Alexandros Schulman

At the time of writing, it is just hours before the opening ceremony in Mexico City is due to commence. The flags are hung, the broadcast crews are in position, and we are about to go live. That moment should be one of celebration, but for any keen observer of the game, it arrives under a shadow. If FIFA persists on its current path, the “Beautiful Game” will remain beautiful only as spectacle, but spectacles require an audience.

In many ways, the World Cup has always been quite contradictory. Born with the same internationalist zeal and passion that animated the early labour movement and a recognition that the working classes share more across borders than they do with the ruling classes in their own countries, it was however captured almost from the start by commercial and state interests. In that aspect, what we are watching unfold is not a new betrayal, just as the Trump regime’s imperialism and right-wing zealotry is nothing new, but both are the same old thing, The same Empire and its institutions, just  more nakedly visible, and they are happening right now, right as the Empire threatens Iran with more bombing and as the world turns its eyes to North America. 

The scandals surrounding this World Cup are too numerous to testify to in this article, but let’s start with Omar Abdulkadir Artan. A Somali referee, with valid visa, full FIFA accreditation, a formal invitation to officiate at the tournament, and yet turned away at Miami airport. Infantino’s response deserves to be read carefully, because it tells you everything: immigration decisions, the organisation explained, belong to the United States government, and FIFA cannot interfere. Let that land for a moment. 

An organisation that imposes financial fair play regulations on sovereign governments, that negotiates tax exemptions from host nations as a condition of staging matches, that dictates stadium specifications down to the dimensions of hospitality suites and yet this organisation apparently has very little to say when a qualified African official is denied entry despite satisfying every formal requirement placed on him. The limits of FIFA’s authority are firmly exposed with remarkable precision, exactly where American state power begins. And it is happening hours before the opening whistle. 

This is not incompetence. It is just the way things are, it is the same order we have already seen FIFA defend through its selective moral posturing and its willing enlistment in the machinery of American imperialism, whether it be banning Russia’s participation in sports due to its military campaigns or this latest immigration fiasco.

 The immigration system of the United States is not broken. It is functioning as designed, commodifying human beings by their utility to capital and their threat to order. Artan’s exclusion is not an anomaly. Moroccan supporters are reporting mass visa refusals, up to 80%. Haitian fans are effectively barred from travelling. Iranian fans are barred from entering stadiums; indeed, the Iranian football team has been reportedly required to enter and leave within the same day. These are not administrative failures. This is the border regime and ICE doing its job, even as the opening ceremony’s final rehearsals are underway. 

The comparison with Qatar is instructive, and it clearly makes liberal commentators deeply uncomfortable. The Western media’s four-year moral crusade against Qatar also served another function: it allowed institutions like FIFA, the Premier League, and their sponsors to pose as the conscience of the game while doing nothing structurally about anything. This is the same old time-honoured hypocrisy of moral posturing for those outside the imperial core and absolute impunity for those within it. And yet Qatar, for all its said faults, did not filter the world through a geopolitical lens before letting it attend a football tournament. When the matches began, people came from Africa, from Asia, from Latin America, from the Middle East. Supporters walked between venues. They occupied public space. Infantino himself, in 2018, made the argument plainly: without the supporters of every participating nation, it cannot be called a World Cup. 

The comparison with Russia 2018 is equally revealing. The Russian authorities, whatever their broader record, introduced the FAN ID system, a free, personalised spectator card that granted visa-free entry to all foreign fans from the 32 participating nations, alongside free inter-city train travel and free public transport on matchdays. It was an explicit commitment to making the tournament genuinely accessible. The contrast with the United States in 2026 could hardly be starker: where Russia opened its borders, the United States has weaponised them. Where Russia offered free transport to fans, the United States charges £110 for a return journey to MetLife Stadium. The FAN ID was a tool of inclusion; the FIFA PASS is little more than a priority scheduling system for a visa interview that still offers no guarantee of entry. The message is unmistakable: some hosts treat the World Cup as a celebration of global community; others treat it as a security operation with football as its entertainment wing. 

Infantino notably has been backtracking from his earlier principles, which as it turns out, were always conditional. Just as FIFA’s “inclusivity” has always been bourgeois fiction, applied selectively to discipline adversaries only. And those conditions are being enforced as the final countdown to the opening ceremony ticks towards kick off.

Inside stadiums across the US, class politics are equally undisguised. Blanket prohibitions on swearing, restrictions on pedestrian access; transport costs to MetLife Stadium reportedly running at around £110 for the return journey. Football crowds have always been loud, and at times profane, and physically present in a way that American corporate sport finds inconvenient. 

The latest edition of this World Cup, which, in a matter of hours, will be declared officially open in Mexico City is exposing the contradictions on a grand scale. Football is not going to be saved from within FIFA. It is not going to be saved by “better corporate governance” or more enlightened tournament hosts. The game belongs to the people who play it in parks and streets, who travel across continents to watch it, who organised the first supporter groups and built the first independent clubs. The 2026 World Cup should be treated as a warning, and as a reminder that a genuine alternative is possible only when the game is wrested from the control of transnational capital, corrupt bureaucrats, and the imperial powers for which they serve as stewards. The ceremony is about to begin. Let us watch closely.