Photograph Source: Quintin Soloviev – CC BY 4.0
The international football association FIFA is more corrupt than Donald Trump and his loathsome family. The fact that FIFA’s current president Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump are playing out some kind of bromance on the stage of the upcoming World Cup is neither surprising or fit for family viewing. Beyond Infantino’s presentation of a fake peace prize to Trump, there lies a greed laced with contempt for soccer’s fans that is surpassed only by Trump’s contempt for most residents of the nation he currently rules. If money didn’t rule sports and sanity did rule US politics, both of these men would be either in prison or on their way to prison for the swamp of corruption they both wallow in and celebrate. While I appreciate the game known as football in most of the world, I have nothing but intense disgust for the capitalist carnival the World Cup has become.
By the way, so do writers Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin. Boykoff’s newest book, a slim tract titled Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine, features an introduction by Zirin. As anyone who is familiar with either of these men’s work would expect, the text is a sharp, intelligent and witty expose of the corruption and right-wing politics that have taken over international professional football. It is also a warning of its future demise unless it changes course. Judging from the history provided by Boykoff in his text, the necessary changes grow more remote with each appearance on the pitch. Or, to be more accurate, with each successive FIFA president.
The litany of looting described in Red Card—because that’s what it is—of local and national governments hoping to host World Cup games is matched if not superseded by the political games played by both FIFA and those governments. From the left-leaning government of Lula in Brazil to the almost fascist regime of Donald Trump, the manipulation of politicians, bureaucrats and other officials by FIFA, the common factors seem to be money and more money. Then again, there’s also the pro-Western (US) political decisions of the FIFA executives. The most obvious example is the expulsion of Russia from the games because of its invasion of Ukraine contrasted to the invitation to the Israeli team while the Israeli military commits genocide and enforces an internationally condemned (and illegal) occupation of Palestinian land. Only occasionally mentioned is that the Israeli football team is made up of former and current members of that genocidal military; mentioned even less often is that the Palestinian squad has seen over five hundred Palestinian footballers killed by Israel since October 2023. Among the dead were former and current professional players and dozens of youth athletes. In addition, close to one hundred percent of Gaza’s sports facilities have been destroyed. Despite the protests of individual athletes, some football fan clubs and even a few teams, no moves have been made to ban Israel for Cup competition.
Meanwhile, Trump, who probably doesn’t know the difference between a striker and a winger, kisses up to FIFA president Infantino even while his gestapo-like agency known as ICE prepares to harass football fans coming to watch their favorite players and teams face off against each other at a few stadiums around North America. Some fans are forbidden entry because of the country they live in. Some teams are uncertain whether they will be allowed into the US. Then, there’s the money—obscene amounts of it going from fans to the coffers of corporate America. Advertising costs are over the top and the gluttony of late-stage capitalism is wallowing in its slime. Security agencies are creating a panopticon that will remain long after the last goal is scored. Palantir, the surveillance corporation run by one of capitalism’s more rabid sociopaths, is enhancing its earnings while intensifying its control; a control that was already dystopian at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The information Palantir collects during the Cup will be added to its already universal database, and it won’t be used for good.
It’s the honest World Cup fan who acknowledges the authoritarian and unsavory uses the money they put out for their fandom. It’s a conscientious fan who does something with that information: a protest in the stands or a refusal to spend their money to watch the games they choose. As Boykoff tells his reader: “Any protest against the 2026 World Cup faces an uphill battle…. But we’re at a pick-a-side juncture in history and the 2026 World Cup offers a moment to choose the right one.” (112) A similar moment existed in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City when John Carlos and Tommy Smith raised their fists on the victory stand in opposition to white supremacy in sport and the greater world.
