U.S. President Donald Trump backed under-pressure football chief Gianni Infantino, after calls grew for the FIFA boss to quit following his aborted plan to sell off parts of the World Cup tournament to private investors.
“FIFA would be making a terrible mistake if, for any reason, they even considered replacing President Gianni Infantino. He is fantastic, having just presided over the most successful World Cup, by four times, ever presented,” Trump posted Tuesday morning on Truth Social.
Trump and Infantino cultivated a close relationship in the run-up to the 2026 World Cup, hosted this summer in North America, and the U.S. president helped present the trophy to victorious Spain in New Jersey in July.
Infantino has faced a deluge of criticism and demands to step down after revelations he planned to spin off a new company from the Swiss-based nonprofit that oversees international football. FIFA Forward Enterprise would have owned and managed the commercial rights to FIFA competitions — including broadcasting, sponsorship, ticketing, licensing and related businesses.
Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, was in line to be the lead investor in the controversial project.
The FIFA boss withdrew the plan after days of blowback, but has dug his heels in as British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European football governing body UEFA have suggested he step down.
“If he is gone, [FIFA] will never be as successful or profitable again,” Trump added.
By most objective standards, the 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament — which concluded two weeks ago in New Jersey with Spain’s grueling 1-0 victory over Argentina — was a major success. Despite global anxiety over the collision between the world’s largest sporting event and Donald Trump’s “America First” regime, stadiums were mostly full across North America, fans and players from all sorts of large and small countries seemed to enjoy themselves (and tried to smuggle home large quantities of ranch dressing) and, of course, something like $15 billion flowed into FIFA’s coffers.
Just below the surface, however, the soccer world was seething with discontent. That erupted into all-out rebellion this week, which could finally bring down Gianni Infantino, the Swiss administrator who has served as FIFA chief executive for the last decade. Unpacking the byzantine history of alleged or actual corruption within FIFA and the numerous regional and national federations under its purview would be a dissertation-length project. But it’s definitely not wrong to say there’s a Trump angle, and that Infantino’s marriage of convenience and shared sensibility with the U.S. president may bring his downfall.
Even before this year’s tournament, Infantino stood accused of commercializing or “Americanizing” world soccer — a process he did not start but has certainly accelerated — and of shamelessly cozying up to Trump, whom he presented with the newly-invented FIFA Peace Prize, aka the “Temu Nobel,” last December. That was all inarguably true, and the guy has form, as they say on British cop shows. Back in 2022, while seeking to justify holding the World Cup in Qatar, an autocratic monarchy with a famously dreadful human rights record, Infantino launched a thousand memes with this memorable monologue:
“Today I have very strong feelings, I can tell you. Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker.”
If it seems extraordinary that a major executive of any enterprise, anywhere in the world, could say stuff like that and still have a job four years later, you are beginning to appreciate the hallucinatory Infantino experience. Anyway, in 2026 Infantino seems to have swapped all those intersectional identities for an adjunct MAGA membership, and this year’s World Cup pushed the soccer world’s bizarre love-hate relationship with its leader into overdrive.
Even before this tournament, Infantino stood accused of “Americanizing” world soccer — a process he did not start but has certainly accelerated — and shamelessly cozying up to the current occupant of the White House. This was inarguably true.
Tom Burrows of the Athletic did a nice job this week of summarizing the indictment: Infantino drove World Cup ticket prices to previously unimagined levels, introduced “commercial breaks in each half [of matches] dressed up as hydration breaks” — a network-friendly innovation that global football had resisted for decades — capitulated to Trump in reversing a red-card suspension for U.S. star striker Folarin Balogun, and introduced a “surreal halftime show” featuring Madonna, BTS and Justin Bieber in the final match, in obvious (and inept) imitation of the Super Bowl.
All of that, mind you, came before Infantino’s big surprise this past week: Apparently without consulting any relevant stakeholders, he announced a plan to spin off commercial rights to the World Cup into a new for-profit company (FIFA is a nonprofit, like other international sporting federations) and then sell off a big chunk of that company to an investment consortium led by Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. So it’s not entirely accurate to say that Infantino wanted to sell world soccer’s biggest brand to the Trump family. But it’s not exactly false either.
