FIFA hopes that this year’s expanded tournament will be the most spectacular — and lucrative — yet. However, there’s a lot standing in the way of that happening.
There’s something magical about the football (aka “soccer”) World Cup — even if you’ve never seen your national team lift the trophy, which is the case for the overwhelming majority of fans. Of the more than 80 national teams that have competed in the tournament since its inaugural edition in 1930, only eight have actually won it: Brazil (5), Germany (4), Italy (4), Argentina (3), France (2), Uruguay (2), Spain (1) and England (1), long before yours truly was born.
Even those who don’t like football will grudgingly accept that the World Cup is the biggest sports show on earth. In many parts of the world, even people who are not big football fans, like my Mexican wife, tend to fall under its spell. Those who are, are instantly entranced. In 2022, over 1.5 billion people worldwide tuned in to watch Lionel Messi’s Argentina beat France 4-3 in a breath-taking final, making it the most watched event of any kind globally.
Despite its working class roots, football is the world’s biggest grossing sport and arguably the one most corrupted by corporate interests.
In his excellent book, El fútbol a sol y sombra, (Soccer in Sun and Shadow, 1995), the late Uruguayan writer, journalist, political activist and life-long football fan Eduardo Galeano describes the classic interplay between the so-called “beautiful game” and the ugly world of politics:
“The scorn of many conservative intellectuals comes from their belief that soccer-worship is exactly the religion people deserve. Possessed by soccer, the proles think with their feet, which is the only way they can think, and through such primitive ecstasy they fulfill their dreams. The animal instinct overtakes human reason, ignorance crushes culture, and the riff-raff get what they want. In contrast, many leftist intellectuals denigrate soccer because it castrates the masses and derails their revolutionary ardor. Bread and circus, circus without the bread: hypnotized by the ball, which exercises a perverse fascination, workers’ consciousness becomes atrophied and they let themselves be led about like sheep by their class enemies.”
The Most Lucrative Tournament Yet?
FIFA, football’s venal, money grubbing governing body, hopes that this year’s expanded World Cup, held in the three NAFTA countries of North America (USA, Canada and Mexico) with a total of 48 teams, up from the standard 32, will be the most spectacular — and, of course, most lucrative — yet. The organisation is already projecting revenues of $8.9bn from this tournament – almost double what the 2024 Olympics made.
There’s a lot standing in the way of that happening, however, including Trump’s reverse Midas touch as well as the simmering tensions between the three co-host nations. The price-gouging in all three countries, particularly the US, where 78 of the 104 matches will be held, is also taking a toll, reports Jon Sopel for the I Paper:
Hotels in host cities jacked up prices to the hilt. In New York, the train operator that will take fans out to the MetLife Stadium is raising the 18-mile return fare from $13 to $150 (NC: contrast that with Moscow’s decision to offer free train travel for all travelling football fans on match day during the 2018 World Cup).
Fans are voting with their feet. Hotel bookings are a fraction of what people FIFA promised and so prices are being slashed. Ticket sales have slumped. Not even games involving the US national side have sold out. Trump has put himself front and centre of this World Cup. But what if he’s unable to claim that it’s the biggest, best, greatest World Cup ever?
In addition, the geopolitical backdrop, with major wars escalating in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf, is hardly favourable. As the former English football pundit Gary Lineker told Morning Joe, “We have never had a World Cup where the host nation is at war with one of the competitors.”
The Trump administration is also aggressively pursuing a strategy of hegemonic domination of the American continent, including over its two World Cup co-hosts, Mexico and Canada. Following the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s visit two days ago to Guantánamo, one can’t help but wonder whether Trump will end up signing off on a US military attack against the energy-starved island during the World Cup. One certainly wouldn’t put it past him.
Meanwhile, the economic pressures unleashed by the US’ war of choice against Iran are already being felt, as Yves has painstakingly documented. Tellingly, the only two times that the World Cup has not taken place in its 94-year history was in 1942, in the midst of World War II, and 1946, when the world was beginning the long process of recovery and reconstruction.
Today, we are either on the precipice of a new world war, or already in the beginning stages of it. Yet the main protagonist in the escalating hostilities, the United States of America, is now co-hosting the World Cup. And it is doing so in the most inhospitable fashion.
So far, the Trump administration has banned the Iranian national team from being able to stay overnight on US soil. This means that on each match day the team will have to travel from Tijuana to the stadium hosting the match and back to Tijuana before the close of day. This puts Iran at a huge disadvantage vis-a-vis its rivals.
The Trump administration is doing everything it can to undermine the country it is actively bombing. The Iranian team spent days dealing with visa procedures at the US Consulate in Türkiye. In the end, 15 members of the delegation were denied visas. US authorities have also made sure there won’t be many Iranian fans travelling with the team.
Visa denials are already a common theme in this World Cup. The Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan, named CAF’s Best African Referee of 2025, was denied a visa and will not be able to participate in the tournament. Despite travelling to the US with a diplomatic passport, Artan was refused entry and sent back. Somalia is one of 19 countries on the Trump administration’s travel ban list.
Other teams that have been affected by visa denials or prolonged visa procedures include South Africa, the BRICS nation that launched the genocide case against Israel at the International Criminal Court; Senegal, whose national team staff were forced to remove their shoes and were subjected to lengthy searches, triggering accusations of racism; Uzbekistan, whose national team was searched with bomb-sniffing dogs.
It’s not just the national teams that have been affected. Many supporters who had already purchased tickets and booked accommodation have had their visa applications rejected, resulting in steep financial losses. AIPS The international sport journalist association, AIPS, has also called on FIFA to resolve the “countless and unacceptable” visa issues facing African & Iranian journalists.
Accused of already losing control of the tournament, FIFA chief executive Gianni Infantino claimed that FIFA is in no position to dictate conditions to the event’s hosts. Which is news to most football fans. After all, FIFA has a long history of dictating conditions to hosts, especially commercial ones, including most recently to Russia, which is now banned from participating in the tournament due to its war against Ukraine (while Israel of course isn’t), and Qatar.
Sixty years ago, the UK government considered denying entry visas to the North Korean national team for the 1966 World Cup. At the time, the UK did not officially recognise the communist nation and feared diplomatic fallout with the US and South Korea. However, FIFA threatened to strip England of hosting rights if any qualified team was banned, which prompted a swift U-turn.
Then there was this…
FIFA’s Dodgy Bromance With Trump
While Infantino pleads innocence, he knows full well that FIFA bent its own rules to award the US the co-hosting rights for this year’s World Cup. In 2017, a year before the US, Mexico and Canada were chosen as co-hosts, Infantino warned that the first Trump administration’s travel bans, which then applied to six majority-Muslim countries and now apply to 19 nations, were incompatible with FIFA tournament regulations. Infantino told reporters in London:
“Teams who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup. That is obvious.”
It may have been obvious then; it’s a lot less obvious now. As many fans are now saying, if the US government didn’t want other countries’ citizens in their nation, it shouldn’t have bid for the FIFA World Cup in the first place. And FIFA should not have picked the nation as a host…
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Nick Corbishley 