Critics cite visa and protest issues as 2026 World Cup faces early scrutiny in host countries

Mega sporting events run on a reliable formula. A country wins the hosting rights, spends money it probably shouldn’t, and receives a month-long image makeover in return. The FIFA World Cup has often been held as the ultimate example of this exchange, accused of being the world’s most expensive reputation laundromat.Critics complain, activists protest, journalists investigate, and then the football begins. But once the goals start flying, everything else fades and the spectacle becomes the story. Qatar 2022 was the clearest example. Human rights questions took a back seat when the spotlight found Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, and arguably one of the greatest finals ever played.The 2026 edition was supposed to be an easy sell. Three host nations with established football cultures. Democratic countries with modern infrastructure. FIFA’s slogan as the backdrop, unveiled with the usual confidence: “Football Unites the World.”But this time, the machine has broken. Instead of the hosts emerging cleaner, the tournament itself has come out looking dirtier.Football meets immigrationOmar Abdulkadir Artan had a valid visa. He was one of 52 referees selected for the World Cup – African football’s referee of the year in 2025 and the first Somali official ever to referee at a World Cup. In Mogadishu, he reportedly rerouted around explosions to reach training sessions. He persevered through every obstacle and earned the right to be there.Last week, he landed at Miami International Airport. Eleven hours later, he was on his way back home.US authorities had denied him entry, citing unspecified vetting concerns. FIFA removed him from the tournament. Just like that, one of football’s most remarkable success stories became one of its strangest.You could spend a long time trying to invent a more fitting metaphor for this World Cup. Football’s favourite claim is that it transcends borders: every four years we are treated to speeches about unity. But then, one of the tournament’s own referees landed at a border checkpoint and found out that immigration officials were not especially interested in football’s poetry.Artan wasn’t the only one.Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein was reportedly detained and questioned after arriving in the United States. A photographer travelling with Iraq’s national team was denied entry altogether. Members of Iran’s support staff reportedly encountered similar difficulties, while the Iran team itself ended up relocating its training base from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico, amid the looming uncertainty over visas and travel arrangements. It became increasingly difficult to dismiss each incident as an isolated bureaucratic mishap.The World Cup vibe is built on movement. Teams, fans, journalists, support staff, officials — everyone travels. Entire economies spring up around people crossing borders to watch twenty-two people chase a ball. Yet before the tournament has properly begun, much of the conversation has revolved around who could or could not enter, and who might find themselves detained somewhere between the airport gate and the baggage carousel.The irony is thick here. FIFA has spent years presenting football as a force capable of bridging divisions between nations. But the immigration policy remains stubbornly unimpressed.The welcome packIn April, more than 120 civil society organisations, including the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and Amnesty International, had issued a travel advisory for visitors attending the World Cup in the United States. This warning was neither for a war zone, nor for a country experiencing civil collapse, but for the United States.The advisory warned visitors about arbitrary denial of entry, invasive social media screening and electronic device searches, violent immigration enforcement that may involve racial profiling, suppression of protest and speech, and potential mistreatment in ICE detention. The coalition had recommended that visitors download apps to immediately notify emergency contacts in case of detention, and brush up on their rights before boarding their flights.The ACLU had pointed out that the World Cup slogan is “Football Unites the World” while millions of people in America’s host cities live in “daily fear of racial profiling, inhumane detention, separation from loved ones, and summary deportation”. The ACLU’s human rights programme director said: “FIFA has been paying lip service to human rights while cozying up with the Trump administration, putting millions of people at risk.”Whether one agrees with every claim made in the advisory is almost beside the point. The remarkable thing is that such a document exists at all, and that it captures the atmosphere surrounding this tournament far better than any official slogan ever can.The other show in townMexico City has offered its own version of the same phenomenon.For more than a week, the country’s teachers’ union had been toppling World Cup statues and blocking roads in an annual push for better working conditions. Their target on opening day was the Zócalo - Mexico City’s main square, where FIFA had set up its official fan zone and where Colombian superstar Shakira was scheduled to perform. The CNTE — Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (National Coordination of Education Workers) — had set up camp near the fan zone. On June 1, police dispersed protesters in the area with rubber bullets and teargas. At least one teacher reportedly lost an eye. President Sheinbaum acknowledged on Wednesday that the fan festival might have to shut down, even as she denied there was meaningful social unrest. She gave away her ticket to the opening match.Elsewhere, activists drawing attention to Mexico’s missing persons crisis repurposed the tournament’s slogan, “The ball returns home”, into a sharper question: “The ball returns home — when will our children?” It was a clever piece of protest, though “clever” feels inadequate when the people holding the banners are searching for missing relatives.In one of the week’s more surreal images, demonstrators staged a football match in the middle of a major avenue as World Cup visitors arrived for the festivities. If football wanted the spotlight, it would have to share.Football awaits its turnAs the opening match approaches, set to being in a few hours, the headlines belong not to some new wonderkid, or a title favourite or a tactical genius of the game. They belong to a Somali referee interrogated for 11 hours at Miami airport, before being sent home. To the Iranian team, to travel advisories warning visitors about detention and device searches. To those who demand their close ones return while threatening disruptions outside a World Cup fan zone.Football will eventually reclaim the spotlight. It always does. There will be moments of genius, heartbreak and delirium before this tournament ends. And yet, the opening week has already revealed something unusual. For years, critics accused football’s biggest tournament of helping host nations launder their reputations. But as the tournament begins this time, the most memorable moments are coming from airports, border crossings and protest camps.Usually, football becomes the story. This time, it still awaits its turn.Small teams can do great things. All it takes is a subscription. Subscribe now and power Newslaundry’s work.  

