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Trump and His Soulless Cronies Have Managed to Suck the Joy Out of the World Cup

Not even soccer is immune from Trump’s reverse Midas touch.

US President Donald Trump receives the FIFA Peace Prize from Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, during the FIFA World Cup 2026 Official Draw at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on December 5, 2025, in Washington, DC.

I have been a critic of the World Cup for over two decades. Reading books like Andrew Jennings’s Foul!: The Secret World of Fifa: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals and my own investigative journalism on the ground in South Africa in 2010 and Brazil in 2014 convinced me that soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is not only an utterly corrupt and immoral entity but even a supporter of dictators and bulwark against democracy. (Since those days, under the leadership of Gianni Infantino, it has devolved even further into a corroded husk led by authoritarian-worshiping gnomes.)

The three main outcomes for countries hosting the World Cup, as I saw time and again, was debt, displacement, and the militarization of public space. The main differences—whether we were talking about Durban or Rio—were the languages used to dissemble and explain the ensuing corruption scandals. And yet, despite all of this, there was also a fourth component: joy. The people of these countries were generous and enthusiastic hosts. Bars turned into fiestas. Fiestas turned into bacchanalias. And bacchanalias became hyper-focused watch parties, as everyone snapped from revelry to riveted attention on the most popular sport on Earth.

We are now 100 days out until the United States—along with Canada and Mexico—hosts the World Cup. In the US, we are certainly getting the financial chaos, the fears of displacement (which the unhoused people of past host cities can attest to), and the........

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