QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I feel gay.”

Responding to criticism of FIFA’s selection of Qatar as the host of the 2022 World Cup, Infantino attempted a show of solidarity with the oppressed.

  • “Today I feel Qatari,” he said during an hour-long news conference in Doha on Saturday. “Today I feel Arabic. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel [like] a migrant worker.”
  • FIFA’s decision to hold the world’s biggest sporting event in the autocratic Gulf state sparked backlash over Qatar’s hardline anti-LGBT policies and alleged abuses against migrant workers.
  • Infantino’s speech, which linked the challenges facing marginalized groups to his own experience as a child of migrant workers in Switzerland, was widely panned.