Air Date: 6–5-2026

Today we explore sportswashing past and present, from fascist dictators who first weaponized the World Cup to FIFA's modern extractivism model of corrupt capitalism, and why workers, unions, and fans are now organizing to reclaim the game from those profiting off it.

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we explore sportswashing past and present, from fascist dictators who first weaponized the World Cup to FIFA's modern extractivism model of corrupt capitalism, and why workers, unions, and fans are now organizing to reclaim the game from those profiting off it.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 45 minutes today include

Chris Jansing Reports

CounterSpin

Power Plays

The Blazing Musket

and MediasTouch

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, TRUMP'S SPORTSWASHING PLAYBOOK

Section B, ORIGINS - THE FASCIST HISTORY OF THE WORLD CUP

Section C, THE FIFA GREED MACHINE

And Section D, PUSHBACK - TRAVEL BANS, BOYCOTTS, AND RECLAIMING THE GAME

And now, on to the show.

Right now, President Trump is at the Kennedy Center, where he was just awarded FIFA's inaugural Peace Prize during the final draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the top soccer tournament set to take place next summer across the US, Canada, and Mexico. But as the traditionally apolitical FIFA organization rolls out the red carpet for teams and fans from around the world, the president is expanding restrictions on travel to the US and doubling down on his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

MS Now White House reporter Akayla Gardner is at the Kennedy Center for us. Simone Sanders Townsend is back with me. Akayla, what's happening inside right now?

Chris, today's World Cup draw has all the bells and whistles of an awards show. We've already seen Kevin Hart and Heidi Klum take the stage, as well as Tom Brady. And as you mentioned just moments ago, President Trump received FIFA's first ever Peace Prize as he publicly campaigns to get another award, the Nobel Peace Prize, next year for his efforts in helping to broker peace deals around the world, although he's notably had mixed results in doing that.

But there's been a lot of attention paid to his relationship with FIFA's president, and many people are attributing that to the reason why that this draw came to the Kennedy Center, even though President Trump's takeover of the center has been really controversial. He's replaced all of the Democratic appointees with his own allies and members of his administration, and many people say that is because of his close relationship with the FIFA president that this draw came to Washington, DC.

Thank you for that. Chris. So Simone, so he gets the first ever FIFA Peace Prize. I wanna remind folks, when there was a lot of buzz around whether or not he might win the actual Nobel Peace Prize, what the head of the committee said about what goes into deciding that award. Take a listen.

In the long history of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think this committee have seen any type of campaign, media attention.

We receive thousand and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what- ... for them leads to peace. This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So our, we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel

so he did not get the Peace Prize this year.

Yesterday, though, he did rename the Institute of Peace after himself, a building that's been empty since its staff was gutted in those DOGE cuts earlier this year. What do you see happening right now? So I think what Donald Trump is doing here is frankly what he's always done. He's using, culture as a shortcut to legitimacy.

People might forget, but Donald Trump at one point, he had the cultural mainstream. R- think of Home Alone. Think of at one point he was the most mentioned name in rap music, and that was in a positive way. He would go to the, to the fights and be seen with Don King, even our, Reverend Sharpton, our colleague talks about this often.

But he lost that a while ago, and ever since that he's been trying to claw it back, and we see this in many different ways. He him- putting himself really at the center of, what FIFA is doing with the draw today. There were other world leaders there today, I wo- I would note, but we're not hearing about those folks.

We're not hearing about Claudia Sheinbaum from Mexico or the Prime Minister, of Canada. We're talking about Donald Trump. And authoritarian-minded leaders oftentimes use stages and ceremonies to project power, right? That's what this is. Think Orbán in Hungary. He built a whole apparatus of these state-funded cultural bodies to promote his worldview.

You can look at Erdoğan in Turkey. He's reshaped these national institutions. Heck, even Putin, they regularly, his government in Russia regularly actually makes up, awards and medals and orders and oftentimes bestows them on people who align with Putin's worldview. And so Donald Trump is a, I don't agree with him on much, Chris, but he is a master marketer.