The 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament is projected to break every conceivable record: It will likely be the most-watched sporting event ever—bringing in an estimated five million visitors to 16 host cities across Canada, Mexico, and the United States, atop a global viewership of six billion throughout the course of competition; more than one billion viewers are projected to watch the final match itself. And the coffers will be full to bursting: The global sport’s governing body is expecting a record $11 billion in revenue. But with hours before the first kickoff, there are problems afoot. FIFA’s ticket inventory remains vastly undersold (due in large part to its exorbitant prices), hotel block bookings have been canceled due to low visitorship, and other superlatives have all but overtaken any event excitement: This World Cup is expected to be the most expensive, the hottest on record, the most emissions-producing, and, potentially, the one that will be remembered for anything other than the game.For months ahead of the tournament, international human rights groups and U.S. civil society organizations alike had been sounding the alarm over the impending human rights nightmare that awaited, largely (if not entirely) perpetrated by the principal host: the United States, where most of the record 104 games will be played, including the final.Far from keeping politics out of play, the Trump administration has wasted no opportunity to use this global stage to debut a new American image, on the eve of the nation’s 250th anniversary, one that is exclusive, exclusionary, and vainglorious. As many had already anticipated, the political tenor of the U.S.-hosted World Cup is set to eclipse the tournament itself.“The prospects of this World Cup being remembered for reasons other than football are very high, and it should be that way,” said Shaista Aziz, co-founder of The Three Hijabis and a member of the U.K.-based Stop Trump Coalition’s “Football Against Fascism” campaign. But that doesn’t seem to be of particular concern to the tournament’s presiding host and FIFA head Gianni Infantino’s close friend, U.S. President Donald Trump, who stole the spotlight at last year’s Club World Cup and quite literally refused to leave the stage. Trump has already playfully rebranded this World Cup as the “MAGA-FIFA World Cup,” with FIFA’s passive consent, and rights advocates and fan groups expect him to host the event accordingly.The official FIFA fan zone in Washington, D.C., for example, will be co-organized by Freedom 250, a project by the Trump administration to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial, which is also the organizer for the “America is Back” rally on June 24 at the same location on the National Mall, in which the president will be the headliner.“Trump and the MAGA project are going to stamp themselves all over this tournament to burnish MAGA via soccer,” said Nicholas McGeehan, program director at the rights group FairSquare. “And given the power of the game and the way it’s going to be broadcast around the world, it’ll be effective.”It’s not the first time that the World Cup has been used for soft-power purposes, but seeing it done so flagrantly has rights advocates no less concerned for its consequences, not only in host cities but also abroad.Looming over the proceedings is the fact that the U.S., aided by Israel, is actively at war with Iran. The fact that Iran is competing in the World Cup hosted by its aggressor will not be lost on anyone, but hostilities that take place during the tournament might.“This cannot be used as an attempt to sportswash Donald Trump’s regime, and indeed all of [its] horrific foreign policy interventions (or lack of interventions),” said Aziz, who is particularly concerned that the tournament will be used to veil Israel’s ongoing assault on the occupied West Bank and Lebanon—as mega sporting events have been utilized as cover in the past—with the support of the U.S. “There should be no normalization of [it] in relation to this World Cup.”While Trump has previously stated that “fans from all over the world will be welcome,” few have ever actually believed that the first ever World Cup in which the host nation is at war with a qualified nation will be as hospitable as advertised. Currently, Iran’s national team has only been issued visas under express warning by U.S. officials that they do not “abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the United States under false pretenses,” while key staff have been denied entry. The team must also leave U.S. soil on the same day as their matches. The Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran now says that its ticket allocation has been revoked, effectively stranding fans who already paid to see their country compete.The Trump administration’s unfriendliness has also extended to other tournament participants: Two players—one from Switzerland and one from Morocco—had their visas denied until the eleventh hour, and one source alleges that the latter’s refusal was due to his father’s appearance (particularly his beard). Meanwhile, an Iraqi player was questioned for seven hours at Chicago O’Hare Airport upon arrival for the tournament, and the Iraqi team’s photographer was denied entry due to “vetting concerns,” according to a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Moreover, both the Senegalese and Uzbek teams were forced to undergo unusually strict security protocols when they arrived in the U.S.Most recently, FIFA referee Omar Artan, from Somalia, was denied entry into the U.S.