‘This will be the greatest event in human history’… These words were part of a speech delivered by Gianni Infantino, head honcho of football’s governing body FIFA, on 5 December 2025 in Washington DC; the event prompting this hyperbole was the 2026 World Cup.
The tournament, which is being hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico and runs from 11 June to 19 July, will certainly be big: the number of participating teams is up from 32 to 48; the number of matches has risen from 64 to 104 and the number of matches the eventual winners will have to play from seven to eight. None of these changes are the result of grassroots pressure from football fans but rather will massively boost the profits of TV companies in the US. That is the entire object of the enterprise. Seated beside Infantino at that Washington appearance was US President Donald Trump, the most powerful and venal representative of the class to which these companies belong. Infantino had spent months lobbying for Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; when his efforts met with failure (with the award instead going to arch-reactionary Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado), he resolved to soothe the US president’s hurt feelings by inventing the FIFA Peace Prize and awarding the inaugural edition to the man who claims to have ended every war known to humankind while underwriting the systematic genocide of the Palestinian people and threatening to end the entire Iranian civilisation overnight.
Events since that charade in December have served only to discredit FIFA and the World Cup further. Trump celebrated his peace prize with the illegal and brutal kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores less than a month later, before launching an all-out war with Israel against Iran. To the immense obstacles Trump was already striving to impose on fans coming to see matches in the United States (which will host 78 matches, with Mexico and Canada getting only 13 each), the US then manoeuvred to get Iran thrown out of the World Cup altogether, refusing to host its squad and suggesting Italy replace Iran in the tournament. The Iranian team will now be based in Mexico, commuting to the US for the three games it is scheduled to play there. Fans from Iran and a host of other countries whose nationals are suspended from entering the United States will be unable to attend any World Cup matches – even if they could afford it, at a tournament billed as the most expensive ever. Meanwhile, the US Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin has told reporters that the notorious Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers (ICE) will be ‘out there every day’ during the FIFA World Cup 2026.
A few days into the murderous assault on Iran, an incident took place which illustrates what the great Brazilian footballer Pele said about o jogo bonito (the beautiful game) being corroded by the rich and powerful. The players of Inter Miami, the outstanding US football team, were invited to a reception at the White House which was then used by Trump to praise the US bombers who were visiting death and destruction upon the Iranian people; among those who applauded his words was the club’s star player, Lionel Messi, whom the progressive late football great, Diego Maradona, had once singled out as ‘the player who will inherit my place in Argentine football’. (In Messi’s tenuous defence, he doesn’t speak English…) But compare it with when just before the 2019 Women’s World Cup, the captain of the US team Megan Rapinoe was invited to meet Trump and said, bluntly, ‘I’m not going to the fucking White House’.
Meanwhile, true to form, Infantino has glibly defended the ticket prices at the US World Cup, which will be the most expensive such tournament ever held. FIFA’s World Cup resale website in May advertised four tickets to the final at a cost of $2.3m each. Although FIFA does not control the asking price, it gets a cut from the final sale and would make $690,000 if one of the tickets for the final were resold at this price. With football inevitably subsumed to imperialist interests and capitalist profit making, there is nothing beautiful about this World Cup.
Mike Webber