And he understands that, that culture shapes a lot. It shapes what we see as worthy, as legitimate, as cool, even as presidential. And he is inserting himself in the middle of that because he knows if you can take hold of the culture, things that people don't necessarily think of as inherently political, you can then dive in maybe into their worldview in that way.

and it is something he has done throughout his career, and he is trying to really ramp that up in this second administration. Let's talk about the reality of what we saw today because the FIFA organization includes in its code of ethics a requirement that participants remain politically neutral.

And then you have the Trump administration with its hard line immigration messaging, which seems to be contrary to welcoming the world, welcoming foreign visitors to the United States to watch the World Cup. How is that gonna play out? I don't think it's gonna play out well for some of the participants and the people.

We will have to see, if folks feel comfortable coming to the United States from some of these other countries, if people do feel as though it's welcoming. I think the FIFA organization has made its decision, right? Much like many of the corporations and companies, and frankly, other world leaders. Y- honestly, Chris, I think they gave him the award today because they understand that one of the best ways to get into the president's good graces is in fact with flattery.

He likes awards, and bringing him things, and showering him with praise. And it's just not FIFA, other world leaders have, and corporations and companies have understood this is the way to get to, in Trump's good graces. Tim Cook, who is no, conservative, bastion, one of the last times he was in the Oval Office, he presented the president with some kind of gold, statue for his, friendship and the work that they've been able to do together.

Tim Cook understands why the president needed that statue. So I would argue we have to watch what the numbers look like. I'm concerned about the athletes, right? At the end of the day, again, the event today was about the draw so the teams would finally realize who they're going to play against. I hope that for the sake of the athletes, who have, really poured their blood, sweat, and tears into, in, in, into this field, that they are not adversely affected.

But make no mistake, culture and politics are intimately intertwined, and I'm wondering if they've got any commitments from ICE about what they won't do if, when these games take place with the people who are coming to watch them.

So I would ask you to explain what is sportswashing?

Absolutely. So sportswashing is when political leaders use sports to deflect attention from chronic social problems and human rights woes at home to try to make themselves look important or legitimate on the world stage, to try to burnish their own individual reputation or the country's reputation, while also setting up opportunities for political and economic gain.

And elements of it go way back in history. If you think about Berlin Olympics 1936 and Hitler, some- now they're called Hitler's Olympics, he put aside his Nazi paraphernalia just for the Olympic Games itself, and then brought it right back out after the Olympics. And it worked in the sense that numerous journalists who showed up in Berlin, who knew full well that there was a whole campaign against Jewish people, against Roma folks and others, and they looked around and didn't see that happening, and they gave glowing coverage of the event.

And so media have long played a really important role in elements of deflecting attention from your problems. And it's not just that it sets up opportunity for money-making, it also sets the stage for war. You s- if you shimmy forward into history and you look at a really good example of sportswashing from the 21st century, and you look at Vladimir Putin, who hosted both the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and then the 2018 Men's World Cup, you can see that he used those events to gain enormous popularity domestically inside of Russia, and he didn't waste any time using that power.

In fact, between the Olympics that he hosted in 2014 and the Paralympics that he hosted, he actually... That's when he invaded Crimea, when his popularity was sky high. And so politicians throughout history have used sport to increase their popularity at home, and definitely Donald Trump has plans to do that.

So now if we look at the 2026 Men's World Cup, and you think about how important sports have always been to Trump, he owned a football team back decades ago, and he's talked about how this World Cup, as well as the upcoming Olympics in Los Angeles, are really important to his presidency and his legacy.

He has ever more incentive now to cling to sports as a sort of political life raft while his ratings go down with the general public, while this Iran war, this ongoing Iran war alongside Israel is giving him grief and people don't like it. And so he has ever more incentive to cling to sports, and I think that's what we're gonna see here over the next month.

And the term sportswashing, I think it's important to understand that it's not just somebody like Mussolini or even somebody like Trump trying to use sports to deflect. There are other players involved. It doesn't work if there's not a system there, right?

Absolutely. And one thing I think is really important to point out is that journalists as well as academics have often used the term sportswashing just to waggle a finger at those, quote, "other people," from Russia, from Qatar, from Saudi Arabia.