—after being detained for 11 hours at Miami International Airport and repeatedly questioned about whether he’d ever met anyone from the Al Shabab militant group—just days before the start of the tournament, despite having a valid travel visa. Somalia is listed among several countries on the Trump administration’s travel ban list—which has also shut out fans from competing nations Haiti, Iran, Senegal, and Ivory Coast. FIFA initially left Artan, who was named Africa’s best referee just last year, high and dry before finally providing him with some “behind the scenes” support.Fans from Scotland, too, have reported last-minute changes to their travel permits to the U.S., moving from “approved” to unauthorized within a week of the tournament’s opening game. One Scottish fan, in fact, had his visa revoked an hour before his flight. Acting Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Lauren Bis explained more recent rejections as, simply, “the Trump administration is enforcing immigration laws.”At this point, fans are more than comfortable referring to the U.S. as a regime, as most decisions determining who is welcome and who isn’t appear to be at the whim of the administration in the moment.“This World Cup won’t be remembered as ‘the most inclusive World Cup,’ but as the World Cup that actually kept the world outside,” said Andrea Florence, executive director of the Sport and Rights Alliance. It may surprise people to know that this was meant to be the first ever human rights–focused World Cup in the tournament’s history, one in which specific human rights metrics were applied to the bidding evaluation process. Nine years later, “we’re still having this conversation,” said former Australian National Team captain and broadcaster Craig Foster, in a virtual press conference recently held by the Sport and Rights Alliance.Given how quickly FIFA abandoned its own human rights policy—which, if it worked in the first place, would have been deployed to protect players and support staff from harassment by the host’s immigration enforcement agencies—it’s hard to believe that the global sports body’s commitments ran particularly deep. “FIFA has said, ‘We will conduct football in the way that Trump sees fit,’” said Foster. “Anything that is not consistent with what Trump thinks is right in the world places you at risk.”Perhaps the most worrying thing for fan groups and rights advocates is that they have no idea what to expect at this tournament, in terms of what the rules are and how consistently they’ll be applied.Take, for example, the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the most contentious element of the tournament’s security apparatus. The Department of Homeland Security has assured that every agency will be on-site at the stadiums but that they are not expected to be deployed for immigration enforcement—messaging that contradicts what DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told CBS News only last month: “ICE always says immigration enforcement. We’re always going to do that. But we’re not there for solely that purpose.”“ICE has never been known to color inside the lines,” said Jennifer Li, director of the Center for Community Health Innovation at Georgetown Law. “We know that ICE will be at stadiums, period. The question is whether ICE will actually be conducting enforcement operations [there].”How roles between law enforcement agencies will be delineated is also unclear.“We don’t know,” said Julia Roig, one of the lead organizers for No ICE in the Cup, a group of civil society members across the political spectrum who are organizing actions around the tournament for community safety. “That’s kind of the nature of the threat right now—to keep everybody distracted and feeling fragmented with the chaos.”FIFA has offered little more than a boilerplate statement in response to fears about fans entering the host government’s hostile human rights environment. “Any journalist should attempt to get FIFA staff to say the word ‘ICE’ out loud,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, who was also in the press conference. “They won’t do it, and that means that they are not addressing the direct risks to fans, players, journalists, communities, and workers.”Between American overreach and FIFA’s abdication of any responsibility over its own event, said McGeehan, “this is, quite obviously, the most problematic World Cup in history.”FIFA does have a grievance mechanism to report on human rights abuses, but Worden said it’s very poorly publicized. What’s more, said Florence from the Sport and Rights Alliance, “it’s not functional.” Abuse reports are handled internally by FIFA, which may not have capacity to address the issue and may also choose not to, especially if it involves FIFA itself.