We used to let FIFA pretend the World Cup belonged to them. I\u2019m not sure it ever really did \u2014 but there was a time when letting them hold the keys felt like a harmless technicality, a fine-print problem you could ignore because the thing itself was still so obviously, overwhelmingly good. That time has passed, and I think it\u2019s worth sitting with what that actually means before we talk about why we\u2019re all still watching anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
This isn\u2019t nostalgia doing the work. The critique isn\u2019t a trick of memory \u2014 the kind where you miss the past simply because your joints didn\u2019t ache and life felt simpler. It\u2019s an objective observation of a steep decline. The game is undeniably more corporate. The product is more sterile, the packaging entirely commercial, and the broadcasting format feels designed around shoehorning in more ad breaks than anything else. But the rot goes much deeper than aggressive marketing. It goes all the way down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The corruption didn\u2019t arrive suddenly. It accumulated \u2014 slowly at first, in ways that were easy to dismiss as the cost of doing business at a global scale. There were always rumors about vote-trading, always whispers about envelopes and favors. But the 2006 World Cup host selection was the moment the mask slipped<\/a>. Germany needed votes. South Africa was the frontrunner. And then, with remarkable convenience, Germany lifted an arms embargo to Saudi Arabia \u2014 tanks, quite literally, traded for World Cup votes. It was brazen enough to notice and quiet enough to survive. FIFA treated it as an administrative footnote, and the world mostly moved on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That became the blueprint. France and Qatar a decade later followed the same logic with even less pretense, a transaction reportedly brokered over a lunch in Paris between Nicolas Sarkozy, Qatari officials and Paris Saint-Germain\u2019s future owners<\/a> \u2014 the World Cup as a line item in a geopolitical deal. And then came the full reality of what that deal meant: an entire tournament ripped from its traditional summer rhythm and transplanted into winter so it could be played in air-conditioned stadiums that hadn\u2019t been built yet, constructed on the backs of migrant workers whose deaths FIFA systematically undercounted, in a country where being gay was a criminal offense, broadcast to the world as a celebration. FIFA called it a triumph of innovation. The rest of us were supposed to just go along with it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n By the time 2026 arrived in North America, the cynicism had simply migrated. The stadiums were real. The weather was fine. But the rot had followed, because it always does \u2014 it lives in the institution now, not the infrastructure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Consider Omar Abdulkadir Artan. He\u2019s the reigning CAF Referee of the Year \u2014 not a ceremonial title, not a participation award, but the recognition of the best referee on an entire continent. He earned the historic right to become the first Somali official to referee at a men\u2019s World Cup. Think about what that actually means \u2014 the decades of work, the accumulation of trust, the lifetime of sacrifice that goes into being handed that kind of distinction. All of it leading to a flight to Miami.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He never made it to a pitch<\/a>. Instead, he spent 11 hours in a fluorescent-lit room at Miami International Airport \u2014 interrogated about militant groups he had nothing to do with, his credentials apparently irrelevant, his achievement apparently insufficient \u2014 before being put on a return flight home over vague \u201cvetting concerns.\u201d His life\u2019s work, collapsed into a border agent\u2019s suspicion. The history he was supposed to make, unmade in a holding room.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And the cruelty doesn\u2019t stop at officials. It reaches into the stands. Imagine saving for four years, securing a ticket, obtaining a valid visa \u2014 doing everything right \u2014 and then watching a border guard look at your passport and decide your place of birth is disqualifying. It happened to Iranian fans whose ticket allocations were pulled days before the tournament<\/a>. It happened to Iraqi supporters whose approved visas were ignored at the gate<\/a>. These aren\u2019t bureaucratic abstractions. They\u2019re people who loved this sport enough to spend money they probably couldn\u2019t spare, navigating systems designed to wear them down, and being turned away anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n FIFA\u2019s response \u2014 Gianni Infantino\u2019s response<\/a> \u2014 was to tell critics to \u201cchill\u201d and \u201crelax.\u201d To avoid screaming and shouting. To remember that FIFA aren\u2019t the \u201ckings of the world\u201d who can override border decisions. It was the perfect distillation of everything the organization has become: deeply invested in extracting wealth from the tournament, utterly indifferent to the dignity of the people who make it worth watching. A shrug dressed up as humility.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n