But the truth of the matter is that it can happen in the United States, it can happen in London, it can happen pretty much anywhere. And I think that's one of those sort of ethnocentric labels that's been applied and that really we need to get away from. So I'll be really interested to see during this World Cup and then in the lead-up to the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, whether journalists wake up to that reality and start using sportswashing to describe what we're seeing with Trump

let's get a little bit into what the different elements of it are, because it's not just...

I think folks will hear, oh, there's big money trading hands, and there's a thing that little people are outside of. But the point is that it's much bigger, that it includes political and environmental and economic impacts that go well beyond just one event at one time. there's a lot of stuff that happens here that folks should be concerned about.

Absolutely. These are mega events. They're called mega events for a reason. And when one of these sports mega events like the World Cup rolls into your town, they roll over the toes of lots of existing activist efforts. the World Cup brings with it gentrification. It brings with it displacement.

It brings with it greenwashing. I'm really glad that you brought up greenwashing because, that's one of the reasons why a lot of fans around the world, soccer fans, have essentially been watching this World Cup through their fingers. Obviously, this event, the upcoming World Cup, has been stained by controversy like, the eye-watering ticket prices that we've been reading about in the newspaper, the question of Iran's participation while the president of the United States, one of the host countries, threatens war crimes against it, or, the role that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement may or may not play in policing the event.

But, lost in that political pyrotechnics is a fiasco that carries as much long-term peril as any, and that's the tournament's staggering contribution to runaway climate change. FIFA is one of the biggest purveyors of greenwashing, talking a big sustainability game, but then actually not following through.

The 2026 World Cup is going to be the most polluting World Cup ever. They made it bigger from 32 teams to 48 teams, and the geographical expanse of the United States, Canada, and Mexico means that people are going to be flying everywhere, and it's got, a huge amount of emissions when it comes to airfare that just dwarfs previous, tournaments.

And so greenwashing is another spectacle that we're seeing in action here with this 2026 World Cup.

I would ask you also to talk about the labor impact, the worker mistreatment that can often accompany these mega events.

Worker mistreatment is a huge element of these events. I think a lot of your listeners will have heard of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, where thousands of migrant workers were brought to Qatar to build the stadiums and other venues, hotels for that World Cup.

Thousands of them died. Thousands of them died. That should be staggering. There were also numerous deaths getting ready for the Russia World Cup. And in the United States, we're not seeing that 'cause there's not as much stadium construction. In fact, there's no stadium construction for this event.

But what we are seeing is workers rising up and asking big questions about whether ICE will be present at the, stadiums. For example, you look at UNITE HERE Local 11 in Los Angeles, and they've been very outspoken, on behalf of their members that they do not want ICE to be there. FIFA gathers all sorts of information and data about workers in all of these venues.

FIFA says that it's about security, but in reality they're not promising that they won't hand over that data to groups like Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the US federal government and President Donald Trump. And so there's actually the threat of a strike right now at one of the stadiums in Los Angeles, where around 2,000 of these workers are a member of that local.

And so I'm glad to say that, this is also a place for fight back. This is a chance when the whole world is watching to make gains. To give another example, 2024, this is the Olympics and not the World Cup, but I was in Paris with the great sports writer Dave Zirin, and we interviewed a train driver there who explained to us how his union threatened to go on strike, and he got an incredible boost in his wages.

He's going to get to retire earlier. Essentially, every self-respecting union in Paris threatened to go on strike during the games. The labor issue has two sides, at least in places where it's legal to organize. It is an opportunity to make some gains ahead of the event. So the thing is, Janeane, it takes organization, and I'm pleased to see that we're seeing groups organizing, unions organizing, especially in Los Angeles, to fight against the injustices that are all too often bricked into these sports mega events.

We're going to start at the 1934 World Cup. It's a long way back, but it will help us make sense of what's happening today. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini used the tournament to stir up extreme nationalism.

La parola d'ordine.

To project his country's supremacy throughout Europe and the globe.

È una sola.

And to distract from dissent in his own country.

È impegnativa per tutti.

All as FIFA President Jules Rimet sat by, unable to do a thing about it. Any story about the weaponization of the World Cup has to start with Italy.

