Denied entry, humiliating customs procedures, and a powerful association pretending to have always been powerless: this is what we’re seeing as the World Cup starts.
What does it show even to those who might not be interested in football?
The World Cup, football’s biggest event globally, hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the U.S., starts on June 11, 2026. And, as you might guess, it is the U.S. where stories of interrogations and deportations are coming from.
From Omar Artan, a world-class referee from Somalia, being denied entry, Iraqi player Aymen Hussein being interrogated for seven hours, and the team’s photographer being deported, to the Iranian team training in Mexico, as it would only be allowed in the U.S. one day before each match.
What this shows are two things, completely predicted: how an increasingly fascist regime will not “tune down” its policies of intimidation, and how an organisation that doesn’t care about such policies would suddenly pretend to do so.
No Sudden Pauses for Racism
If Donald Trump’s own behavior hasn’t made it clear yet, the U.S. doesn’t seem to care about any façade anymore. Your visas don’t matter, your diplomatic passports won’t save you, your excellence in sports is meaningless: it is we who hold the power, and we will not put the spirit of sports and friendly competition above our racist policies. Donald Trump was given an excellent chance to prove wrong those who thought that having the U.S. as one of the World Cup hosts would be a terrible idea. He didn’t see this opportunity as strategic simply because it isn’t what his administration’s politics are about.
No Pretending to Be Antifascist
Such treatment of the football teams also shows that expecting any protection or even consideration from FIFA regarding the safety and dignity of the footballers themselves is simply foolish, and it can only stem from being uninformed about its history. That history includes endless corruption scandals and allowing fascist regimes to remain in its ranks. You might already know that Israel hasn’t been suspended from FIFA, even if apartheid South Africa was indeed suspended in 1961. Yet did you know that Nazi Germany was never actually suspended by FIFA – even if the tournaments themselves in the 1940s were cancelled – and remained a FIFA member until 1945? And can you notice the difference in what was done to Russia after its illegal invasion of Ukraine (a suspension), and what would happen to the U.S. when it was waging one of its illegal wars of aggression (nothing)?
On top of this, FIFA even gave Donald Trump the newly created Peace Prize in December 2025, a year into his material and diplomatic support to Israel’s genocide, and after a 12-day war with Iran in July of that year.
As a generous assumption, what FIFA president Gianni Infantino told Donald Trump during the prize ceremony could have been seen as a way to appease Trump rather than to actually honour him:
“We want to see hope, we want to see unity, we want to see a future. This is what we want to see from a leader, and you definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize”.
If it was given in hopes of appeasing Trump, it clearly hasn’t worked.
What Do We Do with The Deepening Cracks?
Now, not being a football fan, but being an antifascist, I wonder: for the ones who care deeply about football and the very sports spirit itself, at what point does an organisation that doesn’t seem to care for its athletes or fans still appear as acceptable? Would we, at any point, see any boycotts by fans, threats to leave by national teams, or – the craziest-sounding of all – statements by its corporate sponsors?
Would we see any meaningful collective action if one of the football team members were detained for a longer period? If someone got physically assaulted? If it were a football coach, not a player, who is deported?
Does a red line for those who genuinely love football exist? And could they imagine a different role, based on genuine care for the sport and, as importantly, for those giving their lives to it, that FIFA could play one day?
Reimagining a different future is never easy. But to say “It’s only a sport” in 2026 simply doesn’t do. Not after we’ve seen football fans around the world raising Palestinian flags and football coaches talking publicly about Israel’s genocide. People care, and they must surely care about the well-being of the ones they cheer for in the stadiums. Now, let’s see what this World Cup brings – not only in terms of victories and losses, but what it does of revealing where urgent change is needed, be it within corrupt institutions or ways to fight oppressive regimes.
Meanwhile, see FIFA President Gianni Infantino claim that an organisation that makes billions in profit has no power over how sportsmen are treated by the Trump regime.
At least to me, asking where someone is from and then trying to leverage that in their answer sounds exactly like how a white and privileged man would approach a question about accountability. Let’s see how much more scrutiny we’ll see in this regard as the games start.
I’ll leave you with something beautiful, and that illustrates the spirit of sport potentially better than the World Cup itself: a video showing how Somali referee Omar Artan was greeted at home after his deportation ❤️
As always, stay strong, check on others, and keep your heart open.
❤️💔❤️
Justina
PS. Check out three initiatives I have starting this July: my second workshop on launching a political podcast (July 14), my anticolonial English classes, and anticolonial mental health conversations.
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