MOST football fans would agree, I’m sure, that – in terms of the entertainment offered on the pitches in Mexico, Canada and the United States – the 2026 World Cup has, thus far, been a pleasure to watch.
The bright, young stars of the game – such as Kylian Mbappé of France and Vinícius Júnior of Brazil – have shone.
Lionel Messi – who is presently challenging his legendary compatriot Diego Maradona for the title of Greatest Footballer Of All Time – is, at the time of writing, sitting alongside the aforementioned Monsieur Mbappé atop the tournament scorers’ chart.
Perhaps even more importantly, nine out of 10 African countries progressed to the knock-out stages.
That includes the “Blue Sharks” of Cape Verde – a nation of around 562,000 people – which (in this, its first World Cup finals) will take on holders Argentina tomorrow night, Messi and all.
All of which would seem to suggest that the 2026 World Cup is an unalloyed success. If only that were so.
Plaudits for the tournament come despite, rather than because of, the actions of Fifa (world football’s governing body) and the larger of the three host nations, namely, the United States of America.
Even before the competition got underway, Fifa president Gianni Infantino had brought the event into disrepute with the invention, last December, of the preposterous “Fifa Peace Prize”, which he created for US president Donald Trump.
Less than three months later, Fifa’s peace laureate was (alongside the blood-soaked genocidaire, Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu) raining death and destruction down on the long-suffering people of Iran.
It is to the shame of football’s national bodies (including our own Scottish Football Association) that the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) is, so far, the only one that is formally supporting a complaint against the farcical “Peace Prize” lodged with Fifa’s ethics committee by the human rights group FairSquare. The complaint contends, with unarguable logic, that Infantino’s award to Trump breached Fifa’s own rules on political impartiality.
When Infantino flew into Dallas on his private jet for Tuesday’s match between Ivory Coast and Norway he had to sit beside NFF president Lise Klaveness.
However, there were no signs of embarrassment on the part of the Fifa president. The brown-nosing Infantino is – as the eye-watering prices for World Cup matches attest – a man entirely without shame.
If Infantino makes his disgraced predecessor – his fellow Swiss Sepp Blatter – look like a paragon of virtue, the behaviour of the US government has been even worse.
Somalian referee Omar Artan – voted the best match official in the whole of Africa – was, shamefully, refused a visa to enter the US.
It was no surprise that the ref singled out for such disgraceful treatment came from a country that is both majority Muslim and African. No surprise, either, that Infantino and Fifa made no protest about this act of blatant Islamophobia and racism.
Fifa paid Artan’s fee, but it did not – as it could have done – reallocate him to matches in co-host nations Mexico or Canada. Instead, the official flew home to a hero’s welcome in Somalia.
The Trump administration’s greatest outrage, however, has been in its treatment of the Iranian national team. Visa restrictions of unprecedented onerousness were applied to the squad.
Visas were refused to 11 Iran Football Federation delegates, ranging from the federation’s president Mehdi Taj to staff administering the team’s day-to-day operations and security.
Furthermore – having been forced by US harassment to move their base from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico – the Iranian players were refused permission to stay overnight in the US after games.
Instead, the team was forced to travel back to Tijuana, with no opportunity for rest and recuperation, immediately after playing all three of their group matches (two in Los Angeles, one in Seattle).
Despite the obvious competitive disadvantages such restrictions were placing on the Iranian team, Infantino and Fifa did nothing.
As in the case of Artan, the Fifa president hid behind his supposed respect for the “due processes” being applied by the Trump administration.
Which begs the question, what if the 2026 World Cup had been held solely within the US, rather than being co-hosted with Mexico and Canada? Would Fifa have stood back and allowed Trump to simply kick Iran out of the tournament?
Anyone who still doubts that the US administration set out deliberately to hamper the Iranian team’s chances should read the comments of Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s head of homeland security.
Following Iran’s exit from the tournament – which was brought about by the controversial 3-3 draw between Algeria and Austria – Mullin said: “I’m just glad they’re done, and they’re not coming back.
“I was so happy when we were able to pull their visas and said they could leave the US soil, and I might’ve sung a song or two or maybe even danced a happy dance.”
Leaving aside accusations that the Algerian and Austrian teams colluded to draw their match (ensuring that they both progressed at Iran’s expense), there can be no question that the treatment of the Iranian squad by the US authorities (and Fifa’s abandonment of the Iranians) has been a modern sporting scandal.
It should go without saying that defending the right of the Iranian players to be treated fairly is in no way to defend the Tehran dictatorship. As I made clear in a recent column for this newspaper, I defer to no-one in my ardent desire to see the theocratic regime brought down by the Iranian people themselves.
However, the Iranian players – professional athletes, let’s remember – are no more responsible for the actions of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps than the players of the US national team are for the Trump administration’s domestic repression and international piracy and warmongering. The treatment of the Iran team brings shame on Fifa and the sport of football.
It is also another indicator of the racism and repression – not to mention the vulgar, flagrantly expressed prejudice – of what is, it is no exaggeration to say, a semi-fascist regime in Washington DC.
