Canada, Mexico, USA
Mark Perryman explains how despite the worst efforts of FIFA and the White House, three hats symbolise what remains of a fans’ World Cup
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party. Or their more free-thinking predecessors the International Socialists. But I’ve always had a sneaking regard for their slogan ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism’ first coined by the International Socialists at the height of the Korean War.
Why? Because in just seven words it decries loyalty to either of two brutish behemoths in the cause of something better. Hence my adaptation to reflect my feelings about Trump, Infantino and World Cup 2026. For they are doing everything possible to monetise out of existence the popular internationalism a World Cup produces and in turn robbing this and future World Cups of precisely what makes the tournament so uniquely special as a sporting event. Or to mobilise another far-left quote in my critical cause, Karl (Marx) himself: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.”
A football World Cup holy? Isn’t that putting it a bit strongly? But the scale of football’s importance is there’s nothing as global as football. The English language? Yes, spoken as a second language worldwide but mostly by social elites. The rules of science and mathematics? Shared only by specialist professions. Middle and long-distance running? Yes, a global sport but one that doesn’t have a popular following outside of the Olympics. Professional boxing? A global sport too, yet world champions who attract a global fan base are few and far between – Muhammad Ali being the obvious exception, not the rule.
International Footballism rules ok
It’s ‘International Footballism’ which makes football, and since 1930 a World Cup, unique as a sporting, indeed cultural event. Football, apart from the blessed offside rule, a game of the simplest possible rules, a spherical object to cross a line between two vertical objects and below a horizonal bar.
There is not a continent on earth where the game isn’t played. Professional leagues attract a global audience and fanbase. European domestic league club teams are made up of umpteen nationalities. And every four years all of this brought together for a World Cup. This is what Infantino and Trump, if we’re generous, simply don’t understand, but ignorance is no excuse for the mendacious threat that together they pose.
Of course Infantino, like previous FIFA Presidents Havelange, and Blatter, speaks the language of the global game and its international inequalities with Europe and South American interests dominant. Havelange won the vote and ousted Sir Stanley Rous in 1974 largely on the promise to give better representation and support to the fast-emerging African and Asian football nations.
Rous was both a post-war administrator still in the imperial mould, and a dogged opponent of FIFA banning apartheid South Africa from international football. But any principled solidarity that Havelange, then Blatter and now Infantino might have once possessed soon enough turned into a politics of transaction, ensuring that FIFA Presidents bought a bloc of support via patronage that made their position of absolute power impregnable.
Of course, the World Cup should be globally representative. Its growth reflects this from 13 at the first tournament in Uruguay 1930, 16 teams from Italy 1934 to Argentina 1978, then 24 teams from Spain 1982 to USA 1994, 32 teams France 1998 to Qatar 2022, and now 48 at World Cup 2026.
In 2013 Sepp Blatter set out the reason for tripling the size of the tournament from its early days:
I would like to see globalisation finally taken seriously, and the African and Asian nations accorded the status they deserve at the FIFA World Cup. It cannot be right that the European and South American confederations lay claim to the majority of the places at the World Cup.
However compromised Blatter’s intentions, few would disagree with the sentiments. Yet European and South American domination of the tournament has barely changed. Morocco in 2022 finally became the first African nation to reach the semi-final stage, following South Korea as the first, and to date only, Asian nation to do so in 2022. Whatever the basis of Blatter’s and now Infantino’s intentions it is absolutely the case that competitive sport isn’t a representative democracy.
Pretending that it is means World Cup 2026 will be lumbered with a full month of scarcely meaningful games until the quarter-finals take place. There might be the odd upset along the way but the chances of any of the countries filling those 16 extra places and featuring amongst the eight teams in the Quarters are very long indeed, and scarcely any shorter for the last 16 a few days earlier.
Continental competitions, the African Cup of Nations and the Asian Cup in particular, are key to the globalisation of football. The dogged resistance of the European leagues releasing players for these tournaments is the polar opposite to what should be football’s global solidarity. Following the Arab Cup model by expanding the number of sub-regional competitions would further extend the participation in international tournaments of nations who are less likely to make it to a World Cup. Closer to home, reinstating the Home Nations tournament for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales would help make up for when the latter three fail in their World Cup qualifying campaigns (ouch!).
