Before the first ball was kicked at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, FIFA compelled Haiti, making its first appearance in the tournament, to alter its World Cup kit because it featured an illustration of the 1803 Battle of Vertières. The reason, FIFA argued, is that the war scene violated its regulations prohibiting political, religious or personal messages or slogans. Yet what FIFA, or the rule, ignored is that the World Cup is the ultimate theatre for nationalism, geopolitics and even religious expressions. If anything, this World Cup demonstrated that perhaps more than previous ones.
FIFA’s attempt to sanitise football from politics rests on a contradiction. The World Cup is not merely a football tournament. It is a gathering of nations. It begins with flags, anthems and national symbols. It stirs patriotism unlike almost any other global event. Politics is not an intrusion into the World Cup. It is woven into its fabric.
History proves as much. FIFA has frequently ignored human rights concerns and lent itself to sportswashing, the practice where dictators and tyrants use FIFA-organised events (or other sporting events) to launder their image. It awarded the hosting rights to Italy in 1934 because the country’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, wanted to whitewash his despotic regime. They had no problem with the 1978 World Cup being used by the Argentine junta to launder its image. This is an organisation that awarded the FIFA Under-20 World Cup to Nigeria under Abacha, first in 1995, before withdrawing the rights at the last minute over health concerns, and again in 1999. It was glaring that Abacha wanted to use that event to sportswash his regime. Sadly, he died suddenly months before the 1999 event and never got to achieve his goals. He did leave Nigeria with some decent usable stadiums that quickly fell into ruin. Even the 2022 Qatar World Cup was awarded against the backdrop of corruption allegations and human rights concerns in the Middle Eastern country.
It is therefore remarkable that the 2026 World Cup is being talked about in the same breath as the one in Qatar four years ago, and the previous one in Russia in 2018, with human rights concerns, corruption allegations and serious questions about the geopolitics of the host country. This one was dogged by questions of whether Iran, which legitimately qualified for the tournament, would be allowed to enter the United States. While Trump bullied the Iranian national team, denied some of their officials visas, FIFA stood aside and watched, offering paperweight platitudes with no consequence. In the end, Iran was allowed to play, but they were tossed about so much it was clear that the United States was using a FIFA event to torment a team FIFA itself had invited to participate in a tournament for which it had legitimately qualified.
The irony, then, is that FIFA chooses to police symbolism when it is politically inconvenient while ignoring politics when it serves commercial or institutional interests.
The final between the brilliant Spain and the outclassed Argentina was a ballet played out to the musical score of global geopolitics, much of it external to the players taking to the pitch. The Israel-Palestine war took centre stage, with Israel’s propaganda openly declaring for Argentina because the Spanish government and many Spaniards have been outspoken about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Images of Spanish star Lamine Yamal hoisting the Palestinian flag during Barcelona’s title celebration in May, and of Lionel Messi visiting Jerusalem’s Western Wall in 2013 or being pictured with Benjamin Netanyahu, became central to the conversation.
However, the narrative ignored Messi’s photographs with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas from the same visit, ‘The Peace Tour’ organised by FC Barcelona, featuring Messi and the club’s other players. It ignored that he held a football clinic for Palestinian and Israeli children to promote peaceful coexistence. It ignored that Messi and the Argentine national team cancelled a friendly with Israel in 2018 for political and safety reasons.
Ignoring obvious facts is not new to the World Cup. While in this case it has largely come from fans, or if one is to believe the allegations, from an orchestrated disinformation campaign against Argentina, FIFA itself has long entrenched a culture of ignoring inconvenient facts for mercantile reasons. In December 2025, FIFA decided to ignore the war rhetoric coming from the United States, and the country’s role in the genocide in Gaza, to award a completely made-up ‘FIFA Peace Prize’ to President Donald Trump, who exactly a month later would attack another FIFA member country, Venezuela, and kidnap its president.
There was politics in the treatment of Iran, which FIFA condoned. Which makes it ironic that it decided to ban Haiti’s kit or threatened to sanction Argentina for holding up a banner claiming the Falkland Islands, which it has long contested with England, after defeating the Three Lions in the semi-final. Clashes such as England versus Argentina and the United States versus Iran will always carry politics, not as an undertone, but as the very stage upon which such games are played.
Football may be the beautiful game, but it has always been tied to ugly politics. So, while FIFA claims to sanitise the game from politics, it continues to embed politics in some of the controversial decisions it makes. When Russia invaded Ukraine, football leagues across Europe made political statements. They banned Russian teams, displayed Ukrainian flags and illuminated stadiums in blue and yellow. When the conflict in Gaza began, that solidarity and overt display became noticeably muted.
Which raises uncomfortable questions. If Lamine Yamal had, in that moment of youthful defiance and celebratory euphoria, raised a Ukrainian flag instead of a Palestinian one, would the world have batted an eye? Would the English national team, which lit Wembley Stadium in Ukraine’s colours, have been outraged that Argentina raised a banner about a matter with profound historical significance for its own country?
The decision by many Africans not to support South Africa, and even to celebrate its elimination, is rooted in the politics of migration and xenophobia playing out in that country. This politics of identity is woven so deeply into the fabric of football and the fan experience that it cannot be separated from it and the banter that drives the sport-Argentina has too many white players, France has too many blacks.
FIFA’s feeble attempts to divorce politics from football will always fail because FIFA itself is political. It acts on certain political provocations, endorses others and quietly ignores others, largely because of the inconvenience of those views or its own mercantile considerations. After all, FIFA is perhaps the world’s most powerful government that nobody voted for.
Politics is inherent in human nature. FIFA can ban Haiti’s jersey, prohibit an armband or threaten sanctions over a banner. What it cannot do is remove the politics that gives international football its emotional force. The World Cup is not football interrupted by politics. It is football played on the grand stage of politics itself.