NEW YORK – I have watched about 8,000 minutes of this World Cup – and that is probably a conservative estimate. Very little has shocked me in that time, except on a late-night trip to Times Square.
It is easy to be dazzled by the glare, whether of the billboards themselves or a tournament of noise and excess. Above the city, an advert had been taken out urging Americans to “protect our Judeo-Christian heritage”. Many Jews and Christians recognise that term for what is at worst, a euphemism for “white” – at best a dog-whistle to the extreme religious right.
You would need to perform some remarkable mental gymnastics to wholly differentiate the United States of the World Cup from the United States of Trump, Hegseth and Rubio. But we have all managed to do so to some extent, or we wouldn’t be here.
I have loved every minute of those 8,000; then I have the sobering reality check that I have probably just been sportswashed.
In Qatar, this newspaper covered the story of an LGBT+ fan who was told not to bring a rainbow flag into a stadium; if there have been none of those tales four years on, it is worth remembering that many LGBT+ people – including the largest England fans’ group – decided not to come. Even while the World Cup has been taking place, in West Virginia and Idaho the Supreme Court have passed legislation to prevent transwomen and trans girls playing women’s football.
Of the fans I have met from around the world, the singing Ecuadorians, the exuberant Swedes and the half-cut Englishmen, some joke they have sold their houses to be here. Who knows, it might even be true. The ones who made it to the US could afford the tickets somehow; thousands have stayed at home who can’t.
The Balogun saga was a stain on the tournament (Photo: Getty)Mexican fans have danced in a sea of green through the streets, bringing life to the five boroughs of the city. One of their compatriots was shot dead in an ICE raid in Houston, Texas, just last week. ICE officials have avoided the stadiums themselves, but there have been thousands of detentions in June and July.
“There’s a very strong historical trend whereby when people who are authoritarians host sports events like the World Cup, they tend to wind down the repression during the actual sporting event itself,” US academic and former footballer Jules Boykoff tells The i Paper.
“They open wide that repression right as soon as foreign journalists leave. For too long the term sportswashing has been used in an ethnocentric, if not xenophobic, fashion. It’s easy to point a finger at Qatar, at Vladimir Putin.
“If you define sportswashing the way I do, when political leaders use sports to appear important on the world stage, to look legitimate while throwing attention away from human rights issues and social problems at home, it’s definitely happening in the United States.”
Immigration raids were at their peak over 4 July weekend, as the country celebrated its 250th birthday. The World Cup added another dimension to the party atmosphere; I watched thousands of Americans line the banks of the Hudson to cheer a parade of flags.
It struck me that if this were London and were they Union Jacks, it would make me want to throw myself headfirst into the Thames – but on we went, before watching Paraguay vs France and being more scandalised by an appalling referee than by the dark underbelly of this tournament.
The following day, the Folarin Balogun red card scandal unfolded after Trump’s phone call to Fifa.
The story of Balogun – a US citizen by birth, a legal status Trump attempted to outlaw only last month – may have done my cognitive dissonance a favour. Finally, the worst excesses of the US President – the brashness, the disregard for normal codes of behaviour – were thrust into plain sight.
But if World Cups are as much about soft power and legitimacy as the football, the US government will deem this summer a success. Depressingly, the exiled Somalian referee, the travel ban on Haitian supporters, dogs aggressively inspecting the luggage of Uzbekistani players, and the treatment of the Iranian team will become footnotes.
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England: The images that show why Jude Bellingham slapped Argentina’s Valentin Barco World Cup: Four Thomas Tuchel howlers that cost England against ArgentinaI am not a likely target of any of these policies – nor am I the intended audience. It will not matter what I thought about any of it – the people who matter are the voters here, whose attention has been deflected at a time when Trump has his lowest approval numbers ever.
It all ends on Sunday with another pointless subversion of the game, when half-time will be extended to allow for a 30-minute show featuring Shakira (again) and a 67-year-old Madonna. I have seen more ads for that than for Spain vs Argentina. As for the hydration breaks, I am past caring about them.
So perhaps we have all been guilty of letting this surreal tournament desensitise us. At least there was some hope to be found in the sound of hundreds of people booing the sight of Gianni Infantino on a giant screen. Perhaps football really can still unite the world.
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