Trump Has Already Thrown the 2026 World Cup Into Chaos |
Trump Has Already Thrown the 2026 World Cup Into Chaos
With less than 100 days until the tournament begins, it is already being tested by war, diplomatic crises, and instability.
For half a century, FIFA’s leaders have dished out bribes and raked them in as they’ve cozied up—and handed the World Cup—to despots and murderous regimes all over the globe, from Argentina in 1978 to Russia in 2018. Even the generational scandal that led, in 2015, to multiple arrests on charges of racketeering and wire fraud couldn’t reform FIFA, which simply replaced its old way of doing business (cash slipped into pockets or slid across the table in unmarked envelopes) with a new approach, which one former member of its governance board has described as “legal bribery.”
Last year, even by its own debauched standards, FIFA outdid itself when it produced one of recent history’s most innovative sweeteners: a fake peace prize that it invented to curry favor with Donald Trump, who was still furious about missing out on the real one. The FIFA Peace Prize is not exactly the Nobel, to put it mildly. It is an obvious farce, a preposterously stupid award that carried no meaning, let alone prestige. It would be absurd even if it hadn’t been invented to mollify the erratic and belligerent Trump; the fact that it had only made it more ridiculous. But what rendered the FIFA Peace Prize really funny was that Trump seemed genuinely moved when he accepted it.
“This is truly one of the great honors of my life,” a visibly touched Trump said shortly after accepting the prize from Gianni Infantino, the slick operator who has led FIFA since 2016. “Beyond awards, Gianni and I were discussing this, we saved millions and millions of lives,” he continued, before rattling off a preposterous list of the wars and conflicts he claims to have ended. Desperate to be recognized as a great statesman, Trump was not just unbothered by the fact that the prize he had just been given was invented solely for the purpose of puffery; he was seemingly the only person in the world for whom it carried any meaning whatsoever.
More than three months after it was awarded, people are still making fun of the FIFA Peace Prize. Perhaps the defining joke of Trump’s second term, it has real staying power. When Trump dies, we can expect a flood of sarcastic tweets mourning the passing of a FIFA Peace Prize winner. But Infantino, the prize’s creator, is not concerned with the opinion of the masses—a sentiment that increasingly shapes FIFA’s approach to soccer in general. For over a year, his primary concern has been the opinion of just one man, Donald Trump. If the cost of winning Trump’s favor is self-debasement, humiliation, and a made-up prize—so be it.
America’s relationships with both of its World Cup co-hosts, Canada and Mexico, were not great on the occasion of the prize, but they have only deteriorated since; Europe’s soccer confederacy has mulled pulling out of the tournament if Trump were to follow through on his threat to invade Greenland; the State Department stopped processing visas from 75 countries—15 of which have qualified for the World Cup—and federal agents killed two civilians during a monthslong operation in Minnesota. Trump, meanwhile, is more erratic and impulsive than ever.
And then there is the war in Iran, which, come June, may very well still be ongoing—and may involve U.S. ground troops. Iran........