On their way to the United States, FIFA officials maintain optimistic smiles, assuring the world that the 2026 World Cup will be the greatest celebration of human unity, while the host Trump administration is seen as creating multiple barriers to the participation of international visitors, affecting not only fans but also referees and teams.

One has seen many football matches and political dramas in their lifetime, but rarely have the two intertwined as seamlessly, and as contentiously, as in this particular American moment.

The Trump administration has adopted one of the most restrictive immigration policies in modern U.S. history, beginning with a travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries, followed by slower visa processing for applicants from dozens of countries, and a broader climate of scrutiny toward visitors from the Global South, particularly those without strong financial records or affiliations with major Fortune-listed companies.

As for football fans from Global South countries, they faced a visa application process that was almost like a lottery, partly involving interrogation, and entirely designed to discourage them. As usual, FIFA issued all the appropriate statements, hinted at special visa arrangements, and promised to provide guarantees. FIFA is adept at offering justifications, as its history demonstrates.

It feels as though we are back at the 1936 Berlin Games under Hitler’s regime, which was simultaneously laying the technical and legislative groundwork for future genocide while hosting the world’s athletes with a carefully staged display of hospitality.

Those Games saw the swastika, the Nazi symbol, raised alongside the Olympic rings. Hitler himself sat in the stands as Jesse Owens won four gold medals, briefly undermining the regime’s propaganda, yet the competition continued, the world applauded, and the International Olympic Committee congratulated itself on keeping sport “above politics,” before history unfolded as it did.

I do not mean to suggest that Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler, but rather to highlight a broader point: major international sports tournaments have a long, well-documented history of being awarded to, and later used by, governments whose policies and practices conflict with cultural and human diversity, while international sports bodies have often been criticized for overlooking or downplaying these realities.

Sport is not separate from politics; decisions about hosting, attendance, broadcasting, and sponsorship are all inherently political and carry tangible consequences that are not borne by officials or media networks, but by ordinary people who simply want to watch a football match and instead find access restricted or denied.

The question we should be asking is not whether the United States should have been granted hosting rights for the 2026 World Cup, since that decision is already settled and, as is often the case, FIFA’s decision-making process is not subject to any meaningful retroactive accountability that might prevent similar outcomes in the future.

But what does it mean to stage a tournament that depends on the principle of free movement across borders in a country whose government has made the restriction of that very movement a central political objective?

Yet football, at its worst, reflects the world’s hypocrisies, and this mirror now reveals what many prefer not to see: a global sporting body so dependent on television rights and corporate sponsorships that it is willing to stage its flagship event in a country where visa restrictions could prevent a significant portion of the global football community from attending, while local American organizing committees produce promotional campaigns depicting diverse, smiling crowds that, in practice, risk remaining more image than reality under restrictive immigration policies.