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Comment by coffeebeqn | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know whos on Infantinos side on this

There are 200+ participating countries. Many of those are on his side, because they’re tiny and easy to bribe: a few million is significant for them and often that money can be siphoned into corrupt pockets.

That said, a World Cup without any of the 55 UEFA countries wouldn’t make sense commercially.

But the USA men might finally do well!

Depending on whether the South American teams show up…

I like this map:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_cup_winners.svg

Two world wars and one world cup...

You know which country the Nazi's fled to, right..?

Hint: the same one who act like strongmen on the field.

Mildly off-topic, but also mildly interesting.

The Wikipedia page for "Ratlines" [1] discusses "systems of escape routes used by Nazis and their collaborators" and how they settled in Rome, Spain, Genoa, and various South American countries.

But there is no mention of Werner Von Braun there - for that you need to go to "List of Germans relocated to the US via Operation Paperclip" [2], which is described as a list of "German scientists, engineers, and technicians (...) taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment".

So my answer would have been "everywhere", but apparently Nazis fled exclusively to South America while good, honest German citizens working for the official German party were taken to the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II)#Ratlin...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germans_relocated_to_t...

I’ve bad news for you: Concacaf has also unanimously spoken against the plan. :-)

(Though AFAIK they haven’t yet threatened a boycott.)

Past tense. Were on his side. He also just lost a unanimous vote with CONCACAF, the body representing many of the smallest islands least likely to ever qualify for the World Cup or actually generate money from football (and a small number of larger nations that will benefit significantly from his other pledges like more places for CONCACAF natons at the World Cup)

In addition to them all knowing that a World Cup without UEFA isn't going to happen, they also weren't impressed by being presented with a fixed offer and a ticking clock rather than an opening of negotiations....

CONCACAF almost always share opinions with UEFA, that really wasn't a surprise or anything new.

Its not just tinyness and poorness of the countries – it is also the indifference of many nations. Just because, say Brunei has the same voice as France, it does not mean that the sport, or the national team's performance is important enough for their people to care or even notice if their representatives are selling their nation's voice to the highest bidder.

Trump and his family.

His son in law is running the investment firm https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-fifa-investors-kushner-...

In turn Trump wants to nominate Infantino for Secretary General of UN https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/22/trumps-pick-for-the-next...

There is nothing this family does not see as an opportunity for corruption. Comically evil.

as an opportunity for profit*

I think it’s important to clarify the incentives at play, people are rarely evil for the sake of being evil

I think the evil part is the [at any cost] part, the incentives are irrelevant. An AI that only wants to make paperclips isn't evil because of the paperclips.

The thing is though, they’re already outrageously rich.

At some point you genuinely are just being dodgy purely for the love of the game

'I don't want to do evil things! But they so well, what choice do I have?!'

“And those are great, great beautiful evil things. They came to me and said how beautiful those great evil things are.”

No clue how people fall for that.

And it is so blatant to everyone except the republicans.

Republicans should be called the anti-Democrats at this point.

Oh it's blatant to them as well, but you see, they get to own the libs, which obviously warrants setting the world on fire

The heads of Football Associations of tiny countries who took enormous bungs to vote for him and then spent the money on some facilities but mostly themselves

> Sepp Blatter weighed in, writing on X: "The close relationship between the Fifa president and the US President [Donald Trump] has reached a financial dimension that is deeply damaging football. No-one has the right to sell our game."

Sepp Blatter for crying out loud.

Who better to recognize corruption?

That's like John Gotti saying Al Capone was corrupt.

It takes one to know one, yep.

Game recognizes game.

Blatter was corrupt to the core but cared about the actual sport if you look at his record. This new president is like a james bond villian caricature like he actually wants to destroy the sport.

Must hurt, seeing someone do similar shit as you did, yet getting away with it.

Like, mmm, Lance Armstrong, after he got caught.

Kushner

The companies that want a piece of FIFA, I assume.

Edit: I just realized you meant who here on hn, in which case I assume the hardcore capitalists/libertarians. But they can speak for themselves.

On HN? The capitalist/libertarian/Elon posters, Meta employees, etc.

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