Saudi Arabia’s World Cup Win is Shameful

Trump himself appeared, via a pre-recorded video, at a recent event for another of FIFA’s money grabs, the Club World Cup, a wholly superfluous competition to determine which of a handful of somewhat randomly selected teams from across the world is the “best.” His daughter Ivanka, her husband Jared Kushner, and one of their children participated in the draw that selected the groups for the tournament’s first phase—precisely the kind of cozy, corrupt, and familial dynamic that FIFA has cultivated over the decades. 

Trump’s presence was a reminder that he will have a prominent seat at the World Cup, as president, when the United States co-hosts it in 2026. That tournament will likely occur in a country in the midst of mass deportations, political prosecutions, widespread unrest and general dysfunction. Those deportations, combined with Trump’s threats of tariffs, moreover, may also lead to a rupture of relations between its three co-hosts—the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. That would be extraordinary, in many respects. But by the sport’s historical standards—and especially by FIFA’s—it would hardly be unprecedented. This is the way things have always been. People will watch and the money will flow. If we’re lucky, the tournament may even be exciting. 

It is tempting to take a cynical view of all of this, in other words. Soccer is a reflection of the world and the world is a chaotic, dangerous, unfair, deeply divided place. Discrimination, after all, has plagued the sport for as long as it has existed. For a sport that has increasingly been defined by the pursuit of more and more money, making things marginally better for groups that had previously been told, again and again, that they do not have a place in it is a sound business decision—perhaps we should not be so surprised that no one in power really gives a fig about the groups it has wooed via gestures in recent years. FIFA, meanwhile,  has been fantastically corrupt for more than half a century; vile, human rights abusing dictatorships have been chosen to host World Cups for almost as long as the competition has existed. (Indeed, its second installment, in 1934, took place in Mussolini’s Italy.) The only way to change this would be to change FIFA, which seems impossible. Indeed, reforming FIFA, even slightly, seems just as far-fetched.