{"id":3015,"date":"2026-06-05T21:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/06\/05\/how-america-broke-the-world-cup\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T21:10:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:10:00","slug":"how-america-broke-the-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/06\/05\/how-america-broke-the-world-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"How America Broke the World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tAt this year\u2019s World Cup, the rest of the globe will not be rooting for Team USA.<\/p>\n

\tThis has nothing to do with the players. As seen in the excellent HBO documentary series\u00a0U.S. Against the World: Four Years With the U.S. Men\u2019s National Team<\/a><\/em>, the USMNT is a likable squad made up of young and talented, ambitious but humble players who, at another tournament in another year, would be everyone\u2019s favorite second team. <\/p>\n

\tBut this is not another tournament in another year. The 2026 FIFA<\/a> World Cup may officially be a three-way party co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, but thanks to President Trump, the planet\u2019s most beloved sporting celebration has been turned into a referendum on American power, American paranoia, and a particular Trump-era brand of kleptocratic nationalism. Going into the tournament, the U.S., usually viewed as the plucky underdogs in global soccer, finds itself cast in an unfamiliar role: as tournament villain.\u00a0 \t<\/p>\n

\tBoth within and outside the United States, politics has invaded World Cup coverage, crowding traditional sports reporting off the pitch. A May 28 article in the Columbia Journalism Review noted how publications like\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Athletic<\/em> are devoting resources to the politics and business stories surrounding the tournament \u2014 reporting on border controls, ICE crackdowns and the dynamic ticket pricing that will make this World Cup the most expensive ever for fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tFor many newsrooms, from Berlin to S\u00e3o Paulo, the question is not who will lift the trophy on July 19 at MetLife Stadium. It is: will fans make it through the door? \t<\/p>\n

\tThe answer, for some, is definitively no.<\/p>\n

\tFans from Iran and Haiti remain barred from entering the United States entirely. Supporters from Ivory Coast and Senegal \u2014 the latter a genuine African contender \u2014 face partial restrictions under the Trump administration\u2019s expanded travel ban. Five World Cup-qualifying nations \u2014 Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia \u2014 were subjected to a $15,000 visa bond requirement that critics immediately labeled economic exclusion dressed up as national security. The administration has since partially walked back the policy, waiving the bond for fans who hold valid match tickets \u2014 but it is unclear whether fans who purchased tickets after the cutoff date will still be on the hook for the bond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tSports writer Zito Madu, responding on social media to the bond policy when it was first reported, called the tournament \u201ca World Cup that\u2019s hostile to the world.\u201d He was not being hyperbolic.<\/p>\n

\tThen there is the Iran situation. This is the first time in World Cup history that a host nation is at war with a participating team. The United States and Israel have spent recent months bombing Iran, and yet Iran\u2019s national football team has qualified for and is participating in the tournament. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly insinuated the Iranian squad could serve as cover for military operatives, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and warning that \u201cthey can\u2019t bring a bunch of IRGC terrorists into our country and pretend that they are journalists and athletic trainers.\u201d In December, the Iranian delegation nearly boycotted the World Cup draw in Washington after the federation was granted only four of the nine visas it applied for; federation president Mehdi Taj was denied a travel permit entirely. Iran\u2019s team has been forced to establish its training base in Tijuana, Mexico, commuting across the border for matches. In the context of international<\/a> sport, this is unprecedented. \t<\/p>\n

\tThe political awkwardness does not stop at the U.S. border. The three co-hosts \u2014 the United States, Canada and Mexico \u2014 stood together for the World Cup draw at Washington\u2019s Kennedy Center last December in a display of trinational unity so strained it bordered on satire. Trump has mused publicly about making Canada the 51st state and discussed sending U.S. soldiers into Mexico to attack drug cartels. The look on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum\u2019s faces at that Kennedy Center ceremony told a story that no press release could adequately obscure.
Overseeing all of this, with the special authority vested in him by the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup, is Andrew Giuliani \u2014 yes, Rudy\u2019s son \u2014 who, at 40 years old, finds himself as the nation\u2019s steward for what he has accurately, if grandiosely, described as \u201cthe largest sporting event in the history of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe man who created the conditions for that particular appointment is, of course, Donald Trump<\/a> himself \u2014 and his relationship with FIFA president Gianni Infantino has become the tournament\u2019s most uncomfortable subplot. Infantino, who has cultivated close ties with an impressive roster of illiberal world leaders since his election in 2016 \u2014 receiving Vladimir Putin\u2019s Order of Friendship after calling the Russia 2018 tournament \u201cthe best World Cup ever,\u201d and spending extended time in Qatar in the lead-up to that nation\u2019s 2022 edition \u2014 has found in Trump a kindred spirit. He has attended Trump\u2019s inauguration, appeared multiple times at Mar-a-Lago and in the Oval Office, and accompanied the president to the \u201cSummit for Peace\u201d in Egypt. FIFA\u2019s own code of ethics requires the organization to remain politically neutral. Infantino, photographed at Trump\u2019s \u201cBoard of Peace\u201d meeting wearing a red MAGA-style hat bearing the numbers 45 and 47, appears unconcerned by that particular clause. \t<\/p>\n

