Shortly before 6pm local time on Friday night at the Los Angeles Stadium, the actor who plays Ted Lasso – the fictional manager of a fake team in a falsely heartwarming version of football – will tell hundreds of millions of TV viewers tuning in to watch the start of the American leg of the Fifa World Cup that football unites the world.
In an interesting twist, the actor Jason Sudeikis will do this at a time when the World Cup host is simultaneously bombing the second-ranked country in Group G, having recently murdered its head of state. The message of unity is one likely to be heard by the US president, Donald Trump, who has initiated six military conflicts in his second term, and whose brutally divisive immigration policies have now led to the barring of Omar Artan, the reigning African referee of the year.
Perhaps the heartwarming message of hope will resonate better with Gianni Infantino, who also likes to say that football unites the world although he pronounces it “Pediludus Coniungit Mundum”, the absurdly Latinised motto on his beloved Club World Cup trophy.
In this case, however, it seems likely Infantino will be present less as benevolent football Jesus, and more in full Trump-bloodrush mode, a man who lights up like an Elven sword at the approach of a handsome dictator. And who really doesn’t seem to care very much about the exclusion of a Somali referee, or indeed anyone from the 39 football family members currently restricted from entering the US.
Never mind. Just do the line, Jason. This is LA. If you really believe it, then everyone else will too. Now give me heartwarming dammit. In the middle of which the joke is, as ever, on us. Here we go again, still drooling at the spectacle as the clock ticks closer to midnight, dazzled by intrigue and drama, out there worrying about Djed Spence’s defensive capacities while the world burns.
As the World Cup enters its bloated early rounds, a time of flag-waving, and ceremonial pronouncements, it is probably time to talk about American sportswashing; about American imperialism in the age of Trump, and about football’s willingness to run alongside this model barking like a lost and hungry dog.
There has been a great deal of hyperbole around this tournament. But it is now an undeniably groundbreaking event. Most obviously that opener in Los Angeles will mark the first time the World Cup has been hosted by a country that is simultaneously engaged in starting both a global war and a global economic crisis. And somehow, it has to be said, avoiding any real scrutiny over either.
Qatar was at least utterly blatant in its horrors. Yes, we will stage a World Cup built on the bones of indentured labour. We can argue over semantics. But it’s going to happen. Football entered that dark space. Infantino could style himself as clearing up the mess of others, as a kind of progressive internationalist, a big-picture guy who just really gets the struggles of hardline super-rich inherited monarchies.
Before that Russia was a bit of an ambush for most people. Vladimir Putin was out there ahead of the tide. We bought it, swallowed it, puzzled at it. Russia even went through the motions of waiting a few years before the full-blown invasion of Ukraine. Whereas right now you can click the TV control from your enormous padded armchair drenched in Doritos dust and the US will be doing this all live and in real time on the next channel along.
There is a sense of sadness here, of opportunities missed. America is the most powerful economic and cultural force on Earth, self-appointed global prefect and all-round democracy monitor. This is a place where liberty is cherished, where people throw around the word “freedom” like it’s a threat, an insult, a blood-stained battle-axe. And yet the US is also the only World Cup host to ban Fifa members from attending. So far the landscape it has dished up is barren and divisive, a depressingly angry version of football uniting the world.
It didn’t have to be like this. Football is already beloved in many of America’s immigrant communities. Two straight summers of Fifa jamboree could have been a force for cohesion, unity and overlap. Instead Trump has spent his second term persecuting elements of his own population, letting loose a border force militia, creating the familiar boilerplate toxic narrative around race and immigration.
This is why it is incorrect to see the exclusion of a Somali referee as rules being drily enforced, or even as an oversight or an embarrassment. This was supposed to happen. It’s a deliberate piece of messaging, Trump speaking to his base. This is what American isolationism looks like from the inside, a way of convincing your domestic audience that everyone else is the enemy, that border traffic really is the biggest problem facing the world’s richest and most successful immigrant country.
From the outside that isolationism looks like unilateral military action, missiles in the strait, and the most obvious macro-reason why America is not a fit or desirable World Cup host right now. It is hard to overstate the pure cinematic strangeness of Iran’s presence in Los Angeles, where the team will open its campaign two days after Trump, the USMNT and the Jason Sudeikis message of hope.
Let us be clear. The issue with Iran is not just that its team is being forced to travel in and out of the country, or that some of its officials don’t have visas. This issue with Iran is the US and Israeli bombing campaign that has led to the plugging of the global oil spigot, and which is also an act of violence towards every other county on Earth.
So far potentially ruinous fuel shortages have been avoided. But there is plenty of analysis to suggest the world that football is currently uniting might also be heading for a state of profound economic crisis. Jet fuel and diesel, which nobody ever thought to stockpile in Europe, could be about to go through the roof. Pacific nations are talking about rationing and working from home. Never mind killing your holiday flights. Trump may be about to kill your ability to buy enough potatoes.
Why does the US get to act like this without pressure or censure? Is it simply kowtowing to the world’s most capricious and powerful ally? Is there still some inherited sense that America doing things in the Gulf must be good for all of us, dormant Tony Blair derangement syndrome?
In reality American isolationism under Trump is not simply punching the world for the sake of it, or madness or stupidity. It’s an economic strategy, a way of generating wealth by disrupting everyone else. America won’t suffer as a result of bombing Iran. It’s a net energy exporter, insulated by its fracking industry while the rest of the world picks up the tab. And yet instead of outrage or demands for reparations, the world is staging a party in Trump’s back garden, overseen by the self-styled king of football, throat flushed, eyes boggled with doe-eyed dictator-love.
There is a suggestion that the sheer scale of Fifa’s complicity might finally leave Infantino exposed, vulnerable to the challenge of his members at next year’s presidential hustings. This World Cup is his life’s work, his masterpiece, but possibly also a moment of overreach. Infantino has absorbed Fifa into his bones, become its one man brand, its official Instagram mouthpiece, the sun king who believes he has a divine calling to be in these rooms doing these things. Now I am become football, destroyer of worlds.
He has also stretched Fifa’s own statutes by aligning the global game with a single divisive political movement, has run this World Cup without a local organising committee, overseeing it rainmaker-style alongside the Maga politician and renowned American patriot Andrew Giuliani. Football survived Qatar and Russia. It will survive this too, but in what form, with what degree of love and trust and connection? How thin can you stretch this thing, how far can you push the window of tolerance? We may be about to find out.