To coin a phrase, you can’t make this stuff up. But the good news, or the kind-of good news, or the “why in God’s name did this take so long” news, is that Infantino has finally choked on an overdose of hubris. His proposal collapsed within 48 hours and as of this weekend has been abandoned completely. (Soccer fans will discern unmistakable echoes of the European Super League, a proposed NFL-style closed competition for Europe’s top club teams that was announced in 2021 and imploded within a few weeks.)
UEFA, the federation that governs European soccer and is by far the most powerful of FIFA’s regional subsidiaries, wasted no time in rejecting Infantino’s scheme and announcing that none of its 55 national teams would participate in any FIFA competitions until the proposal was ditched. That was almost certainly enough to torpedo this galaxy-brain plan, and other regional confederations — most notably Concacaf, which represents North America, Central America and the Caribbean, and therefore includes the U.S. — soon followed UEFA’s lead, if not as aggressively.
Donald Trump did not pick up the phone on this occasion. (“Johnny who? Really, I barely know the guy.”) Only the Confederation of African Football — whose member nations, fairly or otherwise, are perceived as Infantino supporters — remained silent. More on that shortly.
Anyone who follows world soccer already knows that UEFA has its own extensive history of political intrigue and internal scandal, and is not well positioned to play populist hero in this drama. But as is so often the case in world affairs, there are no good guys in the story and you have to pick your poison. One could draw a rough analogy with the European Union, a deeply flawed entity that nonetheless represents some degree of ideological or economic counterweight to Trump’s America. In this particular confrontation, Europe held nearly all the cards.
If Infantino somehow pushes through his scheme to sell shares in the World Cup, he will do so — believe it or not — by casting himself as a defender of the downtrodden and underprivileged. He feels gay and African and disabled, remember?
While the next men’s World Cup, FIFA’s biggest golden goose, is still four years away, the consequences of a European boycott would have been felt immediately. The under-20 Women’s World Cup begins in Poland about a month from now, and qualifying playoffs for FIFA’s second-biggest event, the Women’s World Cup (to be held next summer in Brazil) are set for October. Given his avowed commitments to promoting the women’s game and youth soccer at all levels, Infantino simply couldn’t afford to play chicken with UEFA and risk losing those tournaments. Joshua Kushner and his family, one imagines, will not starve.
This may be stretching the point, but there’s a thematic resemblance at work here to the worldwide pushback against Big Tech data centers, and against the opaque government processes that gets them built, as well as to the popular and legal resistance that has stalled the $110 billion merger between Warner Bros. and Paramount. It’s also true that Infantino is now understood, both to soccer fans and the world at large, as a proxy for Donald Trump, which looks like a much worse bet than it did a year ago. Infantino was cruising to likely re-election as FIFA president next year, but right now it’s an even-money bet that he can survive the next month.
Like his White House buddy, Infantino has thrived on a remarkable ability to weaponize greed and cynicism, both on an epic scale and at ground level. He fully intended to push through his scheme to sell shares in the World Cup by casting himself, believe it or not, as a defender of the downtrodden and underprivileged. He feels gay and African and disabled, remember? The uncomfortable truth is that he has ruled over a vast global sports and merchandising empire largely by fulfilling his promises to channel lots of money into regional and national federations in the Global South that have historically had few resources.
Under Infantino’s proposed plan, each of FIFA’s 211 federations — at least the ones who supported him! — would have received an immediate cash infusion of $40 million, with further annual installments to follow. That sum would barely make a difference to the football gods in England, Spain or France, but would been enormous in Malawi or Madagascar. Affluent European nations don’t need infusions of private equity capital to build new stadiums and support younger players, and can afford to stand up to Infantino’s Trump-flavored bribery scheme. For players, parents, coaches and local officials in sub-Saharan Africa, the equation might have looked very different. Why should they care where the money comes from? This particular grift may have failed, but in a world built on massive structural inequality, grifters tend to prosper.
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from Andrew O’Hehir on our wonderful and terrifying world
FIFA President Gianni Infantino looks on after the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina on July 19, 2026, in East Rutherford, New Jersey. | Marvin Ibo Guengoer — GES Sportfoto/Getty Images
The 2026 FIFA World Cup wasn’t perfect, but it was still pretty great. Legions of fans got to experience the US (and Canada, and Mexico), and Americans embraced visiting teams in turn. There was lots of extremely good football (soccer), and Cinderella teams like Cape Verde had a chance to shine.
