New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, 1642 and 1643 this route was something special. The Dutch navigator Abel Janszoo Tasman has been considered the western discoverer of many oceanic islands for these years, and now it turns out: Tasman is also a great role model for the world football president. Whereby Gianni Infantino, as a Swiss, does not lean towards seafaring, but resorts to the progressive means of private jets.
New Caledonia was the next stop on Tuesday in a tour of a group of countries that Infantino’s predecessor, Sepp Blatter, once affectionately dubbed his “Ocean’s Eleven”. Fiji, the Cook Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tahiti, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands visited Infantino, the Lord of the Skies, all during the Women’s World Cup. He was greeted with a coconut in Vanuatu, a turquoise shirt in Fiji and floral decorations everywhere in the naturally “soccer-mad countries” at the other end of the world.
Following the voyages of the fortune-teller Gianni was almost more difficult than in the 17th century to understand which promontory Abel Tasman had just circumnavigated, the president flew around so confused. There still had to be time for World Cup games, for meetings with Hollywood star Natalie Portman in Australia and with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in Wellington, for handshakes with volunteers, for photos with referees, for ceremonious ticket handovers to New Zealand families and for the obligatory hugs of the mascot.
After all: with all his frenzy, pardon: traveling Infantino shouldn’t have noticed who he didn’t meet. The German national players, for example, whom he kindly expressed his sympathy for leaving. Or also: Annalena Baerbock.
While the President’s jet flew more than 40,000 kilometers from island to island without any problems, the German Foreign Minister’s Indo-Pacific trip was canceled due to two broken Airbus A340s on the flight crew. A tweet had to be enough: “In the Indo-Pacific we not only have close #friends and #partners. The region will decisively shape the #world order of the 21st century,” Baerbock said. A worldview she presumably shares with Infantino. However, he knows his #friends and #partners personally from slurping coconuts.
