Why other countries should boycott the World Cup
)
- Share via
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred
Alex Pretti, Renee Nicole Good, Keith Porter Jr., Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Heber Sanchez Dominguez, Parady La, Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz and Víctor Manuel Díaz.
These are the names of the nine people who have been killed by federal agents or died while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the last month. Some were fatally shot before our eyes, and others’ deaths have been obfuscated behind closed doors.
After another week of federal immigration agents running amok across the country and the current administration’s constant global interventionism, it’s time for nations across the globe to hurt the U.S. in the only place the country actually cares about: its pockets.
To show that ICE’s ongoing activity is truly beyond the pale, international soccer organizations should refuse to send their delegations to the U.S. for this summer’s World Cup.
According to an analysis by FIFA, the sports organizing body that puts on the World Cup, the country is expected to see an economic bump of over $30 billion from hosting 78 matches across 11 cities during the tournament. Compromising that bottom line would send a powerful message.
And, yes, sports have been and always will be political, so let’s get that out of the way.
President Trump has said he hopes the occasion will be used to showcase the “beauty and greatness of America” and expressed eagerness to welcome fans “from all over the globe.”
The “beauty” of an ICE raid, the “greatness” of killing citizens and the welcoming energy of ICE presence at major sporting events, like the upcoming Super Bowl in Santa Clara, Calif.
Consider subscribing to the Los Angeles Times
Your support helps us deliver the news that matters most. Become a subscriber.
Boycotting the World Cup is not just some cockamamie idea I’m making up; there is some buzz around this internationally.
Even before federal agents killed Pretti over the weekend in Minneapolis, German soccer federation official Oke Göttlich called for a World Cup boycott last week in an interview with the German newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost.
Göttlich said it was time to “seriously consider and discuss” this action as a possibility and evoked the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow during the Cold War.
“By my reckoning, the potential threat is greater now than it was then,” Göttlich said. “We need to have this discussion.”
My colleague Kevin Baxter also spoke with Andrew Bertoli, an assistant professor at IE University in Segovia, Spain, and an expert on the social and political effects of sports, to gauge the temperature overseas.
Although Bertoli ultimately thinks a boycott won’t and shouldn’t happen, he did note that many Europeans are upset by the events taking place here.
“When people see what’s happening in the United States right now, a lot of them are shocked,” Bertoli told Baxter. “They didn’t think something like that could happen in the United States.”
Adding to the choir of voices was Mr. Corruption himself, ex-FIFA President Sepp Blatter. The disgraced former soccer official called for a boycott in an X post on Monday.
A recent poll by the German tabloid Bild found that 47% of the German public would approve of a boycott if Trump’s administration managed to annex Greenland. In the Netherlands, a petition has gained over 156,000 signatures from people calling on their national team to sideline itself at the World Cup.
“We do not want our players, through their actions at the tournament, to implicitly support President Donald Trump’s violent terrorist policies against innocent migrants (whether or not holding a US passport),” the petition reads.
French lawmaker Eric Coquerel said that France should consider the possibility of a World Cup boycott. “Can we really imagine going to play the footie World Cup in a country that attacks its ‘neighbors,’ threatens to invade Greenland, undermines international law, wants to torpedo the UN?” he recently asked.
This wouldn’t be the first time international bodies banded together to stand up against a country perpetrating unforgivable crimes.
Beginning in the 1960s and running through the ‘90s, South Africa was excluded from a majority of international sporting events because of the country’s racist apartheid policies. Under apartheid, it was forbidden for Black and white athletes to be on the same team. Additionally, open trials and competition were prohibited.
“Who could doubt that sport is a crucial window for the propagation of fair play and justice?” former South Africa President Nelson Mandela said in a 1997 speech at the International Fair Play Awards. “After all, fair play is a value that is essential to sport.”
Quite controversially, former President Carter decided that the U.S. would boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, which launched in December 1979. Carter went so far as to enlist the help of Muhammad Ali to convince other nations to join its protest. Overall, 65 countries participated in the boycott for those Games, including Canada, China, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.
Conversely, several countries boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games because of security concerns and alleged anti-Soviet sentiment, according to Soviet officials. In total, 15 countries joined the USSR in protest, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, North Korea and Vietnam.
It is widely considered that both the 1980 and 1984 Olympics were a diluted product due to the blaring omission of some of the world’s top athletes at the peak of their careers.
If a boycott for the 2026 World Cup seems too radical, what if international soccer federations pushed for all the matches scheduled in the U.S. just be relocated to Canada and Mexico — the co-hosts of the upcoming tournament?
The infrastructure is there and it wouldn’t be the first time that a World Cup was repositioned at the eleventh hour.
The 1986 World Cup in Mexico was supposed to be hosted by Colombia. Originally set to be a tournament among 16 nations, it was announced in 1978 that the 1982 tournament and subsequent iterations would expand to 24 teams. Due to that change in parameters, Colombian President Belisario Betancur decided in late 1982 that his country could not afford to house that many teams and would be forfeiting its claims as hosts of the 1986 World Cup.
Within six months, FIFA was able to quickly yet controversially reconfigure its plans and selected Mexico as the host, making the country the first to host two World Cups.
Realistically, is this boycott or relocation plan likely to actually take place? Probably not, given the last two World Cup hosts — Russia and Qatar — were also mired in controversy for political and human rights issues.
Functioning in the face of oppressive regimes is not a new phenomenon for FIFA. The organization made the decision to hold the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, even though the country had fallen into the hands of a military dictatorship through a violent coup d’etat two years before the tournament. The repressive government carried out a “Dirty War” in which military forces killed and disappeared thousands of citizens who opposed the ruling party.
