The World Cup is the biggest show on earth. More than 1.5 billion people worldwide watched Lionel Messi’s Argentina win the 2022 final, making it the most-watched event of any kind globally. This year, 48 teams have travelled to the USA, Canada and Mexico for an expanded tournament which Fifa hopes will be the most spectacular yet.
But ahead of kick-off this week, this year’s World Cup remains shrouded in controversy. Fans have been enraged by vastly inflated prices for tickets, transport and accommodation, and as a result, stadiums for many games are not close to selling out. Fans from some nations will not be able to attend games in the USA because of travel bans brought in by the Trump administration, and the war between the US and Iran – whose national team are scheduled to play in Los Angeles and Seattle – is not yet at an end.
So, will this be the worst World Cup ever? England fan Jon Sopel, The i Paper’s chief football writer Daniel Storey and Tartan Army spokesman Hamish Husbandgive their perspectives.
As a Tottenham Hotspur supporter, it’s not often I feel sorry for Chelsea. Particularly given the circumstances. They had just been crowned inaugural Fifa World Club Cup champions, after beating Paris Saint-Germain 3-0. In that moment, I could not have felt more antipathy towards our West London rivals. But then came the celebrations at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which seemed to be a vehicle for two non-players who had nothing to do with Chelsea FC.
The two in question were Gianni Infantino, the self-regarding Fifa president and Donald Trump. It wasn’t just that they presented the trophy, which would have been fine. It was then that they inveigled themselves with the players to join the on-field party, as though they needed to be the centre of attention, not the players who had just defeated their Parisian rivals. And fair play to them: the dynamic duo hoovered up nearly all the attention.
This is what you get when you cross a narcissist with a narcissist. And that is going to be on show over the next few weeks of World Cup 2026, except with one additional element: greed. The greed of an organisation blended with the greed of some elements of the nation. And let’s be blunt about it, it’s not a pretty sight to behold.
Infantino and Trump are besties now, particularly after the gut-churning World Cup draw staged in Washington at the Kennedy Centre – sorry, the Trump Kennedy Centre, as the US President has rebadged it. It was there last December that Infantino announced the creation of the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize, and you’ll never guess who the first recipient was. Fresh off his snub from the Nobel committee, Trump now had his very own bauble.
When Infantino went to Vancouver, Canada, for a World Cup meeting earlier this year, Fifa demanded that he be given a level-four motorcade, the sort of treatment that a US president or a pope would be afforded. The Canadian authorities told Fifa to get stuffed.
There is normally a natural rhythm to great international sporting events. Phase one is the slew of news stories in advance of the event that it’s all going to be a nightmare – the venues won’t be ready (think of the lead-up to the Olympics in Athens and Rio) or the air conditioning won’t work. There’s only one place where that has been a concern, and that of course was the last World Cup in Qatar four years ago. Well, with Qatar, there were a few other concerns too around tolerance, gay rights and a question that’s never been satisfactorily answered: how on earth did a Gulf nation with searing temperatures and no soccer history get to host the event?
Then you get to phase two and the sporting occasion itself where nearly all past concerns are put aside, and everyone is absorbed by the titanic battles taking place in the stadiums between rival nations.
But with the US, Canada and Mexico hosting, the concerns are of a different order, and could yet make Trump regret tying himself so tightly to Infantino. The greed and price-gouging are off the scale. It’s obscene. I have bought two tickets for a game in the first knockout phase at face value – and have had to pay $1,800 (£1,350). It’s estimated it would cost a fan around $20,000 (£14,988) to follow their side through every game from the group stages to the final. That excludes hotels, flights and living costs.
Hotels in host cities were told by Fifa that demand would be insatiable. They jacked up prices to the hilt. In New York, the train operator that will take fans out to the MetLife Stadium, New Jersey Transit, announced that it would raise the 18-mile return fare from $13 to $150 for the period of the World Cup.
Fans are voting with their feet. Hotel bookings are a fraction of what Fifa promised and so prices are being slashed. Ticket sales have also slumped, so there will be many matches played in half-empty stadiums. Not even games involving the US national side have sold out. Trump has put himself front and centre of this World Cup. But what if there are rows of empty seats, and he’s unable to claim it’s the biggest, best, greatest, most popular World Cup ever? He won’t like that. Not one little bit.
Yet is it any surprise? This is the beautiful game turned ugly. I have been to watch England play in World Cups in Germany, South Africa and Brazil. They were carnivals. But do you want to arrive in the US and find that US Customs and Border Protection (ICE) are demanding to see your social media history and your X and Insta handles? If you’re Hispanic or black, do you want to run the risk of having an ICE agent demand to see your passport to prove that you’re not an illegal immigrant? And maybe most practically of all, how big an overdraft are you prepared to run up?
All being well, England will win their group and will be playing in the Azteca stadium in Mexico City – that’s the knockout game I have tickets for. America is a country I love and spent eight happy years living in as the BBC’s North America Editor but I thought I’d give the US a miss this year. It seems a lot of other people have reached the same conclusion.
Perspectives
square Opinion Will this be the worst World Cup ever? Jon SopelTrump’s World Cup has turned the beautiful game ugly
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