A popular internationalism!
All previous World Cups have been defined as much by the host nation as the action on the pitch. This is almost as true for those watching at home as the travelling fans. It was Euro 96 that turned me into a travelling England fan. But despite attending all of England’s games it was being taken by a mate to Italy v Germany at Old Trafford that convinced me, seeing the streets and pubs surrounding the stadium packed with German and Italian fans.
The Germans were mainly travelling fans and the Italians were mainly second and third generation migrants – one group had a huge banner which said ‘The Azzurri from Norwich greet the Azzurri’. A popular internationalism! And so it proved.
Then there was France ’98, with the Danish fans joyfully partying the night away on a Nantes campsite despite just being at the wrong end of a 3-2 defeat against Brazil, which meant the next morning they’d be homeward bound. Japan 2002, where countless Japanese wore England shirts with ‘Beckham 7’ on the back, and us England fans loved – not loathed, as had been more usually the custom. Germany 2006, hearing the guilty admission of so many England fans that as the Germans seemed to like us wasn’t it about time we stopped hating them? And South Africa 2010, a country I’d spent my twenty – something years protesting against, and here I am at a huge party in Soweto watching South Africa’s opening match on a big screen.
Framed by the host nation, practiced by fans worldwide, home or away, this is a popular internationalism, cultural democracy writ large by what both unites and divides us, football. And to date there’s never anything quite like it.
An expansion of dubious purpose and doubtful positive consequences for the so-called beneficiaries threatens to destroy this. The number of countries of sufficient size with the stadia and infrastructure to host a 48-team tournament are very small indeed, even assuming any of these precious few have any interest in doing so.
A World Cup host nation is a very special responsibility, both awarding that privilege and carrying it out. We will see in future World Cups split across two, three or more host nations. Canada and Mexico will no doubt do their best but in reality will be bit-part players, to Trump’s USA, leaving their citizens to ask what’s the point, why did we bother, how much did that lot cost?
Japan and South Korea were the first, and to date, last Asian nations to host a World Cup. If FIFA was truly committed to a global game rather than one dominated by Europe and South America it would be doing everything possible to persuade China and India to be future hosts.
Morocco will co-host the 2030 World Cup with Spain and Portugal. Good, but again it’s a bit-part, this time for the centenary World Cup, which if FIFA had any understanding of its own history deserves to be where it all began, in 1930, the first World Cup, Uruguay. Not a very commercial proposition though, so the money spoke and one hundred years of World Cups were swiftly dumped for financial reasons. .
Neither Trump nor Infantino?
Not all that is rotten in how we arrived here can be dumped on them, but enough can be to make them more responsible than most. Trump’s politics are about both monetising everything he can get America’s hands on, and demonising anyone he chooses to disagree with, armed with the most destructive forces available.
His exclusion of a world class referee simply because he came from Somalia is emblematic of a President only too ready to be at war with the rest of the world. He will use the tournament explicitly for his own political purposes and never mind the consequences for what many of us still cherish as the global people’s game.
FIFA has for some considerable time proved an inadequate defender of any such open, welcoming, democratic version of our game. But Trump has taken it one step further, opening up the tournament to ticket pricing based on the very most anyone is willing to pay, and at the same time removing the kind of help for fans, including cheap transport and accommodation options that previous tournaments have provided. The message is clear: high-priced ticket holders are welcome, the rest can just get used to it. Oh, and if you complain too loudly, Infantino’s response? Quit moaning.
Neither Trump nor Infantino, most certainly. But despite every one of their mis-steps becoming more evident and their self-serving attempts to grab a portion of the World Cup’s reflected glory, fans will treat them with the contempt they deserve.
Good! And we’ll do this by celebrating with Americans, Canadians, Mexicans what we share, our love of football. For six weeks only, a bobble hat replaced by a Stetson, a Sombrero and the unique headgear of a Canadian mountie. Hats off – or rather on – for International Footballism because with it another World Cup is always possible.
Three Hats World Cup 2026 T-shirt is available from Philosophy Football here
