Join me for a live discussion on World Cup 2026: Geopolitics and the Beautiful Game, with Gazan journalist Abubaker Abed, Latin American historian Alex Aviña, and host Adnan Husain today.

(June 9th) at 14:00 EST, 21:30 IST.
Or whenever, the link will still work.

The United States (along with Canada and Mexico) was chosen to host the FIFA World Cup in 2018, at which point it was already an obviously bad idea. By 2018, Donald Trump A) existed and B) had already signed a ‘Muslim Ban’, approved by the US Supreme Court about the same time as the World Cup bid. The signs were already there that this was a bad idea, but FIFA went ahead anyways and here we are. The 2026 World Cup is an offensive debacle before it’s even started.

In the lead-up, the United States has bombed Iran’s Azadi Stadium, where the national team trained. They have banned the Iranian team from staying overnight in ‘America’, and banned many Iranian staff members and journalists entirely. The animus doesn’t apply just to Iran, many fans from qualifying countries are banned from the relevant visas entirely, and many from all over are getting rejected. Not only fans but also team members, staff, and referees. This is not a World Cup, nor even really a North American Cup, it is an ‘American’ Cup, meaning draconian, hostile, and extortionate.

I must add that on top of this, America is conducting a genocide in Palestine, imposing starvation sieges on Cuba, has murdered schoolchildren in Iran, kidnapped the President of Venezuela, installed an Al-Qaeda regime in Syria, and any countless other outrages. At stolen home, the ‘Americans’ are rounding up North American natives (called illegal immigrants now) and placing them in concentration camps. They have the largest prison population on a good day and Kansas (City) was building a ‘World Cup Jail’ for some reason. They repress their own people’s speech and impose those restrictions on people visiting. The United States of today has committed and is committing far more violations than the Nazis did when they hosted their 1936 Olympics, but where’s the outrage?

Well, here’s the outrage.

Not a Fan of Fans

The World Cup is supposed to be, as it says on the tin, a moment when the world gathers for something besides war. But war is all ‘America’ is doing now, and the World Cup is no exception. Now the World Cup has become a site of ritual humiliation, a dying empire lashing out against a world it can no longer control. None of this is normal. Indeed, it violates norms going back to time immemorial.

When Brazil hosted the World Cup in 2014, they passed a 900-page General Law of the World Cup “covering everything from visa and work permits to social campaigns to criminal provisions.” When Russia hosted the 2018 World Cup, their Parliament gave visa-free entry to FAN ID holders for the rest of the year. Qatar (2022) is easy enough to access normally, and they offered their Hayya Card to people with match tickets or just proof of accommodation. This included public transportation.

Going further back, when the United Kingdom considered refusing visas to the North Korean team in 1966, but an internal memo said “Apparently FIFA has made it very plain to the FA (Football Association) that if any team [that] has won its way through to the finals is denied visas then the finals will take place elsewhere.” More recently, when Indonesia refused to grant the ‘Israeli’ under-17s visas in 2023, FIFA moved the U-20 World Cup entirely, despite the fact that ‘Israel’ had killed members of the Palestinian team and Indonesia was doing the right thing. There was the principle of the thing, but now we discover that the principle is just White Supremacy.

‘America’ never relaxed its draconian visa regulations (on stolen land) and has never stopped its Gestapo roundups of natives. Even the Nazis toned it down during their games but not the Nazis that won, the ‘Americans’. Again, Trump’s ‘America’ was awarded the games during the furor over his Muslim Ban and, predictably, many Moroccans, have had their visas rejected. But it’s not just Muslims. Many British (Scottish) fans have had approval withdrawn as well. Now that ‘America’ requires social media screening before entry, who can tell?

Of course, as a matter of course, fans from Haiti, Iran, Senegal, and Ivory Coast are banned from the recommended visitor visas categorically. And until May, fans from Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia had to pay a $15,000 deposit. Many countries that qualified have a visa rejection rate of over 40% normally. Meanwhile, the 8% ticket allocation due to Iran (under FIFA rules!) has simply been revoked by ‘America’ entirely.

When FIFA’s craven (bald) head Gianni Infantino said, in 2017 before awarding the bid, “Teams who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup. That is obvious,” he missed his own point.

These are things FIFA should have a problem with, but they are, of course, part of the problem. FIFA, like every other supposedly international institution, has been revealed as just another part of the White Empire. They gave Trump a FIFA Peace Prize while he was conducting a genocide, including the murder of many Palestinian sportspeople and destruction of all facilities in Gaza. Play Nazi games, win Nazi prizes. This is the worst World Cup ever, and should honestly be boycotted in solidarity with all the people kept out. It’s not just fans, ‘America’ is attacking the players, referees, everybody in the world is fair game in this unfair cup.

