‘The World Cup of Chaos’ Has Arrived

In the digital era, a global sporting event’s main export is its headlines, which is why it’s been a rough week for anyone trying to frame the World Cup as unifying, no matter how many kind old folks in Lawrence, Kansas, welcomed the Algerian national team outside the town’s Double Tree Hotel, where the Algerians will stay for the tournament, free warm cookies included.

This World Cup is also the World Cup of Mad Libs for Extremely American Sentences, 2026 Edition. Some other recent entries:

A decorated Somali ref named Omar Artan was denied entry into the country at Miami International Airport on Monday and will no longer work the tournament.

The Iranian Football Federation told reporters Tuesday that its ticket allocation had been revoked, making it so the federation couldn’t distribute tickets to Iranian supporters.

Fans from a handful of countries have had their travel halted by visa issues, while teams from Senegal and Uzbekistan, among others, have faced intense security after arriving in the U.S., leaving enduring images of U.S. officials patting down global soccer stars on the tarmac.

Welcome, world. We sure hope you enjoy yourselves.

“It’s very much looking like this is going to be the World Cup of Chaos,” said Jules Boykoff, a Pacific University political science professor who just published “Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine.”

“And it already was, for me, a massive paradox,” Boykoff said. “On one hand, including more countries in the tournament than ever before, but on the other hand the exclusionary politics of the Trump administration were always looming above. And now we’re seeing that it wasn’t just people being alarmist.”

To that end, it’s no surprise policies implemented by Trump, whose hard-line immigration stance helped him win the 2024 election, have created logistical issues for one of the world’s biggest sporting events. FIFA President Gianni Infantino just chose to publicly dodge that possibility last August.

While Infantino was in Kenya for the Africa Nations Championship, a reporter pushed him on Trump’s sweeping travel restrictions for countries that would participate in the World Cup. But Infantino, ever the smiling salesman, said all would be fine. He then went a step further, assuring that “Everyone will be welcome in Canada, Mexico and the United States.”

But after the U.S. denied entry to Artan, the Somali ref, on Monday? FIFA issued a statement saying it is “not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications.” Infantino, who awarded Trump the FIFA Peace Prize in December, did not put his name on it. And then, at a rare news conference Wednesday in Mexico City, he said: “It’s unfortunate what happened to Omar. But again, we don’t control everything. We try, we discuss, we see. Maybe it’s good to just chill, relax.”

Somalia was one of 12 countries most directly targeted by Trump’s travel bans last June. U.S. officials have since said Artan, who had been issued a visa earlier this month, was turned away due to “vetting concerns.” Artan was supposed to be the first Somali ref to officiate World Cup matches.

“Being from Mexico, I am keeping an eye on the news in Mexico and the U.S. heading into the tournament,” said Sarai Portillo, organizing director for Florida Rising, a grassroots political organization that co-signed a travel advisory for international soccer fans this spring. “In Mexico, it’s all: Who is going to the match? Who’s excited? Where are we gathering to watch? And in the U.S. it’s much more: We’re going to be sending ICE to make sure there are no undocumented people attending these games. It’s a total one-eighty.”

Jonathan Grode, a sports immigration lawyer in Philadelphia, said that, in his experience, the Trump administration was thorough in the leadup, expediting visa appointments for certain groups, training various agencies to make sure the host committees have the proper support. But the reality, Grode said, is a dissonance between committing to sports diplomacy, to using sports to project a gleaming, NFL-stadium-sized image of America, and not realizing how few people feel comfortable traveling here to experience it.

In Kansas City, according to the city’s newspaper, FIFA canceled 75 percent of the hotel rooms it initially booked for the tournament. Unsold tickets are also flying onto the resale market at marked-down prices. (Though the lowest to catch the tournament opener, between Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City on Thursday, was still $2,705 on StubHub about 24 hours out.)

“I’ve been doing this a long time, and these guys” — meaning the Trump administration — “are really dedicated to this,” Grode said. “The problem is they don’t understand the dramatic chilling effect their policies have put on overall interest in coming to the U.S. They just don’t appreciate how dramatically unappealing it is to come to this country right now, which I think could take a huge opportunity and make it massively disappointing when we look back.”

Boykoff, the professor and author, is a former high-level soccer player, having once played on the U.S.’s under-23 national team. He adores the sport. He plans to inhale the World Cup. He’s just pained, as he put it, by “what Donald Trump and the FIFA greed machine are doing to the people’s game.”

But from studying a number of global sporting events, Boykoff believes fans could adopt a selective memory once the action begins. That would be history’s bet. We are, by that logic, just one brain-bending Lamine Yamal goal from forgetting about the issues that feel, at least at this moment, like they could stain this World Cup forever. Or what if the U.S. team, gifted a favorable group, makes an actual run in the knockout stage?

“That’s the typical pattern: In the lead-up to the event, everyone is jumping up and down, and correctly so, for the hypocrisies and injustices,” Boykoff said. “But when it actually starts, attention tends to swerve toward the magnificence on the football pitch. I’m just not so sure that pattern is going to happen in this case.”