\tMost strikingly, in December, Infantino presented Trump with a newly invented \u201cFIFA Peace Prize\u201d \u2014 a prize with no prior history of existence \u2014 after the president was passed over for a Nobel. This was not a subtle gesture. Months later, U.S. forces began bombing Iran, a FIFA World Cup participant. The peace prize has not been revisited.<\/p>\n

\tMeanwhile, FIFA\u2019s conduct around the tournament itself has made it deeply unpopular in ways that have nothing to do with geopolitics. Under the dynamic pricing system FIFA has implemented \u2014 U.S.-style surge pricing applied to the planet\u2019s most watched sporting event \u2014 a single ticket to the World Cup final can cost nearly $11,000, compared to $1,600 for an equivalent seat at the Qatar 2022 final. FIFA also benefits from the resale market, extracting a 15 percent commission from both buyer and seller on secondary transactions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tFans will be gouged at every stage. Parking at U.S. stadiums averages $175 per car, with spots at Los Angeles games now listed at $300. New Jersey Transit has raised its round-trip fare from New York\u2019s Penn Station to MetLife Stadium from $12.90 to $150 on match days. The original United 2026 bid promised fans \u201ccomplimentary public transportation to and from the stadiums on match days.\u201d That promise, like a few others, has not survived contact with reality.<\/p>\n

\tThe attorneys general of New York and New Jersey have now subpoenaed FIFA as part of an investigation into its ticketing practices. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani secured a symbolic concession \u2014 1,000 tickets at $50 each, distributed by ballot exclusively to city residents \u2014 which amounts to roughly 1.6 percent of MetLife Stadium\u2019s sellable capacity. It is the only citywide access program of its kind announced for the entire tournament. \t<\/p>\n

\tIn the meantime, immigrant rights advocates in all 11 U.S. host cities are mobilizing not to welcome fans \u2014 but to protect them. Rapid response networks of immigration attorneys have been established. The \u201cNo ICE in the Cup\u201d campaign is organizing ICE-free watch parties. UNITE HERE Local 11, the union representing 2,000 workers at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, has lodged a formal complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over FIFA\u2019s sharing of workers\u2019 biometric data with ICE, and is threatening to strike. More than 120 civil society groups \u2014 including the ACLU \u2014 have issued international travel warnings about \u201cserious rights violations\u201d in the current political climate, including \u201carbitrary denial of entry and risk of arrest, detention and\/or deportation.\u201d The Committee to Protect Journalists has compiled a legal-support hotline specifically for reporters covering the tournament. Trump administration officials have declined to rule out ICE arrests near stadiums, despite assurances from Rubio that agents will not operate inside venues.<\/p>\n

\tAt least 19 people have died in ICE custody in the United States so far this year. This is the backdrop against which the best players in the world will take the field.<\/p>\n

\tAnd yet \u2014 and this is what makes the moment genuinely painful for anyone who has watched the HBO documentary \u2014 the United States team itself is a different story entirely.<\/p>\n

\tU.S. Against the World<\/em>\u00a0offers a portrait of a USMNT squad that is, in many ways, the antithesis of the political environment in which it now competes. The players are young and multicultural, ethnically diverse, several born outside the country or in the United States to immigrant parents. They are the physical embodiment of the country\u2019s immigrant story \u2014 the very story that the administration running the tournament has spent years working to foreclose. They are humble and hungry, aware of their underdog status in the global game, eager to prove themselves on the biggest stage. Under different circumstances, in a different political moment, they would be the team the world wanted to see succeed: scrappy American kids taking on the old football superpowers of Europe and South America. \t<\/p>\n

\tIt is the particular cruelty of this World Cup that the squad itself \u2014 those kids, that documentary, those stories \u2014 represents exactly the America the world would love to embrace. An America of open arms and mixed heritage, of ambition earned rather than inherited, of a country made stronger by the people who came to it from elsewhere. That America is on the pitch every time the USMNT plays. It is not, at the moment, running the tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this year\u2019s World Cup, the rest of the globe will not be rooting for Team USA. This has nothing to do with the players. As seen in the excellent HBO documentary series\u00a0U.S. Against the World: Four Years With the U.S. Men\u2019s National Team, the USMNT is a likable squad made up of young and talented, ambitious but humble players who, at another tournament in another year, would be everyone\u2019s favorite second team. But this is not another tournament in another year. The 2026 FIFA World Cup may officially be a three-way party co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, but thanks to President Trump, the planet\u2019s most beloved sporting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[173,1798,65,2,116,1799],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-donald-trump","category-fifa","category-general-news","category-hollywood","category-international","category-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}