The tournament went as planned and offered a certain sense of legitimacy to the dictatorship, though Sweden and the Netherlands toyed with the idea of protesting their matches. Additionally, international journalists did make a point of continuing to remark on Argentina’s concentration camps and other inhumane actions throughout the duration of that World Cup.
Even if the boycott doesn’t happen (and it probably won’t), it seems undeniable that the fan experience will be severely diminished.
The national fan bases of four squads — Haiti, Iran, Senegal and Ivory Coast — have heavy restrictions on their ability to enter the U.S.
Latinx people and immigrants have been the lifeblood of the soccer fan base within the U.S. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to believe that ICE agents will be ever present at World Cup matches within (and maybe outside) the U.S. Because of that, fans will have to live in fear of harassment, abduction or worse when going out to watch a match.
The World Cup has historically been an occasion for Latinx people to have pride in their homelands and heritage. The current administration has now turned it into a grotesque display of fearmongering and sports-washing.
Good Immigrant, Bad Immigrant: Going back to your birth country after obtaining a green card, part two
A formerly undocumented artist returns to Mexico for the first time in decades. You can read part one here.
Julio Salgado is a visual artist based in Long Beach. His work has been displayed at the Oakland Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum. (@juliosalgado83)
Stories we read this week that we think you should read
Unless otherwise noted, stories below were published by the Los Angeles Times.
Politics and Immigration
- Anti-ICE ‘National Shutdown’ protests planned in L.A. County. Here’s where to find them
- Immigration raids pick up in L.A. as federal tactics shift. Arrests happen in ‘as fast as 30 seconds’
- A measured stance on ICE pits Newsom against the party base
- ICE finds targeting violent criminals increasingly fraught in backlash over indiscriminate sweeps
Arts, culture and entertainment
- Grammy nominee Edgar Barrera wants songwriters to get their due
- Sundance 2026: Nezza expands on her activism in ‘La Tierra del Valor’
- Odessa A’zion drops out of Latina ‘Deep Cuts’ role following backlash
- ‘Clika’ was poorly reviewed. Producer Jimmy Humilde did not take it well
- Rafael Pineda, longtime Univision Nueva York anchor, dies at 88
- Bruce Springsteen’s anti-ICE protest song decries Minneapolis killings and ‘King Trump’
Latin America
- Mexico reassesses Malinche: From traitor to heroine
- Firmness, flattery and phone calls: How Mexico’s president won over Trump
- Rubio details how the Trump administration will control Venezuela’s oil money [Associated Press]
- The top candidates in Costa Rica’s presidential election: a tough-on-crime front runner and splintered opposition [Reuters]
- Trump-backed businessman Nasry Asfura sworn in as president of Honduras [Associated Press]
Sports
- LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes named Mexico’s hospitality house for 2026 World Cup
- German soccer leader adds to calls for boycott of World Cup matches in United States
Insights
L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles.
Viewpoint
Perspectives
The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.
Ideas expressed in the piece
International soccer federations should boycott the 2026 World Cup to protest the deaths of individuals at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and the current administration’s immigration policies and global interventionism. The author specifically references nine people killed by federal agents or while in ICE custody over the prior month as justification for this action.
A World Cup boycott would effectively pressure the United States by targeting its economic interests, with FIFA analysis projecting over $30 billion in economic benefits from hosting 78 matches across 11 cities. The author argues this economic leverage represents the only meaningful way to hold the country accountable for what the author characterizes as federal overreach.
There is already measurable international momentum supporting a boycott or alternative approaches. A German soccer federation official called for serious consideration of a boycott, comparing the current geopolitical situation to the 1980 Olympic boycott and suggesting “the potential threat is greater now than it was then.”[1] A Dutch petition garnered over 156,000 signatures opposing participation, and French lawmakers have raised the possibility of French participation being reconsidered.[3]
Historical precedent demonstrates that international sporting bodies have successfully coordinated boycotts against nations engaged in egregious human rights violations, most notably the decades-long exclusion of South Africa from international sporting events due to apartheid policies. The author suggests the current situation warrants similar action.
If a complete boycott seems unlikely, an alternative exists: relocating all United States-hosted matches to Canada and Mexico, the co-hosting nations. This approach has historical precedent, as FIFA successfully relocated the 1986 World Cup from Colombia to Mexico within six months when circumstances changed.
The fan experience will be severely compromised by visa restrictions affecting nationals from Haiti, Iran, Senegal, and Ivory Coast, combined with anticipated heightened ICE presence at matches and surrounding areas. This creates an environment where immigrant and Latinx fans will experience fear rather than celebration.
Different views on the topic
A complete World Cup boycott is extraordinarily unlikely to occur despite current controversies, as demonstrated by recent sporting history. Analysis from major media outlets notes that “the vast love of the sport shared by many tends to win out over any moral hesitation,” particularly given the magnitude and prestige of the international tournament.[3]
FIFA has a long track record of proceeding with World Cups in host countries mired in significant political and human rights controversies. The organization previously held tournaments in Russia and Qatar despite documented concerns, and hosted the 1978 World Cup in Argentina during a military dictatorship’s “Dirty War.”[3] This pattern suggests FIFA prioritizes tournament completion over political objections.
Any decision regarding Iran’s participation or nation exclusions would involve complex political and economic costs that extend far beyond football considerations. According to an expert who advises on international sports governance, “stripping a host nation’s rights goes beyond a footballing decision and would have a huge economic and political impact on [the] US government’s relationship with FIFA.”[1] Such decisions ultimately rest with FIFA, not individual governments or political figures.
Transparency and legal frameworks, rather than boycotts, represent the appropriate remedy for concerns. Legal experts emphasize that clear visa pathways, realistic ticketing disclosures, and visible security planning constitute effective liability management.[2] The focus should be on ensuring contractual commitments regarding fan access and entry are fulfilled rather than abandoning participation.
