Is FIFA president Gianni Infantino shameless or just honest?

The di­choto­my of con­trol. ​A cou­ple of days ago, a “thought of the day” came across my time­line. It was a quote from the Sto­ic philoso­pher Epicte­tus. It jumped out at me be­cause of some­thing FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no said in an­swer to a ques­tion.

​His at­ti­tude, tone, and re­ply made me de­cide to un­fol­low the World Cup, even though I have a fa­vorite team (Brazil) and want Cu­ra­cao and Haiti to play well. Let me ex­pound a bit on that Thought of the Day ar­ti­cle, which was writ­ten by Mal James in the pub­li­ca­tion Space Dai­ly.

​In his ex­pla­na­tion, James said: ​”A plan you were count­ing on falls through an hour be­fore it was sup­posed to hap­pen. Some­one says some­thing in a tone you didn’t like. None of these are large events, and yet a whole af­ter­noon can tilt around one of them. The mood goes, the fo­cus goes, and the rest of the day qui­et­ly re­or­gan­is­es it­self around some­thing that, writ­ten down, would take a sin­gle line. We tell our­selves the thing ru­ined the day, when usu­al­ly the thing was small and most of what was large was what we made of it.

​”Men are dis­turbed,” Epicte­tus wrote, “not by things, but by the prin­ci­ples and no­tions which they form con­cern­ing things.”

Ac­cord­ing to James, Epicte­tus isn’t claim­ing that noth­ing bad ever hap­pens—on­ly that the event and your ver­dict on it are two sep­a­rate things. The sec­ond one (the sto­ry you build on top of what oc­curred) is the part that does most of the dis­turb­ing.

​Now back to In­fan­ti­no, who held a press con­fer­ence on the eve of the World Cup, where he ad­dressed So­ma­li ref­er­ee Omar Ar­tan be­ing de­nied en­try to the US. In­fan­ti­no told peo­ple to “chill and re­lax” re­gard­ing the is­sue. He de­fend­ed FI­FA over sev­er­al con­tro­ver­sies. Ar­tan was the first ref­er­ee from So­ma­lia at a World Cup, but he was re­fused en­try to the Unit­ed States.

​It may be an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion to sim­ply say that In­fan­ti­no is trans­ac­tion­al or an un­re­pen­tant cap­i­tal­ist. His at­ti­tude and ap­proach may just be the re­al­i­ty of to­day’s world; he is com­fort­able sell­ing FI­FA and the foot­ball he leads to the high­est bid­der. It’s easy for him to dis­miss le­git­i­mate con­cerns, tell peo­ple to “chill and re­lax,” and ask them to trust him and FI­FA. Call him ar­ro­gant or what­ev­er else you may choose.

​Not even crit­i­cism from the Unit­ed Na­tions about im­mi­gra­tion is­sues or com­plaints about tick­et prices de­ters him. He acts as lord and mas­ter: Just re­lax, chill out, and trust me/us (FI­FA).

​Africa’s num­ber-one ref­er­ee be­ing turned away by im­mi­gra­tion was, to him, just “un­for­tu­nate.”

​For­get that In­done­sia, due to host the 2023 Un­der-20 World Cup, was stripped of its host­ing rights af­ter stat­ing Is­rael would not be per­mit­ted en­try. When the Unit­ed States makes sim­i­lar de­ci­sions that af­fect com­pet­ing World Cup na­tions, FI­FA claims it is pow­er­less.

​”We check what we do with the best lawyers, with the best ex­perts,” In­fan­ti­no de­clared.

​FI­FA, he said, on­ly has one chance every four years to raise mon­ey for the world. He de­fend­ed the pric­ing struc­ture as “ac­cu­rate” for the North Amer­i­can mar­ket.

​So, there we have it. Don’t say he is shame­less; he is just hon­est. But if true hon­esty re­quires hu­mil­i­ty, can it re­al­ly be said that In­fan­ti­no dis­plays any?

​I am think­ing I shouldn’t let In­fan­ti­no de­ter my in­ter­est in the World Cup. Yet, I am dis­turbed, and I’m not sure if it’s okay to just chill, re­lax, and en­joy his ver­sion of the tour­na­ment—even if Epicte­tus re­minds me that my anger comes from my in­ter­pre­ta­tion of In­fan­ti­no’s lead­er­ship, and not the World Cup it­self.