“It’s a World Cup without rules, without any commitment from FIFA,” said Ronan Evain, executive director of Football Supporters Europe, at the same press conference. “Once you arrive in the U.S., you’re on your own.” It’s fallen to local activist organizations to fill the vacuum left by FIFA. Danny Navarro, the D.C.-based content creator behind the TravelFutbolFan Instagram account, has been giving guidance to visiting and local fans, as well as informing them of the political overtures of the tournament.“Best-case scenario is no one gets detained or deported from a soccer match, [or] we don’t have anyone dying at the stadium,” said Navarro. “That’s probably the best I’m hoping for.”The onus, then, is on the fans to keep themselves safe. “Fans have to come ready and absolutely not depend on FIFA, because FIFA is not there to protect them,” said Navarro. “FIFA is there to make money, end of story.”But local community groups have their own contingency plans—which have been battle-tested over the last year.In the U.S., “we do not suffer from a lack of civil society oversight or nonprofit organizations,” said Li, who also leads Dignity 2026, a coalition of civil society organizations across labor, sports equity, and civil rights, coordinated through Georgetown Law’s O’Neill Institute.For the past few years, Li has been helping organize local stakeholders in host cities to prepare for the tournament. “We actually have a robust, rich culture of grassroots groups across all these cities, who have a good idea of what they want and what they need, and what are the missing pieces from their cities.”In lieu of any real assurances from FIFA on the safety of fans and local communities, civil society organizations have stepped in to effectively absorb the occasion of the World Cup into their battle-worn rapid response infrastructure. Volunteer immigration lawyers across the country are standing by, including at airports, ready to avail themselves to traveling fans in need of legal support. A mass Know Your Rights effort is also underway, both digitally and on-site in and around stadiums in World Cup host cities, to inform fans of their constitutional rights, for instance via the Immigrant Legal Resource Center’s campaign distributing wallet-size “red cards” for fans and community members to carry in case they are confronted by law enforcement.“Local supporters and civil society organizations feel like we have a duty to help educate and welcome people into our cities during this tournament and, with that, to help them stay safe,” said Bailey Brown, president of the U.S.-based Independent Supporters Council, or ISC, a collective of North American soccer supporter groups and a member of Dignity 2026.Brown also directs fans to Frontline FC, a joint effort by ISC and Dignity 2026 that connects visitors to “fan embassies” in host cities and provides city guides created by local soccer fans to visitors. The site also provides Know Your Rights information for visitors and workers, as well as important local and national hotline information, including what visiting fans need to know about immigration enforcement, encampments or unsheltered community members, and emergency medical needs.No ICE in the Cup has also organized a series of trainings, on Know Your Rights, de-escalation, and political violence and repression in host cities in the lead-up to the tournament. During the tournament itself, the organization will be hosting watch parties in friendly restaurants and other locations across the country to establish safe zones for fans to gather. “We want it to be a celebration,” said Roig.Realistically, fan groups and civil society organizations have virtually no ambitions for this tournament beyond protecting as many people as possible. “We’re talking about mitigation—not even prevention—at this point,” said Li.Trump has previously stated that “reasonable” protest would be permitted during the tournament, but what is considered reasonable is as mutable as anything else in this tournament’s planning. The ambiguity has left a lot of room for doubt, especially without any assurances from FIFA that fans and tournament participants will have their right to protected speech honored. (FIFA only recently restored its anti-racism and anti-discrimination campaign messaging after quietly removing them for last year’s Club World Cup.)Germany’s sporting director has already warned the squad against making political statements at this tournament, encouraging them to keep sports and politics “somewhat separate”—a notable departure from their collective political gesture in Qatar four years ago, in protest of FIFA’s threat to sanction players for wearing “OneLove” armbands.“Four years ago, we didn’t have a climate in Qatar whereby if athletes made a statement during the World Cup, [they] would be removed from the country or publicly attacked by the president of that country,” said Foster, the former captain for Australia. “That’s certainly the case now.”