All'Italia, all'Europa, al mondo.

The early 1900s were a time of change. Industrialization was tearing people away from their villages and their nuclear families, and leading them into big, crowded cities. People, cramped, overworked people, needed something to connect to. For many, that thing was football. There had been variations of the kick the ball in the net game for centuries.

In the 1900s, leagues got bigger and bigger, until teams were traveling by train, by ship, to compete with other teams far away. But this presented a problem. Everyone needed to play the same game from the same rule book. Football needed to be formalized. Enter Jules Rimet. The future FIFA president was born in the tiny French village of Theuley in 1873.

He moved to Paris at 11, and later studied law and founded a sports club called Red Star. He was young, idealistic, and Catholic. He prized the dignity of work and the dignity of sport.

He's a really interesting figure.

That's football historian Jonathan Wilson, who's written an essential World Cup history called The Power and the Glory.

He's a very devout Catholic. He believes in the power of sport to elevate the working classes. He's very big on self-improvement, so he, encourages poetry readings to try and spread a bit of culture as well.

In 1904, Rimet helped found FIFA. FIFA's specific goal was to be the central governing authority for football, to unify the rules so that everyone from Montevideo to Munich could play the same game

At first, FIFA lacked real authority or really any money. But by the 1910s, football started becoming really popular everywhere. Amid social ruptures, it gave life rhythm. Football started to replace church. Goals became miracles, and defeats, they were like moral reckonings. There was this sense of transcendence through chants and rituals and the collective experience of sport

But soon, World War I put international football on hold

It left 40 million casualties, including 20 million dead

Whole populations were shell-shocked. Everyday Europeans needed something to coalesce around. So in the wake of the war, national football teams became vessels. They presented countries as coherent and disciplined and worthy of praise. But this collective transcendence found on the pitch, many regimes exploited it for their own political needs

This was certainly the case with Italy. Like other European nations, it was a young country.

It had only unified its twenty-two different regions in the late 1800s. In the 1920s, there were still massive regional differences. Modernization hadn't come equally to North and South, and Italy was still reeling from the First World War. The country was in crisis.

One man who came of age in that crisis would eventually squash it almost single-handedly, the infamous Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini, he was able to take advantage of the post-war crisis.

Here's the historian Paul Baxa, who's an expert at the intersection of Italy and sports.

There was a fear that Italy might become communist because of what had happened in Russia in 1917. And Mussolini was able to take advantage of that. He founded his own movement.

It was an anti-democratic, extreme right nationalistic movement. And, he created these kind of thugs, these black shirts who went out into the streets and they beat up socialists and they had these pitched battles with them. There was a kind of a civil war.

This movement Mussolini founded, it's called fascism.

Today, the term fascism gets thrown around a lot as a kind of catch-all for authoritarian governance, but it's actually specific to the kind of movement Mussolini was leading.

It's a highly militaristic, anti-democratic, anti-communist, hyper-nationalist movement that wants to create kind of the new fascist man.

And its aim is to prepare Italy for, or to make it into a great power. Mussolini wanted to, recreate the Roman Empire. That was his dream. He wanted a new Roman Empire

To build his new Roman Empire, Mussolini first had to take control. It was in the middle of this chaos, the kind of civil war Baxa was describing, that in 1922, the Italian king asked Mussolini to form a government and bring order.

And he was able to dismantle democracy. He banned all political parties except the fascist party. He banned all labor unions. Essentially, it became a crime to be an opponent of fascism by 26, 27, which is right around the time that soccer or football was being professionalized and reorganized. And so sport plays an important role in the building up of the dictatorship.

Let me emphasize what Baxa is saying here. Sport was not tangential to fascism. It was central. Sport was how Mussolini could unify all the regions of Italy under him, how he could manufacture nationalism as he took away civil rights. That's because Mussolini realized he could create an emotional attachment to the mass spectacle of sport.

He began transforming Italy into what he called a sports nation. He promoted the new Italian, a hyper-masculine man whose athleticism proved Italian racial superiority. And he built enormous stadiums across the country, modernist monuments adorned with statues of himself on horseback. horseback This all communicated one message.

