By
UGO ONUOHA
FEDERATION of International Football Associations [FIFA] awarded hosting rights for this year’s football World Cup tournament to three North American countries about eight years ago, precisely on June 13, 2018. That was in keeping with the longstanding tradition of the world’s football governing body. FIFA allows the host nation sufficient time to provide or improve facilities for the global fiesta. Thousands of people including officials, footballers, fans, tourists and others usually converged on the host nation to attend the events. Some persons who may not be football fans and followers use the opportunity of the World Cup for sightseeing and tourism.
This year’s World Cup football tournament will be different in many respects. It will be the first time that three neighbouring countries – the United States, Canada and Mexico – will be jointly hosting the tournament. The highest combination, to the best of our recollections, was joint hosting between South Korea and Japan in 2002. All the while it had been solo hosting by willing and endowed countries beginning from Uruguay in 1930 to Qatar four years ago. Again, while there were 32 countries battling for supremacy in Qatar in 2022, 48 countries will be contending for the Cup this year in the United States, Canada and Mexico. This has never happened before.
And because of the expanded format, Africa was allotted nine automatic slots with the potential to be 10 through a play-off, against the five slots allocated to the continent in the 32-country arrangement. Sadly, and in spite of the 100% increase in the slots available to Africa, Nigeria which is arguably a footballing giant on the continent could not pick a slot. It failed in the automatic qualification for one of the nine spots. It qualified to pick the remaining slot through a play-off in Africa and a final meeting with a qualifier from another confederation. Again, Nigeria failed at the Africa huddle, losing to the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC]. Nigeria, the self-styled giant of Africa will be MIA [missing in action] in successive world cup tournaments, Qatar 2022 and US/Canada/Mexico 2026. How has the mighty fallen?
This year’s football tournament has been projected to be the best attended, the most spectacular and the most profitable. But it could turn out not to be. In 2018 when the hosting right was awarded to the US and its neighbours, Donald J. Trump was the president of America. In the years while the US prepared to host a potentially spectacular event, Trump was out of power having lost his reelection bid to Joe Biden in 2020. He still denies that he lost that election and also rejected accusations that he inspired the storming of the Capitol [parliament] by his supporters who violently attempted to stop the certification of the election results. Trump was returned to the American presidency in January this year, in time to be the chief host of the American leg of the tournament. And that’s where the problem starts. Before Trump acceded to the White House in 2016, he gave indications during the campaigns that he would be an unconventional president. And he was. However, there were people embedded in American politics and bureaucracy who worked against him and curbed his excesses. He was constrained and was frustrated.
But Trump 2.0 has been a different ballgame from the very beginning last January 20. He returned prepared and appointed those who shared his weird governing philosophy to strategic positions. He ignored Congress [parliament] and set up DOGE [the so-called department for government efficiency], armed his now estranged friend and billionaire, Elon Musk, with a chainsaw to decimate the bureaucracy. He did in sacking many government workers but failed in the goal to save money. Indeed, the report was that the exercise ended up increasing the cost of the government. Ostensibly by design, Musk’s name was not forwarded to Congress for consideration as a member of Trump’s Cabinet. Apart from Musk, Trump also had the almost 1000-page Agenda 2025, a governing template pre-prepared for Trump by the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation as a governing philosophy. When the document was exposed prior to the 2024 election, Trump had vehemently denied knowledge of the document and any association with the promoters. Americans knew that he was lying but voted for him anyway.
The challenge now is that Trump’s unconventional or peculiar way of running the United States is spilling over into the organisation of the World Cup. Before now and with lesser mortals, FIFA would never have tolerated the meddling into the management of football and the organisation of its tournaments by politically exposed persons and government officials. Not anymore or so it seems. Trump fired the first salvo by threatening to strip some American cities of hosting rights, and arbitrarily transferring the same to other cities ostensibly controlled by Republicans. By design or coincidence, some of the host cities and states under threat of stripping them of hosting rights are those administered by Democrats as mayors or governors. Trump is Republican. He claims that cities and states run by Democrats were prone to protests and riots without providing evidence. For the first time since Uruguay hosted the maiden World Cup in 1930, 96 years ago, political affiliation has become a consideration for cities to host world cup matches in a host country.
However, FIFA’s vice president, Victor Montagliani, quickly shot back telling Trump that football was bigger than any country. He had said that “with all due respect to … world leaders football is bigger than them and football would survive their regime, and their government, and slogans”. But before this face-off, the American state department had announced visa restrictions on about 75 countries including a big footballing nation, Brazil. All the qualifying countries from Africa, nine of them, are under the hammer of these visa restrictions except South Africa. Even that exception falls under what the US state department describes as qualified visa restriction. In effect, all the qualifying countries from Africa are in dire danger of the disruptions of the movements of their teams, associated staff, football federation officials, and supporters into the US for the football fiesta that starts on June 11 in Mexico, about five months away.
