“It’s very clear,” claimed haunted Fifa cue-ball Gianni Infantino not so long ago, “that politics should stay out of football and football should stay out of politics.” But is it clear? Is it really? On Monday, the worst man in world sport was – yet again – to be found in the Oval Office, this time nodding along to Trump’s declaration that games could be moved from host cities for next summer’s World Cup if the US president deems there’s “a problem” with security or that the cities are non-compliant in some other way. In practice, that seems to mean if they’re run by a Democrat/“communist”. Amazing that the Fifa president will gladly allow his tournaments to be held in any old violent autocracy but, for the purposes of the White House cameras at least, might need to draw the line at Boston.

Honestly, the very sight of Infantino these days causes decades of writing about Fifa to flash before my eyes. How could it have happened? How could we have ended up with an even bigger horror in charge of world football’s governing body than the various ones who went before? When Sepp Blatter was thrown from a moving gravy train in 2015 amid an explosive corruption scandal, it would have felt like a genuine feat of sporting excellence to have beaten his record for craven awfulness.

And yet here we all are. This year, the Fifa president has been the Forrest Gump of Trump’s administration. Back in May, he attended the US president’s Middle East peace summit, causing him to be so late for Fifa’s own congress that even Uefa accused him of prioritising “private political interests” and staged a delegate walk-out. Last month, Gianni was back on the political trail at Trump’s Gaza peace talks in Egypt, and earlier this month instituted some preposterous Fifa peace prize that he’s going to inaugurate at the final draw for the 2026 World Cup in Washington next month, quite possibly so that the orange organ grinder can be the first winner of it. He spent yesterday grinning along while Trump announced things such as the possible ordering of “strikes” on one of the US’s 2026 World Cup co-host nations, Mexico. Perhaps the writing was on the wall when Gianni kicked off the year of ceaselessly grim politicking by attending Trump’s inauguration, where he was filmed giggling appreciatively during the bit where the US president announced he’d be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Back then, in January, Infantino looked like a competition winner. Now he resembles a fully operational member of Trump’s troupe of winged monkeys. It used to be host governments that got co-opted into Fifa’s supra-national edicts – I remember South Africa being forced to set up highly dubious “Fifa World Cup Courts” for errant fans during the 2010 tournament. But now Fifa is a wholly owned tool of whoever will have it. Like all parasites, it relies on its host organisms.

As far as I can tell, a political leader removing a game from a host city has never happened in the entire 95-year history of the World Cup tournament, which should perhaps confirm the increasing global impression that the US might just be a uniquely backward country. Football fans considering buying expensive tickets and making even more expensive travel arrangements should consider that they are journeying somewhere so apparently volatile that even its own president talks its safety down. Hopefully here in the UK there will be official Foreign Office advice warning of the logistical and political dangers of watching a remorselessly poor match between two of the 48 countries that Infantino has triumphantly ruined the group stages with. Or, indeed, watching no match at all, because Seattle’s mayor has been deemed less politically acceptable than anyone connected to the leadership of the last two host countries, Qatar and Russia. Which, by way of a reminder, were not actually even democracies.

Or as Trump’s White House World Cup taskforce head, nepo gimp Andrew Giuliani, put it on Monday, the next World Cup could only have happened because of Trump’s “vision”, and is going to be “one of the greatest cultural events in world history”. Infantino went with different superlatives, promising that it would be “the greatest and most inclusive World Cup ever”. Mm-hm. In the hands of marketing men, of which Mr Infantino is most certainly one, there are few more telltale red flags than use of the word “inclusive”. If you ever hear the word inclusive in what amounts to an advert, you can be sure someone’s about to get done over or excluded – and in this case, would you believe, it’s the fans. Not only has the Fifa overlord allowed World Cup game tickets to be subject to the loathed dynamic pricing, but those games might be shifted hundreds or even thousands of miles away due to politics.

No doubt Infantino is patting himself on the back for all this. But his true achievement – so far – is presiding over an era in which “sportswashing” stopped being some niche critical term of art, and became something that all football fans know the minute they see it. Because they see it all the time. As for that peace prize, please don’t limit yourself to thinking it will be annual. The last time Gianni invented a prize – Fifa’s The Best Awards – he held them twice inside nine months. So there is every chance Trump could win it again before next summer’s World Cup kicks off. It’s all thanks to the least political man in world sport – or certainly, the least sporting man in world politics.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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