The future was here, and it was Italy.

And it's only possible because of fascist discipline. A nation that works hard, a nation that is disciplined, a nation that is working as one

It was a nation ruthlessly pursuing its goals and crushing whomever disagreed. And when it came to sports, it worked. The Italians marched into the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles singing the fascist anthem and took second in the medal count.

But it would take time for Mussolini to realize that the prime sport for the mass politics he was pursuing was football

there's always the, like you mentioned, there's always these, th- these promises of benefit, of economic benefit, of prosperity. All these great things are gonna happen after FIFA pulls out of town, and that, that doesn't, has that ever really happened? If you go back to, 2014 in Brazil, there's, stadiums that are literally just, they're in the middle of no- there's really no rational reason for these stadiums to even been constructed in the first place. I think one of them now is used as a bus depot.

So has there ever been a time when, yes, FIFA coming here and bringing the world's game to your country for a month has actually really s- spurred, any sort of lasting, economic benefit? I would say the general rule is unfortunately no, especially in places like you mentioned.

Brazil built all these stadiums to the FIFA level in places that didn't have local football clubs that could actually fill up those stadiums afterwards, and they became, white elephant stadiums almost immediately afterwards. Turning... at least with the bus depot, it was actually used- At least, yeah

for something positive, the buses, yeah. And just a side note on that, what people often forget about white elephant stadiums is that in order to keep them up to speed so they could be used if somebody wanted to use them, it costs a lot of money just to maintain these things. And those, again, that FIFA's, they're long gone.

They're not paying for any of that stuff. So again, it falls on local taxpayers. I think if you're talking about the modern era, some people could potentially point to Germany in 2006 as a place that already had a bunch of stadiums in place, already had a strong, football culture. It was a safe place to come travel to.

They had a lot of tourists. Got a little bit of an uptick in their tourism, of course, during the World Cup. But certainly I can't think of any, World Cup that's lived up to the promises that they put in their bid books. These bid books, when they're trying to get FIFA to pick them, oh, they're full of all sorts of confabulations.

It's unicorns, kittens, and, free beer for everybody. And of course none of that ends up really coming true. Yeah. We see that on a smaller level in terms of, w- when, a lot of sports teams in the US get, or try to get the local government or the state government to, to pay for their stadiums.

And we see many books and studies written on that as well, that like they say all these incredible, all these, the- these jobs and this, that, and the other, and then it turns out yet none of that ever really, it doesn't materialize. Yeah, no, y- it's a really smart parallel that you're making there.

And if you look at the work of sports economists, they will say exactly what you just said, is that it is a bad public investment. But the people that say it's a good public investment, those are people that do these really, positive, economic impact assessments, as they're called, and they get paid to do that.

And guess what? They get the results that the owner of the team wants them to get. Yeah. That is one of the biggest scams around, is public paying for these big stadiums for billionaires and upgrades and at the threat that they're going to take their team and move it elsewhere, which they sometimes do.

Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah, and so with, with 2026, I think I'll... I think I may have a bit naively originally looked at this as, okay, the United States already has the stadiums in place to do this. They have the hotels, they have the airports, they have the infrastru- like, pretty much everything seemingly was already here and in place, so you know, this should be pretty, this should be pretty straightforward.

They'll, FIFA will just turn up, a bunch of people will come in, and everyone will, have a good time and make lots of money, and everything will go smoothly. W- what has happened with FIFA i- is what FIFA's doing in this World Cup, is it more... are they getting bolder with their profit-taking?

Are they getting bolder with what they're trying to get away with, where, the local government, or the regional government is stuck paying for everything, and they're just, they're the only ones that are really gonna walk away with, with any money from this?

Is this something that is, happens every four years, or have we seen it gotten, has it gotten worse, as time has gone on? I would say that the 2026 World Cup is much more intense extractivism on the part of FIFA. It's much more intense greed, if you wanna put it that way. They are taking it to the next level.

