FIFA president Gianni Infantino has been a busy man at this World Cup but his unquenchable thirst to pack in as many matches as possible is causing unrest among environmentalists who are questioning his indifference to climate change.
Mexico City, Guadalajara, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Seattle, Kansas City, Houston: the Italo-Swiss boss has already powered up his private jet to appear in the stands 10 times in seven days.
His insatiable use of a Qatar Airways private jet is nothing new: in September 2024, the investigative outlet Josimar revealed that he had used the plane to clock up 600,000 kilometers (372,822 miles) over the previous three years.
But the expanded 2026 World Cup, staged for the first time with 48 teams across the United States, Canada, and Mexico — meaning a jump from 64 to 104 matches — has magnified the impact of Infantino’s flying habit.
“Just one hour in this plane emits roughly what an average human being emits in an entire year,” Greenly, a French company specialising in carbon footprint assessments, said this week.
If Infantino strings together two cities a day until the end of the round of 16, then attends the last eight matches, Greenly estimates he will rack up “a defensible range of 300 to 500 tons of CO2 for his plane alone” over the course of the tournament.
That is the equivalent, they say, of “the annual footprint of around 35 to 55 French people”.
