EVEN BEFORE the impressive opening ceremony of the 2026 World Cup took place in Mexico yesterday and the ball was set rolling, the global football gala was already under heavy fire. What should have been a global popular celebration, as in recent decades, has been turned into an exclusive elite event by commercial greed and geopolitical power.
A well-known saying goes that sport fraternizes and brings people together. But what is happening around this World Cup shows the opposite. Due to political interference, including from American President Donald Trump, and apparently ill-considered decisions and lack of backbone from the World Football Association FIFA, people have been driven further apart. After many successful editions, a tournament has been organized that can hardly withstand the test of criticism. Such high barriers have been set for much of the international community that many who would have liked to attend the event were excluded in advance.
Ticket sales took place via an opaque system of so-called variable prices. Ticket prices fluctuated constantly. With extremely high starting fees and tickets running into thousands of dollars, FIFA has effectively shut out the ordinary fan. This not only led to official consumer surveys in the United States, but also to an all-time high number of cancellations and tens of thousands of unsold stadium seats.
While previous host countries did everything they could — and were often successful — to project a hospitable image, President Trump is shamelessly using this World Cup edition as a stage for his ‘America First’ doctrine. He is influencing the tournament by putting national security and his strict migration agenda above the spirit of the sport. It is remarkable that Trump laconically stated that he will not buy a ticket himself, while at the same time he is inciting fear by having immigration police ICE expressly present in and around the stadiums.
The low point of this political interference is the treatment of Somalia’s top referee Omar Artan. Although he has been named African Referee of the Year and has all the required FIFA accreditations, he was detained for hours upon arrival in Miami. He was ultimately denied entry to the United States due to alleged ties to individuals associated with terrorist organizations.
Thousands of supporters from various African countries were also denied visas for fear that they would go into hiding in the United States after the tournament. FIFA could at least have tried to change the minds of the US authorities, but responded weakly by stating that it has “no influence on the visa policies of host countries”. That argument is not convincing. When Indonesia, as host country of the Under-20 World Cup in 2023, did not want to facilitate Israel’s participation due to the situation in the Palestinian territories and local administrators turned against the arrival of the Israeli team, FIFA did intervene. Indonesia eventually even lost the right to organize the tournament.
Under Trump’s border policy, 39 countries are now subject to a full or partial entry ban. Even for supporters from qualified countries such as Iran, Haiti, Senegal and Ivory Coast, obtaining a visa has become virtually impossible. In addition, the Iranian players have been forced to set up their training camp in Mexico and travel to the United States only for matches. At the same time, FIFA withdrew thousands of tickets already allocated to Iranian supporters. The introduction of a special ‘FIFA Pass’ does little to change this reality.
Once again: FIFA stands by and watches it helplessly.
From all this – and much more that remains undiscussed in this commentary – only one important conclusion can be drawn: before the World Cup actually got underway, much of the luster had already disappeared. For many, this tournament is therefore no longer a global football celebration, but has become a perfunctory exercise.
