Davos 2026: FIFA President Gianni Infantino praises football's magic globally, says 'it transforms people's life'

FIFA President Gianni Infantino praised football’s magic at the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, Switzerland, highlighting the game’s power. Speaking on the penultimate day of the WEF, Infantino reckons football has transformed people’s lives around the globe as it brings the community together. During the summit, 2006 FIFA World Cup winner Alessandro Del Piero and former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger also reflected on football’s role.

Infantino praises football's magic globally

"This is a magic instrument (while holding a football) that transforms people into happy people. This is what this strange instrument does. And children, the children's faces become happy and adults become children and they start playing, passing the ball. This is fantastic, this is beautiful and this is something that we are forgetting,” FIFA President Infantino said at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos on Thursday.

“Dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, in these particular times we forget to be happy, to be joyful. Everyone has their own problems, issues in life and with football, we want to give to communities all over the world. FIFA has 211 countries that are members of FIFA. We want to give them a moment of joy and happiness. When a child kicks a ball, when an adult kicks a ball, they don't think about their issues and their problems in life and we have to always remember that," Infantino added.

The FIFA president reckons that the upcoming FIFA World Cup is a huge economic booster, with an estimated $80 billion turnaround. He also underlined that the FIFA World Cup will create thousands of job opportunities for the community.

Del Piero spoke about the role football played in his life growing up and how winning the FIFA World Cup with his country in 2006 made him feel complete not only as a footballer but also as a human being.

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"It's not very difficult, but we probably need more time to explain how big lifting the trophy and winning the World Cup means to me, to every football player, I guess. I mean, first of all, you feel complete. You feel complete as a footballer, of course, and also as a human being,” Del Piero said during his address.

“I say both because, you know, I started playing because I had a passion for football. My only focus was playing football, even though I have to say that I needed to go to school and be a good student, and blah, blah, blah--but yeah, it's part of the journey. Football was always in my mind: trying to become a football player, but also just enjoying it. And then, as soon as you grow up, you understand, of course, different things," the former Juventus attacker said.

Wenger explained that football has grown enormously since the first World Cup, expanding from a small, Europe-South America-focused competition into a truly global sport.

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“100 years ago, you had 13 teams playing in the first World Cup and it shows football's development. I'm now in football development and I realize how big football has become in the world. When you speak about the number of tickets people want, you cannot imagine,” Wenger said during his address.

“I travel all over the world and football has become the most important thing people talk about. And to me, for a long time, it was a confidential competition between Europe and South America. We had to open it to the world and I think the minimum we could do is to open it to more African countries, more Asian countries. Because you want football to be strong everywhere," Wenger stated.