FP’s coverage of the tournament

This week, a record 48 countries will kick off the world’s biggest-ever World Cup, co-hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. But what should be a festival of sport is being overshadowed by controversies over immigration, travel woes, ticket prices, and the fact that the United States is at war with another participant, Iran.

On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Mehreen Khan, a sports and economics journalist at the Times in the United Kingdom. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

This week, a record 48 countries will kick off the world’s biggest-ever World Cup, co-hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. But what should be a festival of sport is being overshadowed by controversies over immigration, travel woes, ticket prices, and the fact that the United States is at war with another participant, Iran.

On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Mehreen Khan, a sports and economics journalist at the Times in the United Kingdom. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: So, let’s start with this. What makes this year’s tournament exceptional?

Mehreen Khan: There are lots of things that make it exceptional. It’s the biggest World Cup ever, expanded from 32 to 48 teams. That means we’re getting record numbers of games—over a hundred matches. It means it’s longer; the World Cup will run from June 11 to July 19 and is going to occupy most of people’s summers. It’s happening across three countries for the first time ever. We’ve had shared hosts, but we’ve never had three countries (of course, they are contiguous; it’s one continent). There are various things that are being experimented for the first time, including new pricing systems that are making fans very unhappy about how expensive it is. It might be the hottest World Cup on record, and being in some parts of the United States at this time of the year is going to be incredibly prohibitive for athletes. So there are lots and lots of firsts.

It’s not the first geopolitical World Cup. Politics and geopolitics usually collide with World Cups. But if we’re going to think about it from the way that Foreign Policy readers would like to think about it, this is the second time the United States will host the World Cup. The first was in 1994. The global hegemon hosting a tournament gives it a slightly different dynamic, and when U.S. President Donald Trump is involved, it gives it an extra spicy dynamic. So in the run-up to this World Cup, there’s already been more noise, controversy, and sensitivities than I’ve remembered in any World Cup—that includes the ones hosted by Russia and Qatar, which are probably the two more controversial ones that people remember. So everyone’s not talking about the football right now, and that might be where we are for a while, actually.

RA: I want to talk a little bit about history. The founder of the World Cup was Jules Rimet, who fought for the French in World War I. And it’s notable that when they wanted to host the first World Cup, no one really wanted to do it. Uruguay stepped in. But as I was looking at the history of World Cups, it struck me that a lot of countries that have dubious politics have ended up as hosts. Italy’s Benito Mussolini played host in 1934. Argentina’s military junta hosted the cup in 1978. You mentioned Russia, under [President] Vladimir Putin—that was 2018. And then looking down the road, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is due to host in 2034. So there is a long history of autocrats and dictators who tend to put their hands up for hosting duties. Why is that?

MK: Football exists in a world where we’ve variously lurched between peaks of autocracy and totalitarianism toward the flourishing of liberal democracy, and maybe we’re in an era where the pendulum is swinging back. So in some senses, it’s just spotlighting the types of regimes that are around in the world at whatever point in time. If you are a strongman dictator who celebrates national pride, patriotism, something special about your country, there’s nothing better than sport, and in particular football, to whip up tribal feelings. That’s why it’s become normal to see your national leaders, your heads of state and government, in crowds at the World Cup supporting their team, because they want to ride off the coattails of........

© Foreign Policy