“For these foreign athletes, I do not expect them to be as vocal, especially if they’re having to play here in the States,” said Navarro. “I think it’s more important for them to just show up on the field and let the football do the talking, because that’s just gonna be more meaningful, perhaps, than speaking out.”There are other ways for players to protest too, whether that’s by wearing pins with political messages or petitioning FIFA for stronger safety measures against extreme heat.As for fans, no one expects their compliance, even with Trump’s veiled threat of deploying the attorney general to police them. “Resistance looks different for everybody,” said Navarro, who anticipates acts of defiance as discreet as bringing a reusable, collapsible water bottle to the games. But we should also expect more verbose displays of resistance, as well. Protest is already somewhat of a World Cup tradition, and advocacy groups expect this tournament to be no different. “We are [watching] this World Cup at a time when dissent is being cracked down on in ways we’ve not witnessed before in the West—ways that Western nations lecture so-called ‘third-world countries’ [about],” said Aziz. “This is the backdrop, but without a doubt, people will protest.”“Trump understands the power of spectacle to influence his project,” said McGeehan of FairSquare. But, try as he might to curate it in his favor, the spotlight won’t only be on Trump—and when it is, he cannot guarantee adulation (despite his belief to the contrary).“The World Cup happening in the USA is not a win for Donald Trump,” said Aziz. If anything, she said, it will put the U.S. under his leadership under more global scrutiny. “This is not going to be Trump’s coronation.”

Omar Abdulkadir Artan may be the best soccer referee in Africa. He’s certainly one of the best in the world. We know this because he was one of just 52 people chosen to officiate the 2026 World Cup, which kicks off on Thursday. His appointment was historic, as well as deserved: He was set to become the first Somali to referee a World Cup game. Artan is decorated and experienced—but he’s Somali. That, ultimately, is probably the reason why he won’t make history. On Monday, Artan was turned away at customs at the Miami International Airport, after border officials reportedly questioned him about, among other things, the Islamic insurgent group Al Shabab. The Trump administration has waged a bitterly racist campaign against Somalis and Somali Americans in recent months. The nation is on the president’s travel ban list, and President Donald Trump has called Somali Americans “garbage” and said “they’re all crooks.” The Trump administration, it seems, determined it would not allow a World Cup principally hosted by the United States to provide a showcase for a Somali—even if he earned his place; even if he really wasn’t there to represent his country. Just last year, Gianni Infantino assured fans that none of this would happen. “There is a lot of misconception out there,” the FIFA president said in August. “Everyone will be welcome in Canada, Mexico, and the United States for the FIFA World Cup next year.” That tune has changed: When the Artan news broke, a FIFA spokesperson shrugged off the fact that one of its handpicked referees had been denied entry to participate in a tournament where “everyone will be welcome.” FIFA, the spokesperson said, is not involved in host-country immigration processes, including visa adjudications, and has been informed by authorities that Mr. Artan’s status will not be changed at present.” Welcome to the 2026 World Cup, a Frankenstein’s monster of a tournament, stitching together the rot of FIFA with the ruin of its principal host nation. With kickoff a day away, there are many reasons to despair—or just to tune the whole thing out. But there are also reasons to be hopeful. Donald Trump poisons everything he touches, as does Infantino. But the competitive spirit of the World Cup, in spite of it all, can be remarkably resilient—an often poignant, sometimes magical spectacle that often reminds us that there are many things that vulgarians like Trump and Infantino simply can’t desecrate. At the moment, the vibe is bad; there is very little magic and almost no poignancy. Instead there are the stories, like Artan’s, bubbling up as the World Cup approaches. The United States has denied visas to Iranian officials, detained Iraq’s star striker Aymen Hussein for seven hours at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and has denied entry or put up significant hurdles for many fans who are citizens of nations that aren’t subject to the administration’s travel restrictions, like Jordan and Scotland. If you have followed U.S. politics in any capacity since Trump returned to the White House last January, you have probably spotted Infantino lurking. He was at the inauguration and has popped up at Trump’s side in the Oval Office and on state visits—he even donned a red Trump hat at a meeting of the president’s absurd, fantastically corrupt “Board of Peace”—where he pledged to spend tens of millions building soccer stadiums in Gaza, a tin-eared, inhumane gesture even by Infantino’s depraved standards. The conventional wisdom at the time was that Infantino was playing the long game. Sucking up to Trump would be humiliating for most, but Infantino is a virtuoso at ritual self-abasement—indeed it might be his only real talent. The prevailing theory was that Infantino was attaching himself like a barnacle to America’s gormless and corrupt president for the sake of the World Cup. By June—which is to say by now—the effort would pay off in the form of a