FIFA has managed to turn the beautiful game into an ugly spectacle. With the US playing host to the World Cup alongside Mexico and Canada, Trump has discovered the power of sports to wash away the blood and dirt of empire. This month, billions of people will watch men kick a ball around a field as 48 national teams play a record 104 matches in the FIFA World Cup. I’ll be one of them, but what price are we paying to enjoy these international football festivities?
The cost of entry to the games is higher than ever. For this year’s tournament, FIFA came up with the genius idea of running their own scalping system alongside a “dynamic pricing” process. This is the let-the-market-rip version of access to sports, where the richest win every time. At the 2022 World Cup, the cheapest category tickets cost around $69, with Qatari resident tickets available for as little as $11. In the current competition, you can expect to pay at least $1,000 for the nosebleeds in the group games and seats at the final on sale for as much as $2 million per ticket. Even billionaire Trump said he wouldn’t pay for his own ticket at those prices. Fan groups are so angry they have filed a formal complaint with the European Commission, accusing FIFA of abusing its monopoly over ticket sales.
Tickets are just the beginning. Fans travelling to matches at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey face train fares of more than $100 from Manhattan, a route that normally costs $12.90 return. Unlike Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, where fans benefited from free travel between host cities, supporters will have to cover the costs of navigating hundreds of kilometres between games. The host city agreements originally required free transportation to all matches. That was quietly renegotiated away.
Meanwhile, FIFA is expected to make a record-breaking $14 billion (up from $7.5 billion) in revenue this World Cup cycle. Although FIFA is officially a nonprofit organisation, it holds reserves of more than $4 billion and has reduced the proportion of its budget for development of the game to 36 percent. So where does the money go? Corruption, bribery and the expenses bill of the boss would be a good guess. FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s claim of $5,000 a month for the schooling of one of his daughters in Miami gives you a sense of the rorts. Prosecutions of high-ranking soccer officials in 2015 over sales of broadcast rights did not slow down the dirty deals. A recent statement by prominent figures in the world of soccer administration suggested that the situation has actually become worse since those legal cases.
In an effort to bury the human rights abuses of the Qatar event in 2022, Infantino promised this would be the most inclusive World Cup ever. Instead, Canada and Mexico are co-hosting with an authoritarian regime where fans are too afraid to attend games for fear of detention and deportation by ICE. Trump is using the “world’s game” to project an image of openness and excitement that sits in stark contrast to the day-to-day life of millions of Americans. This is a country where the right to protest has been criminalised, immigrants are rounded up in workplace raids, and the president has deployed the military against his own cities. For Trump, the World Cup is a welcome distraction from inflationary hikes in fuel prices and record low personal approval ratings.
Internationally, while US armed forces continue attacking their country, the Iranian team is scheduled to play in the group stage of the World Cup on US soil. Until ten days before their first match, Iranian officials were unsure about whether the team would even be allowed to gain entry to the country. Fourteen support staff were refused visas. The Iranian players have been told they will need to enter and leave the US on the same day of their matches and stay in Mexico in between.
We’ve also witnessed Africa’s leading referee, Omar Artan from Somalia, being denied entry to the US without the right to appeal. This has never happened during a World Cup before, even in fascist Italy, which hosted in 1934, or in 1978 under the Argentinian military dictatorship. It shouldn’t come as a surprise—Trump is on record calling Somalia a “disgusting country” and claiming Somali immigrants are “garbage”.
Amnesty International has even issued an explicit travel warning ahead of the tournament, flagging serious risks of racial profiling and intrusive searches for fans, players and officials. Teams arriving from Senegal and Uzbekistan have already allegedly been subjected to harsh and humiliating treatment by airport security. Even before a ball has been kicked, around a quarter of competing nations face some form of US travel ban or tight visa restriction under the Trump administration.
The relationship between Trump and FIFA boss Infantino is a love story of aspiring oligarchs. Three weeks after Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize, Infantino invented the “FIFA Peace Prize”, with no selection criteria and apparently no consultation with the FIFA Council. Trump joyfully received his medal at the World Cup draw in Washington. At last year’s Club World Cup final, Trump joined the Chelsea team on the field to hand out the winners’ medals and then refused to leave the celebrations despite being booed at the beginning of the game.
Football is a glorious game with feats of skill and athleticism to match any sporting code. But in FIFA’s hands, the sport has become an instrument of spectacular distraction and outrageous corruption. While ordinary fans are priced out and profiled at the border, the forces of reaction are using it to boost their egos, persecute Muslims and further enrich the already obscenely wealthy.
