Between political interference, consular arbitration, and FIFA’s takeover, the World Cup revealed the face of unashamed American imperialism, even though it was supposed to celebrate the great festival of football. Washington now embodies the banality of football’s evil.
FIFA Under Tutelage
FIFA’s autonomy regulations explicitly prohibited any political interference. Trump trampled them from the very start of the preparations. African referees and players were denied visas under flimsy security pretexts, and delegations were targeted and humiliated: Washington transformed the right of entry into the country into a weapon of ideological coercion. The Iranian national team, subjected to abusive restrictions and constant administrative harassment, suffered the direct dictates of the White House.
As the media outlet TRT Afrika points out in its report on the impact of the travel ban on the continent’s national teams, “The joint organization has become a political dilemma where continental representation risks being purely symbolic in the face of the systematic exclusion of fans and families.” Along the same lines, columnists in the pan-African press denounce what they call “barely disguised sporting apartheid,” analyzing the consular system as an ethnic and social selection process “bearing the hallmarks of a particularly unwelcome racism.”
Across the continent, the mainstream press rose up to condemn, with one voice, the arrogance of the American administration. From Dakar to Lagos, via Abidjan and Paris, major news outlets denounced a veritable hijacking of the legacy: while Jeune Afrique lamented that “the White House has confiscated the competition to make it the stage for a humiliating unilateralism against the nations of the South,” Le Quotidien de Dakar condemned a tournament distorted by asserting that “this World Cup is no longer a celebration of football but a distorted mirror of an American autocracy without faith or law.” This media shockwave continued with force in the columns of The Guardian Nigeria, which accused Washington of having “transformed the greatest spectacle on the planet into a chauvinistic and freedom-crushing circus,” while Fraternité Matin concluded with bitter lucidity that “by imposing his laws in contempt of the statutes of world football, Trump has trampled the spirit of sporting universality”.
In his poignant column published on July 24 in the Ugandan newspaper New Vision, under the evocative title “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” Kalungi Kabuye exposes this brutal ideological manipulation. Drawing inspiration from the lyrical drama of Evita, the journalist offers an incisive reflection on the collapse of major sporting institutions, the vulnerability of historical nations to setbacks, and the lessons learned from fallen grandeur. Behind the Albiceleste’s defeats on the field, Kabuye deciphers the shameless politicization of a tournament hijacked by the American president, who arrogates to himself the discretionary right to bend FIFA rules to his own hubris. Faced with this geopolitical chaos, Africa heeds the lesson of resilience conveyed by Kabuye: true dignity lies in rising with pride after every collapse caused by institutional injustice.
The totalitarian mirror of Berlin 1936 to Washington 2026
History offers striking parallels. The analogies drawn by international critics between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler are no longer mere rhetorical provocation, but rather the product of rigorous structural analysis. Like the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the 2026 World Cup has been hijacked to serve as an ideological showcase for a doctrine of exclusion, reviving the specter of racial chauvinism and state supremacy. By recalling the American president’s German origins, Kabuye contrasts the behavior of Nazi Berlin – which still attempted to maintain a facade of discipline and decorum – with that of contemporary Washington, displaying an unashamed disdain and blatant contempt for international conventions.
This feeling of indignation is sweeping across the continent. The analysis published by The Conversation Africa points out that “the promise of a universal cultural exchange has been completely perverted by institutional mistrust and hyper-strict immigration controls, transforming what should have been a multicultural celebration into a manifestation of geopolitical division.” In several other African media outlets, the assessment is equally scathing. Numerous columnists condemn this tripartite World Cup, in which Mexico and Canada have been relegated to the status of mere administrative satellites, denouncing a competition corrupted by the vanity of a single man and transformed into an instrument of hegemony for the American superpower.
The potential consequences of a shipwreck
The consequences of this Trumpian deviation from FIFA rules are disastrous and long-lasting. By capitulating to American coercion, FIFA has lost all ethical and sovereign legitimacy. It has demonstrated its structural inability to protect the universality of football against political power grabs.
This irreversible break marks the beginning of a global schism. The marginalized nations of the Global South will no longer tolerate the dictates of Western consulates and geopolitical favoritism. Trump’s political legacy at this World Cup will not be an American triumph but the birth of a new international sporting order free from Washington’s control.
Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in the geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Human and Social Sciences, Pan-African University
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