Not this time, either, FIFA

On boycotting another World Cup.

This text originally published: 11 June 2026

Four years ago, I boycotted FIFA’s World Cup 2022 in Qatar. Earlier, I’d been a happy fan in the stands of the 2010 Men’s World Cup in South Africa and the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France. As the 2026 tournament loomed, I found myself once again ruminating the ethics of engaging with a FIFA World Cup, this one jointly hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

When the hosts were selected in 2018, there was perhaps some optimism among the world football authorities that by 2026 the United States would be in a different era, having emerged from its Trump regression – either by voting him out or navigating a second sequential term. Few FIFA officials would have expected the Biden interregnum to return a further-degraded, extra jaded Trump to the White House, one who quickly went about souring relations with both co-hosts by threatening Canada’s sovereignty and repeating his old racist tropes about Mexico. But this is the tournament they got and the one we all have to face.

For me, the disgusting politics of the Trump administration – its disregard for decency, laws, even a modicum of ethics – made the U.S.-based matches a very easy hard no. With that choice, 78 of the 104 matches in the expanded tournament were off the table, including almost all the later rounds.

That left the Canada- and Mexico-based matches. While neither country is perfect, Canada and Mexico’s conduct as states is much closer to FIFA’s stated ideal (i.e., ‘football unites the world’) than the so-called ‘America-first’ trampling of multilateralism and international cooperation carried out by the second Trump administration. In that light, I contemplated viewing the bits of the tournament taking place in Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey, Toronto, and Vancouver. And yet, ultimately, there was no escaping that this tournament will crescendo into a showpiece on U.S. soil, one that Trump will seek to exploit (and which FIFA will feebly feign powerlessness to prevent).

We’ve already seen how this plays out, at the FIFA-organised Club World Cup in the United States in 2025, where the U.S. president felt entitled to linger on stage with the tournament-winning team after his trophy-presenting responsibilities, befuddling the Chelsea players and coaches who’d actually earned that limelight through, you know, football. Having suffered the indignity of being unable to shunt the shameless Trump off that stage, FIFA president Gianni Infantino – always adept at finding new ways to diminish the integrity of the organisation he leads – bestowed a made-up FIFA ‘peace prize’ on Trump a few months later.

FIFA can’t necessarily pull out of these arrangements with each change in the political winds. But it is certainly within the realm of the possible that FIFA’s top officials stop short of obsequious flattery of world leaders – especially real or would-be tyrants and active warmongers. Did FIFA really need to rent offices in Trump Tower – was that the only space available in that village called New York City? Did FIFA need to mint an embarrassing ignoble prize for the unpopular president of one of the three World Cup hosts? Or does licking Trump’s boots honestly taste that good? Only FIFA can say for sure.

As news emerged in the final days before the tournament that some of the Iran team’s coaching staff and at least one of FIFA’s own tournament referees were denied U.S. entry visas (the referee had the audacity to be Somali, one of the many nationalities Trump and his flunkies have developed a tic of racially abusing), the foulness of the Cup came into sharper focus for me. So, on the day the tournament will kick off in Mexico’s fabled Azteca Stadium, I have finally settled on a complete boycott – consistent with my stance on Qatar 2022 and my distaste for the direction of the international game under Infantino, who we all hoped would be an improvement on Blatter...

I don’t kid myself that it matters whether I’m watching or not. But I am proud to join the many actual football fans who’ve decided to stay away or tune this one out. And I will cautiously hope that this tournament is a business failure for FIFA – an organisation that desperately needs to learn that collaborating with despots on sports-washing leaves a stain that’s hard to remove.

Notes