If you wanna talk about how they're maximizing their own profit-making, there are so many ways that we can do that. For starters, they made the tournament much bigger. They made it in, from 32 to, to 48 teams, so there's many more matches to sell tickets to. Second, and this is a little bit lesser known, but when they-- When the United States hosted the World Cup in 1994, there was one umbrella organization that signed the contracts on behalf of all of the cities.

This time around, FIFA signed individual contracts with individual cities to try to squeeze as much as they possibly c- could out of every one of those cities. And you've probably, I'm sure your listeners, and obviously you will know all about this, the rising prices of tickets. The highest priced ticket is now in the neighborhood of $11,000 to the final at, in MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

Just four years ago, the highest priced ticket in Qatar was $1,600. That's huge inflation. Not to mention the fact that if you look at the bid For the 2026 World Cup put forth by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. They said in that bid that the most expensive ticket would be $1,550, which you should never trust those bids for anything.

They're pretty much useless. Th- you've probably already been talking on your show about dynamic pricing, which I don't even like using that term because it makes it kinda sound exciting. It's dynamic. Hey, that sounds kinda nice. What basically that is we are going to... We're FIFA, and we're going to screw you over to the absolute maximum, ticket buyer.

We're gonna get every last penny out of you that we possibly can, unless we have to offload the tickets at the last second, kinda liquidate them. That's the only way you're gonna get a good deal. It's like when you try to get a rideshare car, and it's, raining outside and the price is much higher, or it's rush hour and the price is much higher 'cause you gotta get where you gotta get.

It's kinda like that, but taken to extreme greed. Speaking of extreme greed, the resale market. At least Mexico had the good sense of if you're going to resell your ticket, you cannot legally sell it at a face, the value higher than the face value on the ticket. Whereas the United States and Canada, that is not the case at all, and FIFA takes a cut.

Every time you resell your ticket, they take 15% from the seller, and they take 15% from the buyer. So they're getting 30% cut on every single ticket sale in the secondary market. So the more people are selling tickets and the higher the price goes, FIFA's loving that stuff. They are making more and more money.

I could go on. I'll just say two more things, just 'cause they're, I think they're kinda gobsmacking. One is the parking prices that you're hearing a lot about now. It costs upward of, sometimes, $300 in Los Angeles to get a parking spot if you wanna just go to the FIFA, World Cup match that you have a ticket to. And it's not just, money that FIFA is hoovering up. There's some good reporting by Alex Shepherd in Gold and Gold, a new soccer magazine, that found that actually FIFA's also trying to get workers at World Cup stadiums to hand over extraordinary amounts of personal information. Supposedly it's for vetting for security accreditation, but, they're not saying, they're not saying that they won't hand it over to policing organizations, including Immigration and Customs Enforcements.

So FIFA could actually be a conveyor belt of passing along personal information about the workers at stadiums to ICE. They're not saying that they won't do that. It's just incredible. And the last one I just have to say is Infantino itself, he is making... He just gave himself, or FIFA technically gave him a bonus of 33% of his annual bonus.

He got an increase on that, so he's making $6 million every year. It wouldn't surprise me, Thomas, if FIFA brought in more than the $11 billion in revenues that they're planning for this World Cup alone. That's the most of any event in, sporting history. It wouldn't surprise me if it actually went higher based on just some of the things that we, I just laid out for you right now.

So let's start with this, that less than a year ago, the FIFA president, Gianni InInfantino, made a promise He promised an economic boon equal to 104 Super Bowls, but that was not true when it was said, it's not going to come true now, as Forbes reports.

So what the guy promised, 104 Super Bowls. You just have to trust us. Trust, trust me, as Don- as Donald Trump would say. But now nearly 80% of US hotel owners, in 11 World Cup host cities say bookings are tracking below original forecasts, and in many cases, below what it would be if there was no FIFA at all.

Tourism has been down dramatically in the US year over year because Canada started this powerful boycott against the US, and the rest of the world followed. And, you look at all of the threats that the US, imposes on people here in the United States and immigrants, people don't wanna come, to the United States.

And lots of people are describing the tournament right now as a non-event. Just think about that. 80% of people who own hotels in 11 World Cup host cities say bookings are tracking below original forecasts, with some describing the tournament as a non-event, according to an American Hotel and Lodging Association survey of members released Monday.

