How FIFA turned the World Cup into the biggest grift in sports

The FIFA World Cup is the world’s richest clown show. Recently run by people investigated for international criminal conspiracy, now run by people who ask to be treated like the Pope on a visit to Canada. Bought and paid for by dictators for decades, sustained by those who see its mandate over the world’s most popular sport as the ultimate source of power and sportswashing. Yet it has managed to be completely unfunny even in its incompetent, institutional idiocy, always dipping its disgusting toes into matters that defy even the realm of comedy. You find yourself laughing at it out of delirious shock, before realizing what horrific realities lie beneath the face paint and red noses.

I can’t really “criticize FIFA” as I would, say, the Las Vegas Raiders, because FIFA’s misdeeds exist on such a galactic scale that I can’t actually do them any justice. There are a billion reasons to boycott the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but I’m not asking you to do that. I am even tempted to say I won’t enjoy it, but I know I will.

The World Cup is entertainment genius; it’s the world’s prodding, calculating, beautiful game distilled into a single chaotic flow, national pride and eternal glory for the victors. It is the greatest spectacle on earth, the peak of every player’s career. And it is being stepped on like a cockroach. Yes, we will enjoy the World Cup, but we will enjoy it in spite of everything I am about to tell you. And it is within that dissonance, our enjoyment leeched upon by subsurface repulsion, that we find suffering instead of celebration.

It seemed impossible that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar could be topped in terms of pre-tournament issues — it spawned a standalone Wikipedia article titled: “List of 2022 FIFA World Cup Controversies.” But the 2026 World Cup in North America has not even begun, and yet it is a mortal lock to be categorically insane. Whereas the Qatar contest was the result of documented corruption, graft and secrecy, 2026 is the out-in-the-open sequel.

For instance, President Donald Trump, the winner of the spectacularly not-illustrious FIFA Peace Prize, will surely be the event’s main character given his cozy association with the much-maligned FIFA president Gianni Infantino and their perfectly matched egomania. And he will be the mascot of the event even despite the depravity of his immigration crackdown that will threaten the security and human rights of soccer fans who travel to the United States; Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have already issued a public warning. He will glow in the light of his Not-The-Nobel Peace Prize while prosecuting an aggressive war with Iran, who qualified for the World Cup, as Trump’s representatives attempt to replace them with Italy, who did not.

Infantino has repeatedly made a mockery of his position and authority, called a “nowhere man in this bonfire of greed, vanity and despotic power” (I can’t do any better than that) by The Guardian’s Barney Ronay in 2022. The FIFA President is seen by many observers as an over-promoted megalomaniac who has marshalled global soccer to serve himself above all others. And lately, FIFA’s utterly guaranteed profit-margin has come at the direct expense of its consumers.

FIFA has treated their ticket sales like we live in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max hellscape, and their tickets are gasoline; feel scammed? That’s just the way of the world. The Athletic’s Henry Bushnell has been relentlessly reporting on the changing seat maps and lack of transparency despite stratospheric price hikes, and it’s really something to behold. FIFA has treated their fans, and the greatest sporting event the world has to offer, like a cash cow they can repeatedly bludgeon with impunity.

And they can. What began as a regulatory body for European soccer between seven continental countries is now an essentially unaccountable superstructure of graft and corporate overreach. I often joke that while American sports can sometimes feel chaotic and corrupt, with monopolistic leagues organized financially like drug cartels, international soccer makes American leagues look like a kindergarten papier-mâché project.

2015 saw FIFA investigated for multinational racketeering; we’ve had broadcast rights bribery, investigations about how in the world Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup, lines of financial criminality that penetrate local administration, you name it. FIFA, which is supposed to be an administrative and regulatory body, has behaved like the dictator of international soccer and has placed itself above the game; they have become a distraction rather than a unifier. If there’s one silver lining, though, it’s that their culture of greed and corruption is hitting the United States at the perfect time, as it will have ample opportunity to mix and mingle with our own special brand of greed and corruption that is presently ascendant in American politics and business.

The World Cup should be the coolest thing ever when it comes around, and it’s still amazing every time. But why must it come with a persistent circus of financial crimes, authoritarian-curious actors with egos the size of Jupiter and human rights violations at every turn? It is the epitome of a sporting event being too big to fail, too popular to boycott and too powerful to fight.