Not even two weeks later, though, FIFA president Gianni Infantino is doing his best to kill the good vibes. He has a new proposal to sell stakes in the World Cup to private equity, attempting to capitalize on an enormously profitable tournament — with record revenue of about $15 billion in this year’s edition.
Specifically, his plan would create a new entity to run the World Cup, with FIFA the majority owner. Up to 21 percent of the company would be offered to private shareholders, in a major departure from FIFA’s current, ostensibly non-profit model.
And so far, nearly everyone hates it. Many of FIFA’s 211 member associations are in outright revolt; one of its six regional confederations, UEFA, which represents European football, has threatened to boycott FIFA events if the plan goes forward. “We will never lend this model our legitimacy,” UEFA wrote in a statement released Thursday.
Go a little deeper
UEFA is not the only governing body in football that has condemned Infantino’s plan to bring private money into the World Cup, though it has led the charge. Concacaf — which represents North and Central America, plus the Caribbean — and the Asian Football Confederation have also come out against the idea.
Collectively, they make up nearly two-thirds of FIFA’s member associations, which creates a real math problem for Infantino — the plan would require approval from a majority of FIFA members to take effect.
The intensity of the backlash has raised questions about Infantino’s future. As the Athletic reported on Thursday, he’s up for reelection as FIFA president in March, but he may no longer have an easy time of it. On Friday, FIFA’s chief operating officer described the proposal as “the project of one person” — Infantino — in a statement coming out against it.
For now, though, FIFA and Infantino say they plan to forge ahead with a “consultation period” for the plan. It sets up an even higher-stakes version of the battle over “hydration breaks” — which double as lucrative commercial breaks — that Roger Bennett, founder of the soccer podcast Men in Blazers, described to Vox in June.
“Ultimately,” Bennett told Vox, “the whole game of football is currently in a battle between its roots and the commercial imperative that comes from being as big as it is. … It is the last megaphone which is faintly audible around the world. And when you have something that big, it becomes deeply desirous to make as much money as you can out of it.”
One link for later
➨ Bail on plans the right way. If you’re currently staring down a weekend engagement you’d rather not attend, Vox’s Allie Volpe has some pointers on canceling without injury or offense. For starters, you can only bail on casual events with someone you either know very well or not that well at all. And you should offer an honest excuse before attempting to reschedule.
Before you go…
Did you know…that, until 2016, scientists routinely excluded female mice from medical research? The National Institutes of Health now requires that researchers include both sexes to help guarantee that drugs work safely for both men and women.
Today’s trivia: What’s the Vietnamese word for “festival”? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you to identify the “ugli” fruit. Ugli is the registered trademark for the Jamaican tangelo, a natural — and honestly, perfectly good-looking — hybrid that was discovered in the wild in the early 1900s.
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Ahead of the World Cup’s Round of 16, President Donald Trump literally interfered with the U.S. team’s run as he called FIFA boss Gianni Infantino and argued for a controversial red card to be reviewed. And, on Sunday, as the quadrennial tournament came to its conclusion, Trump crashed the stage during the final celebration.
We were all so happy when the World Cup was fun. And now… | Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images
Just a few weeks ago, Americans were able to eat salad without the fear of liquid feces and breathe in air that didn’t taste like campfire ash.
And — we were just really excited to watch some soccer.
One major concern at the outset was whether America’s foreign and strict immigration policies would impact the levity of the games, and, at worst, deny entry to people, and perhaps even athletes and officials, from countries at odds with the current administration (it did).
But in the early days of the World Cup, Americans and fans across the globe were surprised by how much of the world embraced coming here — and vice versa. Visiting international fans shared their astonishment at the sublime oddities this massive country has to offer, posting about: ranch dressing (in bowls if you ask nicely), unlimited refills in towering glasses, dairy products, air conditioning, Tex-Mex, ammunition displays, chicken tenders, cowboy hats, and, among other things, the Cheesecake Factory. Oh, how we all rejoiced in seeing the rest of the world experience the Byzantine beauty of our chain restaurants for the first time, and how craggy we enjoy our fried chicken strips!
Adding to the cultural exchange on the sidelines, fans were also pleasantly surprised by how well the United States — historically a country that’s been bad at soccer — showed up.