For Africans in particular, football would lose its essence in the absence of the travelling supporters of the national teams. The non-stop singing and drumming and dancing in stadiums will be felt and will take a toll on the motivations of the players during matches. Arguably, Nigeria has the most vocal supporters club for their national team. But Nigeria did not qualify for this World Cup so the national team’s supporters club would not have valid reasons to seek visas into the US this time. But what about South Africa and their vuvuzela which they introduced when they hosted a highly successful World Cup tournament in 2010. You can argue that a vuvuzela can be picked up in any neighbourhood shop in any American host city, but a vuvuzela in the hands and the mouths of its creator, a South African, sounded differently and certainly more menacingly. South Africans have a way of using the vuvuzela to pass coded messages to their players who are doing battle in the field. National team supporters constitute the 12th player in the field of 11 players.
FIFA promotes football as a tool and force for unity. This slogan will face an acid test in Trump’s America in the World Cup months of June and July. The vicious and violent anti-immigrants policy of President Trump will ensure that. An immigration policy that has no respect for sanctuary cities in some states in America, the churches and the law courts, will certainly pay scant regard to stadiums and fan zones as no-go areas during the World Cup. Overzealous Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] operatives will find stadiums and fan zones and hotels as fertile grounds to meet their monthly targets for the arrest of immigrants for detention and deportation. What this means is that legal migrants and undocumented ones from countries that qualified for the tournament will avoid match venues for their own safety.
Football enthusiasts from Iran and Haiti are forbidden from travelling to the US. They are fully banned though their national football teams qualified for the tournament. Of the nine qualifiers from Africa so far, only South Africa can be said to be partially off the hook. The rest – Algeria, Cape Verde, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia – are under one form of the American visa restrictions or the other. If DR Congo which eliminated Nigeria from the race succeeds in the inter-confederations play-off it will fall under the visa restrictions category. FIFA is trapped in America. Its aspiration of inclusivity through football is directly in conflict with Trump’s divisive immigration policy. The rigging by Gianni Infantino, FIFA’s president, of the so-called FIFA Peace Prize specially for Trump to appease him when the Nobel Peace Prize committee overlooked him in the 2025 award, has not helped the situation. The presentation ceremony for the award and the fawning of Infantino over Trump at the event was a spectacle with unrivalled ugly dimension.
Now Infantino will have to contend with a troubled tournament even before the games start. He may have to preside over a tournament that could fell far short of expectations and projections. He will have to superintendent a World Cup that excludes three quarters of the world, among them football loving countries. And football as we know it is neither the number one sport in America nor even number two. For Infantino this will be a dilemma with implications for the future. He has allowed Trump to use his corrosive brand of politics to trump football. Future host nations of the World Cup would also be inclined to introduce politics to the game. For instance, Saudi Arabia is slated to host the World Cup in 2034. It will be the sole host of the 48-country format unlike this year’s that will be jointly hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico. What will Infantino and FIFA do on the eve of the tournament if the Saudis introduce a visa policy that excludes gay people? What Trump is doing to the world of football could be the beginning of the diminution of football as a global brand and a force for unity not tainted by overt partisan politics of member countries of FIFA and host nations of the tournament.
There are other implications of the exclusion of three quarters of the world from the 2026 tournament by the US which is one of the host nations. Airline bookings to the match centres are likely to crater; hotel reservations by football fans from countries affected by visa bans and restrictions would be cancelled; restaurants in the host cities may have to review their plans and projections; the same would apply to tour operators; and, companies that sponsor interpreters but which operate in the countries under visa bans or restrictions may have to review their operations. Apart from these, global brands who are the major sponsors of the World Cup would now be wondering whether their investments would be worthwhile given the virtual exclusion of broadcast audiences from emerging markets. These markets are the new frontiers they are working to reach with their messages, products and services. They could be wondering whether football lovers in such countries would still be enthusiastic in following the tournament on television, radio or through other means. It will be a tough call. But it will not be a call for Infantino alone.
Postscript
The prospects of a tragic 2026 World Cup became starker at the weekend with the vice president of the DFA, the German football federation, Oke Gottlich, hinting at Germany boycotting the tournament because of Trump’s immigration and imperialist policies. Trump has been talking about seizing Greenland, an autonomous island under the sovereignty of Denmark. Analysts say that if Germany shuns the World Cup, Denmark is likely to follow suit immediately. Indeed, the potential boycott of the tournament will have a domino effect with European nations walking away. No disrespect intended, but nobody goes to the World Cup to watch Haiti play against DR Congo. No global brand will expend millions of Dollars on any World Cup tournament sponsorship in which European football power houses are excluded. That will not happen. No broadcasting network will pay for rights for such a tournament. If Europe boycotts the World Cup, it means that half of the 48 countries will be out of the tournament. And if countries under the current US visa restrictions join Europe, it will be game over, no pun intended. And all these will be down to one man – Donald Trump.
