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meaning a jump from 64 to 104 matches -- has magnified the impact of Infantino’s flying habit.

“Just one hour in this plane emits roughly what an average human being emits in an entire year,” Greenly, a French company specializing in carbon footprint assessments, said this week.

If Infantino strings together two cities a day until the end of the round of 16, then attends the last eight matches, Greenly estimates he will rack up “a defensible range of 300 to 500 tons of CO2 for his plane alone” over the course of the tournament.

That is the equivalent, they say, of “the annual footprint of around 35 to 55 French people”.

FIFA defends the president’s travel by stressing that its executives choose between commercial and private flights “based on what is most efficient and cost-effective” and that in all cases the organization covers travel costs.

David Gogishvili, a geographer at the University of Lausanne, told AFP that FIFA had created a “sustainability paradox”. “By reusing existing but geographically dispersed NFL stadiums across a continent, FIFA has created a model that is structurally dependent on high-emission air travel,” he said.

“When leadership sets a precedent by hopping between matches via private jet, it perfectly reflects the broader systemic issue/approach.”

The way FIFA has organised this World Cup “normalises hyper-mobility while simultaneously shifting transport costs and carbon burdens onto the host regions and fans.”

John Hocevar, who is Oceans Campaign Director of Greenpeace USA, is equally curt about Infantino’s stadium-hopping.

“Having executives take daily flights on highly polluting private jets doesn’t exactly send the message that FIFA recognizes either the cause or its responsibility to be part of the solution to climate change,” he posted on Instagram.