sharing app increases the price in bad weather. Mamdani calls it a high-tech scam that allows FIFA to “increase prices in real time depending on how much profit they think they can make from us.” Team Mamdani also marked that the same tickets “can then be resold on the official FIFA platform without a price cap – another method of controlling the game.” Moreover, FIFA does not allocate tickets to local residents, as it did at the last three World Cups.

FIFA's call for dynamic pricing sparked immediate outrage, but Mamdani is so far the only politician trying to do something about the anger. The campaign announced that it was making a “demand for FIFA to put the game before greed and end dynamic pricing, end this idea of ​​an open-ended resale market and finally set aside 15 percent of its tickets for locals.” He also noted that in Mexico, FIFA has allowed the creation of a resale market with price caps.

For a non-profit organization, FIFA is incredibly profitable. The 2026 FIFA World Cup could be the most lucrative event in sports history with a whopping $10 billion. projected get into FIFA's coffers. That dwarfs the $7.5 billion that FIFA absorbed during the four-year cycle leading up to the men's World Cup in Qatar in 2022 and is more than double the amount the group took in during the cycle before the 2018 Russian tournament. Football historian David Goldblatt spoke about this. Nation that “FIFA is one of the most hypocritical and self-serving organizations in the world.”

He's right, of course. What's galling is that Infantino now has the advantage of a US leader who is equally amoral and sleazy: Johnny allows Trump to openly use the Cup for his own political ends, including favor from both above and, of course, below. While oligarchs and world leaders flow from one owner's box to another, the host cities below are even more visibly militarizing against ordinary people, promoting Trump's vision of bringing US cities under his iron heel. Mamdani's voice is welcome, but what he calls and calls for is not enough. Higher ticket prices and the end of dynamic pricing, while politically very sensible, are not enough. Lower prices won't make much difference if you end up in an unmarked van.

People around the world should gather for the greatest of sporting events. But they should go to Mexico and Canada. Stay away from the United States. In our circus, elephants run free. To paraphrase Trump's words 2015 racist foam On Muslims: The world needs to stay away from the US for its own safety until “we figure out what's going on.”