How FIFA is Asphyxiating the Beautiful Game

This is the first World Cup co-hosted by three countries – the US, Canada, and Mexico. However, FIFA has done nothing to ensure that the players, staff, administrators and, crucially, fans, of participating teams are treated equally, and with respect. It has not even stood up for its own match official. 

Rich, white-dominated countries of the Global North have one set of rules applied to them. Poor, non-white countries of the Global South have another. And one country, one of the three co-hosts, has to abide by no rules at all. It can do as it pleases. In other words, the FIFA WC 2026 mirrors the essential features of the ‘rules-based world order’ – unequal, discriminatory, and racist.

Consider some examples

Omar Artan is a 34-year-old referee from Somalia. Named Men’s Referee of the Year for 2025 by the Confederation of African Football, he is part of a tiny elite of top global referees. He was in FIFA’s team of 52 referees for the WC. The US denied his entry. He returned to Somalia to a welcome befitting a national hero. Every US president in this century – George W. Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump – has bombed Somalia. How could Trump’s US allow a Somalian to be the boss on the football field, especially if he happened to officiate a game featuring the US?

(L to R) Omar Artan, Aymen Hussein and Woodensky Pierre

Aymen Hussein is a striker in Iraq’s squad. He was detained at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for seven hours. He was forced to consent to his phone being inspected. He was luckier than the official photographer of the Iraq team, Talal Salah, who was held for a longer time, also had his privacy violated, and was eventually denied entry. The visa for Haiti’s midfielder Woodensky Pierre was delayed inordinately. There were reports of the national teams of Senegal and Uzbekistan being subjected to unprecedented scrutiny and delays while entering the US. 

This is the first WC where a host nation is at war with a participating nation. For a long time, there was uncertainty surrounding Iran’s participation. Would they be allowed to enter the US, and would the US guarantee their safety? If they were not allowed to participate, who would take their place? Would Italy, four times champion but not able to qualify for the third WC running, be granted a tennis-style ‘wild card’ entry?

Eventually the decks were cleared for Iran’s participation. The players were granted Visas just ten days before their first match. However, over a dozen members of their support staff were denied Visas. Iran’s ordeal doesn’t end here. Their base camp, originally in Tucson, Arizona, was shifted at the last minute to Tijuana, Mexico. Until a day before the start of the WC, it wasn’t clear which facility would be their training site (where they would practice and train).  

Even more shockingly, the Iran team is being made to enter and exit the US on the same day for each of their group stage matches. (One of their matches is in Seattle, over 1,700 km from Tijuana, just a little less than Mumbai to Dubai.) This puts them at a serious disadvantage. It’s like asking them to play with one hand tied behind their back.

Could FIFA have pushed back against US highhandedness? Absolutely. In 1966, when England demurred about hosting North Korea, FIFA threatened to take the WC elsewhere. England quietly fell in line. (Luckily, given it’s the only WC they’ve won.)

If the national teams, support staff, and even officiating referees of FIFA have faced such shockingly discriminatory treatment, what of the ordinary fans from the Global South? There have been numerous reports of fans having to jump through multiple administrative and financial hoops to get into the US. Fans from Algeria, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Tunisia were initially required to deposit between $ 5,000 to 15,000 (₹ 4.5 lakh to ₹ 13 lakh at a conservative estimate) just to be able to apply for a Visa (this requirement was eventually waived).

For fans who somehow make it to the US, or are already there, this is by far the most expensive WC to watch. Average ticket prices exceed $ 1,000 (about ₹ 86,000 or more), with those for marquee matches topping $ 10,000 (₹ 8.6 lakh or more). This is because FIFA is using, for the first time, ‘dynamic pricing’ for tickets. In previous WCs, transportation to matches was either free or highly subsidized. Not in the US. Fans have to shell out large sums to just get to the venues.  

Football is the ‘Beautiful Game’ because it is the quintessential sport of the poor. It is played by kids and adults, women and men and everyone else, in streets, shantytowns, on fields, beaches, in prisons, using the most minimal equipment. A ball is all it takes. And sometimes, not even that. Empty tins, rags tied together, coconut shells – anything at all that can be kicked around will do. What Marx said of religion is true of football too: ‘It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions’.

For football clubs and national teams, the support of fans inside and outside the stadiums is like oxygen. Today, the ‘Beautiful Game’s chief custodian, FIFA, is doing all it can to asphyxiate it. 

(This is a FIFA World Cup series written by Sudhanva Deshpande and this article is the first of the series)

Courtesy: leftviews.in