tournament that ran smoothly, the way he wanted it. To accomplish this, Infantino went so far as to create the single dumbest and most ridiculous award in the history of humanity—the fantastically absurd “FIFA Peace Prize”—which he bestowed on Trump. A month later, Trump sent U.S. troops to kidnap the president of Venezuela; a month after that, he started a war with Iran, a World Cup qualifier. Infantino, of course, doesn’t care about national sovereignty or human suffering; he certainly doesn’t care what kind of a person leads World Cup host nations. He does care that he—and by extension FIFA—gets what he wants from the tournament. And if that requires a warmonger to be the first—and let’s face it, likely only—recipient of a FIFA-branded award, so be it. It can be credibly argued that Infantino debased himself for little in return. The lead-up to the tournament has been pure chaos and dysfunction. FIFA has known—or at least should have known—that there would be travel issues related to the tournament from the moment Trump won the election in 2024. (In fact, some of these concerns were apparent when Joe Biden was president.) Infantino may have hoped that all of that face time with the president would smooth things over. They haven’t, and there’s clearly no plan B. Put Infantino down as another fool in a long line of them that gambled that the president might care about anything other than himself and lost.That said, there’s really no evidence that Infantino is troubled by any of this. He doesn’t care if a Somali ref isn’t allowed to officiate for racist reasons or if the Iranian team isn’t allowed to stay overnight in the United States—its base camp is in Tijuana. He doesn’t care if tickets to even inconsequential group stage matches are going for $1,000 or more. In fact, the absurd cost of the tournament to fans is the other major crisis of the 2026 World Cup. But for Infantino, the checks keep clearing. So he’s not losing sleep. It is scandalous all the same. Fans are being priced out of participation. Many fans who might be willing to risk the perils of visiting the United States right now are staying away due to the insanely high cost of tickets. Although FIFA has bent a little in recent days, releasing more tickets and allowing prices to fall somewhat, it’s too late for many fans from outside the U.S. For Infantino and FIFA, that’s just fine. Their real goal is to rake in as much cash as possible from the 2026 World Cup, and that’s exactly what is happening: The organization is set to make as much as $14 billion from the tournament. And for Infantino, it’s crucial that it does. He is running for reelection, and his presidency is dependent on doling out tens of millions’ worth of boodle to each of the 211 national federations that make up FIFA. For Infantino, it doesn’t really matter if the World Cup is chaotic or controversial. He just needs that money pump to run thick and green.And make no mistake, the cash is flowing. But very little of it is trickling downward. The money’s not helping players, teams, or officials. It’s not benefiting fans or lowering the cost of transit to the venues. It hasn’t created exceptions for people traveling from nations like Somalia or Iran. For a select few, this will be the most lucrative World Cup ever. The only cost to Infantino is that he had to spend 18 months fawning over a moronic president who doesn’t care a lick about soccer. But for the World Cup, this isn’t novel. Mussolini’s Italy hosted the second tournament ever, after all. FIFA’s history of corruption and bribery is only slightly shorter than that of its ties to authoritarian regimes and states. The U.S. is hosting the 2026 World Cup more or less because an FBI investigation into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 tournaments nearly destroyed FIFA—it’s basically a make-good, an apology for the fact that Qatar more or less bought a World Cup that had been earmarked for the United States. What’s more is that the lead-up to the World Cup always tends to be the moment we choose to reflect on its flaws and the corruption of its governing body; when we have the opportunity to assess the often dire human cost of holding this tournament in the first place. The 2010 and 2014 tournaments, held in South Africa and Brazil, were riven by protests over the high cost borne by developing nations who spent billions to host a tournament while millions lived in poverty. The 2018 World Cup was a transparent soft-power plot devised by Vladimir Putin of host nation Russia, sandwiched conspicuously between its invasion of Crimea and, four years later, Putin’s attempt to seize all of Ukraine. The 2022 tournament in Qatar was marred by the host nation’s abuse of the migrant workers who built its stadiums, whom it essentially treated as slave labor, as well as its oppression of women and minority populations. By now, the World Cup follows a recognizable pattern: a wave of controversy and media scrutiny in the weeks leading up to kickoff that ebbed the moment the goals started coming and the talented nations started advancing. The World Cup is so big—and still, in spite of everything, so glorious—that it’s hard to focus on anything else once it starts. The competitive narratives eventually