We were high off the US team’s 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina. We looked like a team with guts! Malik Tillman scored a goal down a man after star striker Folarin Balogun was sent off with a (questionable — experts said) red card. Many players on the US team have immigrant parents, are army brats, or are American by birthright citizenship (a constitutional privilege that the Trump administration has sought to dissolve). Though Belgium, in the next round, was going to be a difficult matchup, you couldn’t count out toughness.
Even though many Americans root for the underdog, and many see themselves as underdogs, it’s rare that America is ever actually the underdog.
But in the context of the World Cup, one of the rare things that American men will never win because soccer is one of those rare sports that no American man has ever been the best at, the stars aligned for Americans to have the scrappy longshot team of our dreams.
But it didn’t take long for the illusion to shatter.
As the Fourth of July weekend finished, FIFA announced that it had reversed Balogun’s red card and that he would, in an exception to the rules, be allowed to play against the Belgians. The move was unprecedented and fishy.
That red-card reversal also ripped open a portal into a nightmare realm.
Acting like a person who can’t keep a surprise party a surprise, President Donald Trump began insinuating that he might have had something to do with the decision. Then, on the morning of the match against Belgium, Trump said that he had placed a call to FIFA president Gianni Infantino about the red card and implicitly took credit for its reversal. Infantino not only confirmed the call but said that he takes calls from important and rich people all the time — a cartoonishly suspicious response from an organization that’s historically famous for corruption.
Trump on Balogun: "I saw the play, and I'm a person that loves sports … that wasn't a foul. That wasn't even an infraction … this referee, who is a little bit suspect if you check his past. He made a call that nobody could believe … he's our best player, or one of our best… pic.twitter.com/YfIqb1JA4u
Some fans, upon learning that the laws had been bent for the host country, reacted with astonishment, if not fury. Ethically, FIFA’s bar is on the floor, and this blatant move to help the United States somehow seemed to confirm onlookers’ worst fears.
In that moment, it was clear the US was no longer an underdog. Underdogs aren’t supposed to be able to put their thumb on the scale. They surely aren’t supposed to have their papa call favors. Perhaps all that talk of guts and toughness and how the team was a band of overlooked outsiders was just a mirage — and all that ranch dressing merely a charm offensive.
Whether you’re a soccer fan or someone who is ambivalent about soccer but loved the vibes, the shift was palpable. We’re all experiencing a collective whiplash and perhaps a sports-affected melancholy.
And now that the Cup is ending, Americans are now living in a country where vegetables, famously healthy, and good for you, carry the risk of “explosive” diarrhea. Diarrhea itself is something many would not consider a calm experience, so the idea that this is not just diarrhea but somehow a special, even worse diarrhea, one akin to detonation, feels especially terrifying.
This week also saw swaths of the US living under a plume of wildfire smoke — the dirtiest air in the world. Breathing outside is, according to scientists, the equivalent of smoking 10 cigarettes. Breathing in smoke-laced air and worrying about the looming spectre of diarrhea with every meal puts the shared cultural joy we had in perspective. But even without these extreme plagues, it’s worth mourning how fleeting those moments can be.
By any measure, the 2026 World Cup has been exceptional. The new format, expanding team participation from 32 to 48, has brought to center stage smaller, underdog countries that have outperformed expectations, produced unexpected heroes and warmed our collective hearts. FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, has repeatedly positioned the sport as a force for inclusion and social cohesion; soccer diplomacy is being elevated as the panacea for our current global disharmony.
But all is not golden at the World Cup. This tournament has had no shortage of controversies, as fights over referee favoritism and interference by President Donald Trump attest. There is much to pick apart about this year’s World Cup, but one issue has been mostly invisible in the public discussion and debates: gender-based violence.
Why does FIFA maintain strict rules that police everything from drug use and match-fixing to financial fair play, yet it has no universal standard on gender-based violence?
Several players currently competing in the World Cup are facing allegations, investigations or charges for sexual assault, rape or intimate partner violence. While the facts and legal outcomes of these cases vary and due process must always be followed, the larger question remains: Why does FIFA maintain strict rules that police everything from drug use and match-fixing to financial fair play, yet it has no universal standard on gender-based violence?
This silence reveals a deeper contradiction at the heart of the world’s most popular sport.
Soccer is built on collective responsibility. Success depends on discipline, teamwork, emotional control, respect for others and adherence to the rules of the game. Yet the game’s governing institutions have shown little commitment to these values when it comes to allegations of violence against women.
