There’s No World Cup in 2026, Just a MAGA Trophy

Infantino has created a highly profitable Trump-rules tournament that bears little resemblance to the spirit of the World Cup as we knew it

May 10, 2026

Thanks to ChatGPT for generating this image

“Imagine that the BBC chose to ignore the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Cup hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and to instead devote an hour of programming to the moral—and physical—hazards of staging a part of that tournament in the US,” Daniel Levy and I wrote in the Nation four years ago, drawing attention to Western media’s hypocritical treatment of Qatar 2022.

“How safe can visiting fans really feel, the presenter might ask, in a country where the authorities are unable or unwilling to prevent them from being shot dead on any day of the week in a mall, in a gay nightclub, in a church, synagogue, mosque, or anywhere else? And how safe are visiting Black fans (those lucky enough to get visas) in a country with shocking levels of racist police violence?

“How could visitors really feel comfortable enjoying a sports festival in a country where, on any given day, there 2 million people are behind bars, more than half a million are homeless, and 41 million face hunger—in the world’s richest country, which spends more on arming its military than the next nine countries combined (and which has shown an unfortunate willingness to unleash that military abroad to disastrous effect and with scant regard for international law)? A country where one in six women has been raped or sexually assaulted, but where legal protection of women’s bodily autonomy is being systematically eroded…

“There’s more than enough for an hour of gripping television there, but it’s a hypothetical, of course. We all know the BBC would never question the bona fides of any Western country as a World Cup host. Nor is the BBC alone: The Western mainstream media has a habitual inability to step outside of the self-serving narratives spun by its own rulers.”

Fast forward four years, and the morbid symptoms we noted above are even more dire. Not only that; there are new, and monstrously troubling ones that, if they applied elsewhere, would certainly disqualify any non-Western country from hosting the World Cup:

Mass shootings, i.e. when four or more victims are killed or wounded, continue apace: There were 134 in the United States during the first four months of 2026 _— an average of more than one a day (Source: Gun Violence Archive)
Police killed 371 people during the first 120 days of 2026, with Black people three times more likely to be the victims (during the same period there were just four days on which nobody was killed by police) (Source: Gun Violence Archive)
45 people have died in ICE custody since Trump’s second term began, while its officers have killed a further 8 people and wounded at least 19. (Source: ACLU)
To the 2 million people typically behind bars on any given day in the U.S., now add a further 60,000 detained in ICE facilities, 71% of them with no criminal convictions; and some 6,200 children having been detained by ICE since Trump’s inauguration. (Source: ACLU)
Many visitors from Africa and Latin America holding valid visas have been detained and held for days or even weeks, simply because of their origins — it’s not hard to see that any World Cup visitor from those continents, or with family roots there, could fall prey to the racist profiling of ICE. (Source: Multiple reports)
That’s if fans from many of those countries can get visas to enter the U.S. Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, and Senegal may have qualified for the tournament, but their fans are prohibited by a visa ban. Fans from a number of other qualifying nations will be required to post a $15,000 bond – this may even apply to players from these countries. Extra screening (meaning a probable no) will be applied to fans of Egypt, Ghana, Jordan, Morocco, Uruguay, Uzbekistan. And, of course, further arbitrary denials of entry are widely expected at points of entry. (Source: Multiple)
And that’s before we even get to the ideological screening. Visa applicants are required to submit five years’ of their social-media output for scrutiny. Recent State Department guidance tells officers to look out for those who “bear hostile attitudes toward our citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles.” And then there’s “anti-Semitism”, which the U.S. government defines as including challenging the racist, genocidal state of Israel. So it sounds like the intent is to deny entry to anyone who, like most of humanity, demands Palestinian freedom and an end to Israel’s genocide, or opposes the illegal and unprovoked U.S. war on Iran. (Source: Amnesty International)
Homelessness: It’s now an average of 771,000 a night; food insecurity or hunger now affects 48 million people, meaning 1 in 7 people in America and 1 in 5 children. But the government is planning to spend $1.5 trillion on its military in the next year, which has in Iran and Venezuela demonstrated what Daniel and I wrote about “an unfortunate willingness to unleash that military abroad to disastrous effect and with scant regard for international law”
Even the weather raises the likelihood of an abnormal World Cup: It’s being held during peak thunderstorm season across Eastern and Southern North America – a threat exacerbated in recent years by global heating. A single strike of lightning within a 13 km (8 mile) radius of a stadium requires that the game be stopped for a minimum 30 minutes, the field and uncovered stands vacated, and any further lightning strikes in the same area reset that 30-minute clock. There’s a significant risk of matches being disrupted by up to one-hour midgame delays, which can seriously alter the outcome. Four matches were disrupted in this way during last summer’s Club World Cup. (Source: The Athletic)

FIFA’s failure to challenge the U.S. human rights record or seek guarantees for the safety of visiting fans from state violence has been condemned by human rights groups. “Attacks on immigrants and those visiting the United States are at an all-time high,” the American Civil Liberties Union warned in a statement last December. “ICE is conducting raids across the country, tearing families apart, deporting thousands, without due process, and holding an unprecedented number in inhumane detention centers, including on military bases. The host cities of the upcoming World Cup are among the most heavily impacted – with cities like Los Angeles and Chicago facing extreme surveillance, National Guard deployment and immigration enforcement activity. The Trump administration actions threaten our communities and tourists-fans alike – and FIFA has unique leverage to push for change not to whitewash and capitulate.”

That statement condemned Infantino’s unfathomable decision to invent a “FIFA Peace Prize” and award it to Trump – a pally relationship clearly in violation of FIFA’s ethics that require political neutrality, particular when it comes to sitting leaders.

“The FIFA Peace Prize is presented annually on behalf of the billions of football-loving people from around the world to a distinguished individual who exemplifies an unwavering commitment to advancing peace and unity throughout the world, through their notable leadership and action,” Infantino in a sentence remarkable for the number of falsehoods it contains (besides the inconvenient Trump wars, there was no FIFA Peace Prize before Infantino invented it for Trump, and the billions of football fans around the world and the Federations that represent them were never consulted).

“This is what we want from a leader” Infantino gushed at the award. “You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action for what you have obtained in your way but you obtained it in an incredible way and you can always count, Mr. President, on my support.” The absurdity of these statements is evident every day, and has made many in FIFA deeply uncomfortable. But Infantino is a MAGA fan boy. He celebrated Trump’s 2025 inauguration with a video message declaring “Together we will make not only America great again, but also the entire world.”

God save football from Infantino. But hey, FIFA is projecting that it will earn some $11 billion from this year’s tournament. And clearly, that buys a lot of supplication.