FIFA Peace Prize Winner Is Trying To Spoil the World Cup

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In 2018, when soccer’s governing body, FIFA, awarded the 2026 World Cup, Donald Trump played an important role in ensuring that the US, Canada, and Mexico got the nod to jointly host the world’s biggest sporting event.

Back then, a little over a year into his first term in the White House, there were concerns about the travel bans he had put in place. After all, the World Cup is supposed to be a global celebration that brings people from all over the planet together.

To alleviate those fears, Trump assured FIFA boss Gianni Infantino in a letter that he was “confident” the US would host the tournament in an “open and festive manner” and that “all eligible athletes, officials and fans from all countries around the world would be able to enter the United States without discrimination.”

It was a pledge that helped win over the FIFA delegates who voted to award the World Cup to the North Americans instead of Morocco — perhaps partly because, at the time, it seemed highly unlikely that Trump would be in office in 2026.

More than anything, the so-called “United Bid” of the US, Canada, and Mexico promised stability. FIFA had just come off a major corruption scandal and controversially awarded the 2018 and 2022 tournaments to Russia and Qatar respectively.

There was a concern that the tournament was increasingly being used by some of the world’s more unsavory regimes for “sportswashing” — i.e., the practice of using athletics to distract from criticism of human rights violations.

As a result, the United Bid’s vow to deliver “unity, certainty, and opportunity” seemed like a very safe bet.

If only there were a World Cup of Irony.

Because, here we are, on the eve of the tournament, and nothing is as people thought it would be in 2018.

Trump is president again and the US, Canada, and Mexico are not united. He threatens Canada with annexation, runs CIA black ops in Mexico, and uses every opportunity to try to slap heavy tariffs on both countries.

There is very little certainty about how the next four weeks will go. In large part because he has spent the first year and a half of his second term picking fights of one kind or another with just about all of the countries who are sending teams — including the two co-hosts.

Well, perhaps apart from Argentina, whose economy the administration bailed out to the tune of $20 billion because Trump likes their president.

It has also become clear that those assurances from eight years ago were worthless. The administration has denied entry to athletes (at least temporarily), officials, and fans.

Finally, there is no indication that this World Cup will be “open and festive,” at least not in the US, where it is more likely to be “hostile and gloomy.”

Which is also ironic because Trump is very much in need of some sportswashing of his own.

He is deeply unpopular at home and abroad, which is hardly surprising seeing how he has made things more expensive for just about everybody on the planet with his war in Iran — a conflict the president started even though he is the inaugural recipient of the prestigious FIFA peace prize.

And the ailing US economy could use the boost that comes with hosting the World Cup and welcoming traveling fans willing to pay big bucks to see their teams.

For example, at the end of the 2006 tournament, host Germany raised its growth prediction from 1.6 percent to 2.3 percent because everybody was so happy with how it turned out. Research conducted at the time showed that Germans felt much better about the economy and their personal financial situation whenever the national team won.

In the end, the revised growth prediction was way off. The economy actually grew by 3.2 percent that year — i.e., twice as much as anticipated before the successful World Cup.

That kind of bump is something Trump could use since consumer confidence in the US is historically low.

However, it’s tough to imagine that this World Cup will deliver a similar feel-good factor.

Americans just don’t care a whole lot about soccer, so the home team would have to do exceptionally well for there to be a surge of patriotism in an extremely divided country. And, since the US is in a tough group and not expected to make it to the quarterfinals, that’s a high mountain to climb.

Obviously, there is a chance that the rambunctious soccer fans from all over the world will turn the World Cup into a gigantic party as they have done before.

Just look at these guys!

However, greed has also made it unaffordable for many fans.

Ticket prices are through the roof and so is the cost of transportation to the venues. In some venues, we’re talking $300 for a parking space.

In addition, a lack of demand has the American Hotel & Lodging Association sounding the alarm. According to a report the group released last month, a member survey showed that 80 percent of hotels said that bookings are below initial forecasts, and a large majority of operators are blaming “visa barriers and broader geopolitical concerns.”

In case you are wondering, that means “Trump.”

None of this is how it was promised to be when the US, Canada, and Mexico launched their United Bid.

In fact, it’s the opposite.

“There are only a few times when a country gets the chance to look far beyond itself — to embrace the concept of global unity in a real and tangible way; to demonstrate that its people are all truly connected through sport,” the so-called bid book stated in 2018.

There is not a person on the planet who has been more destructive to “global unity” in the past year than Trump.

And there is a good chance he will also ruin the World Cup… or at least try to do so.

One way to do that would be to send ICE to the stadiums where games are being played to snatch the undocumented (we’re guessing that would end messily). Or to hassle fans at the border. Or do any of the cruel things he usually does when he flexes his authoritarian muscles by punching downward.

For a narcissist like Trump, the temptation to insert himself into the spectacle that is the World Cup must be enormous — whether it’s going well and he wants to take credit, or it’s going poorly and he wants to be seen to save the day.

After all, billions of people will be glued to their screens. Of course, most of them really don’t like the president, which makes for an interesting dynamic.

Along with everybody else, we’ll be watching.