overwhelm. It seems this familiar trajectory is once again locked in. World soccer’s biggest blackguards eventually benefit from the fact that the actual soccer is riveting. Will this year’s tournament break the cycle? There are some reasons to believe it might. In addition to all of the issues we have heretofore covered, climate—Houston and Miami are both hosting several games—will certainly be an issue. And what happens if there’s an outbreak of measles or another preventable infectious disease, thanks in part to the policies of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy? What if, God forbid, some kind of tragedy strikes? The English media, in particular, has latched onto a mass shooting in Kansas City that wounded nine because it occurred five miles from the team’s hotel. This is America, after all—there will undoubtedly be gun violence in host cities during the tournament. Oh, and let’s not forget: Donald Trump is president of the United States. Past World Cup hosts have felt powerful incentives to keep controversy and chaos to a minimum during the tournaments. The leaders of South Africa and Brazil wanted to showcase their nations and their economies; Putin wanted to rehabilitate Russia’s reputation after Crimea; and the Qataris wanted to use the tournament to make powerful friends. They wanted something from the World Cup, in other words. Naturally, Trump has the monomaniacal desire to be bathed in a positive light, but he doesn’t need anything specific from this tournament—no quid you could offer for him to stake pro quo of being on his best behavior. To expect a man who is so thoroughly in crashout mode to straighten up and fly right for a month and a half without doing something controversial, destructive, or stupid—maybe even from doing something that ticks every box at once—is to insist on the physiologically impossible. There is little to be done about the fact that the defining feature of this tournament will be a vainglorious and corrupt president. But it’s still the World Cup. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I got goosebumps writing that sentence. When the tournament starts, many of us will remember everything we love about it. And there is a lot to love. A (likely) last dance for the sport’s greatest ever player (Argentina’s Lionel Messi) and its, I don’t know, eighth or ninth best (Porgual’s Cristiano Ronaldo), the 2026 World Cup will feature wunderkinds like Spain’s Lamine Yamal and players currently playing at their peak, like England’s Harry Kane. Although the French arguably arrive with the best team for the third consecutive tournament, it also feels more open and unpredictable than recent World Cups. I think seven teams—an unusually high number—have a reasonable and more or less even shot of winning: France, Spain, Argentina, England, Brazil, Portugal, and Germany—roughly in that order. (If Yamal is fully healthy, I would flip Spain and France.) Want a dark horse? There are plenty: Colombia, Norway, Ecuador, and (of course) Turkey come to mind. Feeling patriotic for some reason? The United States Men’s Team is not bad! Want to have fun picking a random country? FIFA expanded the tournament from 32 to 48 teams, mostly for craven profit-seeking reasons, but that also makes it fun! Uzbekistan, Haiti, Cabo Verde, even small but mighty Curaçao… take your pick. Mostly though what’s to love is the World Cup. All of that soccer—104 games in 39 days—means that there will be a lot of joy and a lot of chaos (the good kind). Trump can ruin the Knicks. He can ruin the White House. He can ruin America. But he can’t really lay a glove on the World Cup. Over those 104 games there will be a lot of reminders that there are a great many things in the world that can’t be tainted, perverted, or corrupted by money and power. There will also be a lot of reminders that the world looks rather different from how he describes it. The diversity of the World Cup—which has only grown with the expansion of the tournament—is and always has been its real strength. The tournament is a celebration of what makes nations unique, just as it is a reminder that people from all over the world are basically and fundamentally the same. At its best, it’s a celebration of togetherness and diversity that undercuts every tenet of the president’s agenda. There is no real way to separate the two facets of the World Cup, no way to celebrate its magic without coming into contact with its corruption. There’s no avoiding Trump or Infantino. But that is ultimately the tournament’s real power. It’s not simply a global pageant of diversity and togetherness, just as it isn’t simply an event wholly corrupted by autocracy and greed. The World Cup is, and always has been, a reflection of the world as it is right now. That world is, in many ways, broken. It’s hateful and mean. It’s ruled by those who pursue wealth and power and trample on anyone in their way. But it’s not wholly or irredeemably broken. That wealth and power only goes so far; try as they might, Trump and Infantino can only do so much to this beautiful game and the delight of watching this esteemed competition. The lion’s share of these rich rewards belongs to everyone else. It’s there for the taking, if you’ll have it.