It’s long been a golden rule of sport that football World Cups get bigger and badder every four years. The latest edition of the tournament, however, may put that universal law to the test after a six-week journey through Trump’s America, which is expected to generate $80bn of global economic output through its full timeline.
As the world’s biggest sporting event meets the world’s biggest market, it’s hard to see how even the World Cup can get much more bloated than this. But if anyone can make it happen it’s Gianni Infantino, the opportunist Fifa overlord who has schmoozed with the planet’s most divisive leaders to extract maximum gains from his travelling global roadshow. As Barney Ronay says in his tournament scenesetter for our cover story this week, welcome to the heart of darkness.
