According to US President Donald Trump, FIFA boss Gianni Infantino would agree to rescheduling games at the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico if the security situation required it.
“He would do it easily,” Trump, who called Infantino a “phenomenal FIFA boss,” said Tuesday in Washington.
Trump was specifically asked whether moving games from Boston was conceivable. “If someone is doing a bad job and I feel like the conditions are unsafe, I would call Gianni and say, let’s move the games to another location. And he would do that,” Trump said a day after meeting the FIFA boss in Egypt.
Trump had already considered rescheduling the games to be conceivable in September. Trump said at a press conference in the Oval Office that he assumed the World Cup would be “safe,” “but if I think it’s not safe, we will move the games to another city.”
The venues for the World Cup games also include cities that are considered strongholds of the Democrats, Trump’s political opponents – including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. In recent months he has sent the National Guard to some democratically governed cities.
Trump also made reference to the Olympic Games scheduled to take place in Los Angeles in 2028 on Tuesday. “I could say the same thing about the Olympics,” Trump said: “If I thought LA wasn’t adequately prepared, I would move the games to another location.”
At the beginning of the year, Trump declared himself chairman of a White House task force for the World Cup. He maintains close relationships with Infantino, who recently expressed his “full and unreserved” confidence in the US government to be able to contribute to a successful tournament.