The most politically charged World Cup ever puts the U.S. and Iran on a collision course while America co-hosts with neighbors it has tariffed |
The most politically charged World Cup ever puts the U.S. and Iran on a collision course while America co-hosts with neighbors it has tariffed
The World Cup has never been free of politics, yet this year’s event may be in a league of its own.
The quadrennial global soccer tournament will be co-hosted for the first time this year by three nations: the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. It will also be the biggest version of the tournament ever, with FIFA, the global soccer governing body, utilizing an expanded 48-country format that adds 16 more teams.
But Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, a historian and professor at New York University’s Tisch Institute for Global Sport, said what may stand out the most this year is the World Cup’s geopolitical context, which she said has no clear modern precedent.
“We’re in pretty unique territory,” she told Fortune.
Part of the tension comes from the relations between the three host nations. Since President Donald Trump returned to office last year, he has levied tariffs on both the U.S. and Canada as part of his broader trade war.
In addition, his rhetoric toward both countries has turned increasingly hostile and menacing.
While he claims to get along with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, he has tried to convince her to allow U.S. troops to enter Mexico to fight drug cartels, a suggestion Sheinbaum rejected as an affront to the country’s sovereignty.
“The president of Mexico is a lovely woman, but she is so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight,” Trump said last July.
The president has also attacked America’s northern neighbor, calling for Canada to become the 51st U.S. state and labeling Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney a “future governor.”
It is not the first time that co-hosts have dealt with complicated relations. Japan and South Korea, two countries with plenty of baggage due to Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula in the early 20th century, jointly organized the 2002 World Cup. The tournament was largely seen as a success, Krasnoff said, and laid the groundwork for future tournaments to be hosted by more than one nation.
But Krasnoff noted that while the tension between South Korea and Japan is........