Infantino has many opinions on violence in soccer, but seemingly none on gender-based violence. This stands in stark contrast with other sports associations like the NFL, which in recent years has committed itself to addressing domestic and other violence through its Personal Conduct Policy. So does Major League Baseball. Its policy combines investigation, discipline and mandatory education. FIFA’s lack of comparable universal standards is not just a governance failure. It’s also a missed opportunity for prevention.
Gender-based violence is often framed as a private matter between individuals or a problem for the criminal justice system to solve. But decades of research and community-based prevention efforts tell us otherwise. Violence is shaped by social norms, power dynamics and the behaviors that institutions reward, tolerate or condemn. Prevention happens not only through laws and prosecutions, but also through the values communities choose to uphold.
Few institutions have greater influence over those values than soccer. The World Cup is more than a sporting event — it is one of the most powerful cultural platforms in the world. When soccer institutions fail to address violence against women with the same seriousness they bring to drug-use, corruption or fan misconduct, they undermine those very lessons. They communicate the respect that matters on the pitch but may be optional off it.
While much of the blame for this omission can be squarely placed on Infantino as the longtime leader of the association, the soccer clubs themselves must also be held accountable. FIFA is the governing body that controls international competition, but the onus also falls on “global football” as a whole. The elite European teams, which are all owned either by billionaires, investment groups or actual nation-states, especially petrostates — all of whom derive great financial rewards from the commercial value generated by their star players — should face particular scrutiny.
Too often, soccer institutions seem willing to tolerate serious allegations when the player in question remains valuable on the field. A case in point is Achraf Hakimi, who is currently playing for the Morocco national team and has been ordered to stand trial in France over a rape allegation. Hakimi’s full-time job is with Paris Saint-Germain, which is owned by Qatar; he continues to play for both teams with impunity.
Several players in previous World Cups, including Dani Alves, have been convicted of rape or sexual assault. But convictions are rare. They are often overturned or reduced on appeal, as was Alves’ case, which prosecutors cited they would appeal to Spain’s Supreme Court. Convictions are uncommon not because allegations are rare but because the legal system is slow and flawed. Studies show that in the US, for every 1,000 sexual assaults, 50 reports lead to arrests, 28 cases lead to felony convictions, and only 25 are sentenced to incarceration, according to RAINN.
The problem for this World Cup is players are competing under active charges or investigations. FIFA’s selective moral leadership — claiming the high ground on fair play, inclusion and human rights — cannot be credible without meaningful action on gender-based violence.
To that end, FIFA must develop and enforce a broad policy that includes independent reporting mechanisms, transparent investigation procedures, survivor-centered protections, mandatory education and prevention programs, as well as clear standards to end impunity. If, as it claims, FIFA truly wants to be the face of global diplomacy and human rights, then the credibility of the “beautiful game” depends not only on how it protects the integrity of competition, but on whether it is willing to use its powerful influence to help create safer communities for women and girls.
World Cup fans en route to a Scotland vs. Haiti match in Boston. | Erin Clark/The Boston Globe
Much like its indifference toward soccer, America’s aversion to public transport has made it a global anomaly, an oddity encapsulated by the nation’s sacred pregame pastime: the tailgate.
Here in the US, celebrating sports means driving your big car to a colossal suburban gridiron football stadium, where you’ll grill, baby, grill until the smoky scents of burgers and bratwurst float across vast plains of asphalt. So entrenched is the nation’s car culture that the average American spends about half a month sitting behind the wheel every year. In fact, while the US has tens of millions more cars than it has people to drive them, even its largest cities have far fewer trains or buses per capita than our global peers.
As a result, Americans are more than twice as likely to die in a car accident as Europeans, and nearly five times as likely to die in a car crash as someone in train-happy Germany. While many transit projects carry similar price tags, the US still boasts many dozens more college football stadiums than it does rapid transit systems or subway networks.
So, it’s no wonder that critics doubted that US cities hosting this year’s World Cup, the largest single sporting event in human history, could effectively find ways to schlep visiting fans around. After abandoning its initial pledges to shepherd fans for free, New Jersey earned scorn for trying to sell $150 round-trip train tickets to MetLife Stadium, prompting journalists to test how difficult it would be to reach it by foot, bike, or canoe. Kansas City’s shiny new pop-up World Cup buses got caught in hours of ensnarled traffic on their way to their city’s very first game between Algeria and Argentina.
