The hypocrisy of the anti-America World Cup boycotters

Threatening to boycott the World Cup has become something of a ritual for Europe’s posturing politicians and pundits. The calls have started late for the 2026 tournament, which will be held in Mexico, Canada and the US in June. But they are now getting louder – and the target of all the ire is, of course, Donald Trump’s America.

Oke Göttlich, vice-president of the German Football Association and president of the ‘world’s “wokest”’ club, Bundesliga’s St Pauli, got the ball rolling in late January. He said the ‘time has definitely come’ for countries to consider refusing attendance on the grounds of Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland. He likened the situation to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which led to more than 60 countries – led by the US – abandoning the Soviet Olympics in 1980. ‘By my reckoning’, Göttlich said, ‘the potential threat is greater now than it was then’.

Göttlich’s call has picked up steam among the world’s posturing politicos and pundits, especially after armed Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shot and killed a second anti-ICE protester, Alex Pretti, in Minnesota last month. Popular Dutch broadcaster Teun van de Keuken published a petition urging the Netherlands to withdraw from the World Cup, which has garnered nearly 170,000 signatures. ‘We do not want our footballers, through their performances at the tournament’, reads the petition, ‘to implicitly support the policy of violent terrorism pursued by President Donald Trump against innocent immigrants, whether or not they hold a US passport’. Elsewhere, French leftist politician Éric Coquerel said it was wrong for France to play ‘in a country that attacks its “neighbours”, threatens to invade Greenland’ and ‘destroys international law’. In Britain, a Guardian op-ed declared that a boycott would be ‘eminently sad’, but ‘entirely justified’ given ‘safety is under threat from federal violence on the streets’.

Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter has also come out in favour of a boycott. It might be said that Blatter is not best placed to sound off on a nation’s fitness to host a football tournament, having been banned from football’s governing body in 2015 over bribery allegations. Yet still he pushed on, saying it would be ‘right’ for football associations to refuse to participate.

There is plenty to criticise about US domestic and foreign policies, from ICE agents’ lethal actions in Minnesota to the attempt to take over Greenland, a sovereign territory of America’s NATO ally, Denmark. But these are not reasons for boycotting a World Cup. Not only are boycotts counterproductive, in this case, it would be staggeringly hypocritical, too.

After all, European countries have been happy to play in competitions hosted by countries that are far more repressive and imperialistic than Trump’s America. You only need to recall the two most recent tournaments.

The 2022 World Cup was hosted in Qatar. After it won the right to hold the tournament in 2010, amid allegations of corruption, Qatar bussed in 6,500 workers from South Asia to work on constructing the stadiums. Hundreds are estimated to have died labouring in harsh conditions on little pay. That’s not all. Qatar is not exactly a liberal paradise. It’s a country in which homosexuality is illegal and punishable by imprisonment.

There was certainly disquiet in the run-up to the tournament among Europe’s right-thinking. There were indeed murmurings of boycotts. But when the first whistle was blown, Europe’s great and the good were all there, turning a blind eye to the deaths of construction workers-cum-slaves, and to Qatar’s appalling human-rights record.

And then there was the 2018 World Cup in Russia. In the run-up to that tournament, European politicians and activists frequently criticised the Russian state. They drew attention to the plight of gay and lesbian Russians, the repression of political dissent, the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in the UK, and Putin’s support for former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. It also hadn’t gone unnoticed that Russia had unilaterally annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014. Yet despite all this, as the World Cup approached, Europe’s performative outrage soon gave way to excitement. And there were predictably no boycotts at all.

So it would be quite something for European nations to draw a line at America. It is also dishonest. Fans are not actually at risk of being shot in the head by ICE agents when they touch down in the US. Both of the protesters who were shot dead last month had put themselves in incredibly dangerous situations – Renée Good appeared to drive a car at an ICE agent, while Pretti was armed. This does not remotely justify their deaths. It is only to say that the footballing elites are utterly wrong to suggest that ICE agents are randomly shooting civilians simply going about their day.

Above all, this is all just so pointless. It is a dead certainty that all the media organisations clamouring for a boycott will be in America in June, covering every second of the World Cup. Just as they were in Qatar and Russia. Fans, too, will flood into the States – just like they have for every World Cup in living memory.

It is rare for a World Cup not to be surrounded by controversy. Yet America, by any reckoning, should be among the least contentious hosts in years. It’s time those blinded by their animus to Trump gave the calls for a boycott a rest – and let the rest of us enjoy the football.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.