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It was probably fitting that the first call from someone with genuine power should emanate from Germany, long one of soccer’s moral centers. “The time has definitely come,” German soccer federation vice-president Oke Göttlich told the Hamburger Morgenpost, “to seriously consider and discuss” a boycott of the 2026 World Cup.
“What were the justifications for the boycotts of the Olympic Games in the 1980s?” added Göttlich, who is also the president of FC St. Pauli, Hamburg’s earnestly countercultural club. “By my reckoning, the potential threat is greater now than it was then. We need to have this discussion.”
Meanwhile, Fifa’s disgraced former president Sepp Blatter, long the sport’s amoral center, now almost 90 years old and never one to pass up the opportunity to take a swing at his successor, further undermined this World Cup. On Monday, he endorsed comments by a former Fifa anti-corruption lawyer – breaks fourth wall to glance directly into the camera with a smirk – to “avoid the United States!”
The heads of about 20 European soccer federations discussed the possibility of a boycott. And between Donald Trump’s threats against Greenland, his administration’s actions in Venezuela, his various travel bans, and killings by federal agents during his immigration crackdown, clearly some kind of international rebuttal is called for. But whether soccer’s authorities are really in any position to do so is questionable. And the cost and ramifications of a potential boycott should be fully thought through.
For one thing, it’s worth considering who will actually be punished. It’s doubtful that Trump cares enough about the World Cup to save it from a would-be boycott by backing down on the policies mentioned above. If there were no longer a margin in it for him, he’d likely do much the same as he will with the upcoming Super Bowl: dismiss it, ignore it, and move on.
The Trump administration, then, probably wouldn’t be materially hurt by a World Cup boycott. It may be embarrassed, but then is that even something it is capable of or cares about? The oligarch class that keeps Trump in power wouldn’t really be damaged either, as they have no significant stake in the thing – Fifa gets the lion’s share of the proceeds.
Fifa would certainly be affected, but probably not as much as you’d expect. It will surely still make its broadcast income, and the sponsorship money, and it has already collected huge amounts of the ticket revenue it stands to make. It would be egg on the organization’s face, sure, but they also seem to have moved on from such quaint considerations some time ago.
In the end, the brunt would be borne by the boycotting teams and their fans, who don’t get to play in, or watch, a World Cup with their country in it. And, more directly, the many people who would work the tournament and benefit from the tourism it will generate. This may be a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things, but only if a boycott actually has any sort of effect.
Which, well, let’s return for a moment to Göttlich and his deep cut to the Olympic boycotts, when the US and much of the west snubbed the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The USSR and much of the Eastern Bloc then counter-boycotted LA in 1984. Neither boycott accomplished very much at all, other than political posturing. The Soviets would not withdraw from Afghanistan until 1989. Yet two Olympics were pretty much spoiled. Lots of athletes lost their chance to compete, while others had their accomplishments affixed with a massive asterisk.
To hold up the Olympic boycotts as some sort of paradigm for how withholding participation in a sporting event can be wielded as an effective political tool is ahistorical.
There have hardly been any boycotts in the context of the World Cup. Defending champions Uruguay refused to go to Italy for the 1934 World Cup because so few European countries had showed up when it hosted the inaugural edition four years earlier. In 1938, Uruguay and Argentina sat out after an incident involving Peru at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. African countries boycotted the 1966 World Cup in protest over their continent getting just one-third of a berth, to be shared with Asia and Oceania – successfully, as Africa got a full berth in 1970. And the USSR refused to play a qualifier against Chile for the 1974 World Cup after the overthrow of socialist president Salvador Allende.
For some reason, the community that orbits the global game feels a ceaseless compunction for football to affect the wider world in a positive way. It’s a noble notion, a kind of immutable idealism that runs deep through a fundamentally cynical sport. The trouble is that in this case, there really isn’t much a hand to be played. An administration unconstrained by convention, aspirations of global leadership, or diplomatic politesse probably won’t be bothered about a bunch of countries staying away from a World Cup.
All the better to show up and lodge your protest in person. Nobody will hear you if you’re not there to speak up.
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Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on 12 May. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University.