And yet, on the precipice of the tournament’s final stage, the nation’s widely expected World Cup public transit meltdown has simply not materialized. To the surprise of pretty much everyone, US cities have managed to absorb the influx of fans with relative ease, even under the pressure of record ridership en route to stadiums, watch parties, and fan zones.
Eli Lipmen, executive director of the advocacy group MoveLA, said that he had “actually been pleasantly surprised and quite impressed” with how the Los Angeles transit system performed amid the World Cup. As he explained, that notoriously gridlocked city is in the midst of a “major cultural shift” around public transit. As Angelenos spend less time in their cars, the city has gotten quieter, he said. “People are happier. There’s more of a sense of community,” Lipmen said.
A renewed commitment to public transit infrastructure has played a part in that shift — and not just in Southern California. In the lead-up to the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, Los Angeles unveiled three new subway stations in May, its first new stations to open in over two decades. Meanwhile, Seattle’s Sound Transit shuttled a record-shattering 309,000 riders when Team USA faced Team Belgium, thanks in part to its completion of a light rail extension that had been in the works for nearly two decades. Atlanta overhauled its bus network, Miami made use of a new rapid transit line, and Kansas City spent millions to expand its tram service and rolled out pop-up shuttles.
As it turns out, US cities can build new buses, trams, and trains much faster than they may think. The harder question now is whether they can keep up that momentum when it serves locals, and not just visitors. Just hours after Kansas City’s final World Cup match — Argentina 3, Switzerland 2 — its cash-strapped transit authority shut down its extended tram service with plans to slash a quarter of its regular bus routes by the end of this summer.
Many host cities “are still not building [transit] as a serious modal shift” away from cars, said Eric Goldwyn, director of the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management. “They’re building it as a cutesy-patootsie complement.”
Americans learned to love soccer. Can they learn to love transit too?
LA is among the exceptions, and not only because of its looming Olympics host gig. The city has made a concerted effort over the past couple of years to invest in and rebrand its transit system, which had long had a reputation for grime and danger. “If you’d spoken to me two and a half years ago, this conversation would be about safety and security on the metro system,” said Lipmen, referencing a bus that was taken hostage in 2024, one of several “really horrible, very high-profile incidents” that left many Angelenos feeling unsafe on the system. “Now, the conversation is about joy and celebration.”
What changed?
LA began investing heavily in building more trains, buses, and subway stations, and overhauled its public safety approach, which led to a 6.7 percent drop in violent crime on transit and a 33 percent drop in incidents like drug use and weapons possession. For Lipmen, the real shift came when the metro system opened its three new stations along the D line in May, and released a raunchy “Ride the D” shirt to celebrate it. Almost immediately, the Metro’s cheeky merchandise sold out, and would continue to sell out every time it was restocked for months to follow.
It might sound silly, but the hype genuinely helped dull some of the stigma associated with taking the train. “People who were quietly riding transit all of a sudden felt comfortable in their own skin as a transit-rider, and proud to be a transit-rider,” Lipmen said.
Overall, LA’s big bet appears to be slowly working. “LA is a transit city,” Jennifer Vides, Metro Los Angeles’s chief customer experience officer, told the Associated Press last week. “People want to try to say that it’s not. Obviously, we have a lot more expansion to do and we’re working on it. But people really want transit.”
Beyond adding new train lines or bus fleets, normalizing public transit requires “a dramatic recast of how people get around and travel,” Goldwyn said. Cities need a vision that ensures that there is an actual “destination on the other end” of their new transit line, like offices or the kind of housing California’s new bill aims to get built near transit hubs. Most cities will need a mixture of “carrots and sticks” to help people who are used to driving everywhere see the value in hopping on a bus or tram as part of their everyday commute, not just to get to the airport or the stadium. “If your transit is not connecting you to places you want to go, you’re not going to use it,” Goldwyn said.
A single tournament, like a single train line, will never be enough to change how Americans move. But if this nation of football fans can learn to love soccer, then surely they can learn to love the train a little bit more too. At the very least, with LA28 precisely two years away, Los Angeles just got closer to making its car-free summer Olympic dreams come true.
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