Anti-Competitive to Teams, Referees, Everybody

It’s not just fans that can’t access the World Cup. It’s teams. Switzerland’s star striker Breel Embolo was denied a visa and unable to travel with the team (he is, not coincidentally, colored). His visa was just approved after much uproar, but this has an anti-competitive effect already. The entire South Africa team’s departure was delayed because of ‘visa issues’, which also again disadvantages them from the beginning. The same thing happened to Moroccan player Zakaria El Ouahdi. Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein was detained and questioned for seven hours. These egregious examples have been ‘sorted out’ but they have an anti-competitive effect already.

As further examples, the Senegal team was singled out for body searches on the tarmac when they arrived. The Uzbekistan team was strictly searched, body by body, when they got off the bus, having already cleared immigration before. There is a clear racist dimension to this intimidation that would make Hitler proud, though even he was too ashamed to do it in 1936. Oh, how the Whitey have fallen.

The Iranian team, of course, is the most egregious example. Not only did ‘America’ bomb one of their training facilities, they are also denying them the right to even sleep after their games. As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said, “The United States doesn’t want the Iranian national team to stay overnight in the United States.” FIFA is in on this, even after Trump said he could not guarantee the “life and safety” of Iranian players (seems important!), they still refused their request to move their matches to Mexico. So instead the team must fly in and out of the country entirely before and after games, putting them at a real disadvantage physically. Not to mention in physical danger from their hosts, admittedly. Meanwhile Iranian staff, including coaches, have been denied visas, as have journalists.

And the outrages don’t stop there. ‘America’ has even rejected FIFA referees! Somalian referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan was denied entry at the Miami airport. FIFA issued a craven statement saying “FIFA is not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications,” which is a lie, they often get legislation changed beforehand, but not for ‘America’. There is also no report of them simply moving this ref to games in Mexico or Canada. FIFA doesn’t even take care of their own people.

The State of the Games

This Cup is already a shambles before the first ball has been kicked. There has been a school shooting near the England camp, because of course, ‘America’ has a shooting almost every day, it would be an anomaly if they didn’t. The Swiss camp was beset by snakes, the Senegalese training pitch didn’t bounce, Japan had to change venues due to terrible facilities.

‘America’ is not a safe or decent place to travel to and the world knows it. As the Wall Street Journal reports, “The World Cup starts later this week. U.S. hotels are already in last place. Hotel bookings in Canada and Mexico are outpacing all but one American city [San Francisco].” ‘America’ as a colony is just a pyramid scheme nearing its end, the whole thing is a con, including the World Cup. Tickets are selling for more than $20,000 (some upwards of a million), but who wants them? And even if you can buy them, can you attend?

As part of the con, FIFA set up its own scalping platform, but that’s not going well. After the 26% ‘resale fee’ the median ticket for the US/Paraguay match (for example) costs $800, and 4,400 are still available because who is buying this? In contrast, tickets for Mexico at home have only 300 tickets available. As the FT reports, “Fan groups estimate the cost of following a team at this summer’s World Cup will be five times higher than four years ago.” For all their greed, this World Cup may see empty seats. Indeed, should. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. This World Cup is already a hotbed of corruption, racism, and greed. Hardly a hot ticket.

Showcase: Shows Over

Sanctimonious nations like Norway (which said they’d skip the Qatar World Cup despite not qualifying) and Germany (which posed hands over mouths and wore rainbow Rolexes) made a huge fuss about Qatar, but they’re saying nothing now. About a Cup where even teams and referees can’t travel freely and everybody gets their social media scanned to see if they’re suitably quiet about the genocide currently going on. And the same journalists and officials who protested about Qatar are quiet because that was, in hindsight, just racism. These fake nations, fake institutions, fake journalists; they’re all part of the White Empire. All a bunch of false flags to match the false internationalism of FIFA. This event, like so many events this century, reveals the White Empire behind the scenes, and it’s obscene.

A World Cup is supposed to be showcase for the host nation and the 2026 Cup is. This is an awful World Cup hosted in an evil nation. As Maya Angelou said, “When someone tells you who and what they are. Believe them the first time.” FIFA should have known from the time of the ‘Muslim Ban’ that ‘America’ was a wildly unsuitable candidate to host a World Cup, but they went ahead anyways because the leadership of FIFA is wildly unsuitable themselves.

FIFA is obviously craven and corrupt, no countries have the guts to speak up, and White journalists treat these things as an anomaly rather than a host nation worse than the Nazis, historically. ‘America’ is showing the world who they are with the World Cup, which is hostile to the world. And this will have consequences. Like China’s Olympics was a ‘coming out’ party to the world, this is a ‘party’s over’ message from ‘America’. They’re really trying to take their ball and go home. The funny thing is, ‘Americans’ don’t even like football and it shows.