So when Infantino promised 104 Super Bowls, that's what this would be. Now it's not even one Super Bowl, it's a non-event. It's if the circus came to town, or if, Disney on Ice came to town. By the way, I love Disney on Ice and taking my little daughter there. I was 19 months old. That would be an event, it'd boost tourism. People are saying FIFA is a non-event. Let's take a look and, and dig through more of the facts here together. So US hotels are saying the World Cup is a non-event so far. FIFA hyped the World Cup as an econo- as an economic juggernaut for the US, but with five weeks until the tournament kicks off, the hotel industry says advanced bookings in some host cities are on par or lagging an ordinary summer.

Lagging an ordinary summer with no FIFA. Nearly 80% of hotel owners in 11 World Cup host cities say bookings are tracking below original forecasts, with some describing the tournament as a non-event, according to the AHLA, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, and the recent survey they just did.

Only a quarter of AHLA respondents are seeing any incremental lift. The US metros hosting the World Cup games will generate some GDP growth this summer, concentrated in leisure and hospitality, but those will not have a material impact on overall job and economic gains this year, according to a report released by Oxford Economics.

No material gain in an economic boost from the World Cup. And it goes on to say, "While the US is expected to see an economic upside to hosting the World Cup, it's clear that the demand for the tournament will fa- will fall well short of the one hundred and four Super Bowls promised last year by FIFA's president, Gianni InInfantino.

'It was not true when it was said, and it's not going to come true now,' says Jo- Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality and marketing analytics at CoStar, an industry benchmarking firm," she told Forbes. A FIFA analysis that projected the World Cup would drive thirty point five billion in economic output was predicated on the assumption that millions of international tourists would flock to the tournament.

Last year, FIFA told tourism officials in World Cup host cities to expect a fifty-fifty split between domestic and international visitors. But roughly seven in ten respondents in AHLA surveys say visa barriers and broader geopolitical concerns are significantly suppressing international demand. Let's be very clear.

Seven in ten respondents in this survey are saying, let's be clear what these factors are, Donald Trump's catastrophic war against the world, the instability caused by Donald Trump, and people boycotting the United States make it so international folks don't wanna come to the United States. The lack of international inbound is certainly going to hurt the overall economic impact, and the size of this World Cup, spanning sixteen host cities across three countries, presents many logistical hurdles for international travelers.

Roughly eighty-five to ninety percent of hotel owners, for example, in Kansas City, report that bookings are trailing a typical June or July without any major events. In four host cities, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle, nearly eighty percent of hotel owners say bookings are behind a typical summer, with many describing the tournament as a non-event.

In Los Angeles, nearly sixty-five to seventy percent of respondents report bookings below expectations, often in line with or lagging behind a typical summer. And in New York, it somewhat tracks with a normal summer with no World Cup. So if there was no World Cup The typical tourism and the typical hotel bookings in these cities may...

I'm giving you major metropolitan areas, Philly, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, would be more than it is right now with FIFA. Do we all realize what a stunning stat that is? But Gianni InInfantino says there may be a last-minute influx, like a miracle right around the corner. Just you wait and see.

There may be a miracle coming, right? Aren't these all just MAGA con artists right here?

You talk about how, in basic terms World Cup and these mega events induce a state of exception, and that's what we're looking out for. It's like all other rules g- go by the wayside, and suddenly we're supposed to not care about them, and that's the important thing to focus on. So I would ask you, specifically looking at the World Cup 2026, which I've already been told that I should try to work from home because my office is near Penn Station, and they're gonna be rerouting trains, and lots of things are gonna be disrupted.

But what should we be looking for in terms of the coverage, in terms of questions asked or unasked as we go into this latest mega event?

There's no question about it that sports mega events like the World Cup do bring this state of exception where the normal rules of politics don't apply. And while it creates enormous amounts of inconvenience and enormous amounts of profits for groups like FIFA and their corporate sponsors there of the World Cup, it does present opportunities for people to push back against it.

And that's what we're seeing in cities around the United States right now. Los Angeles is a good example. Not just the union, but a group called NOlympics LA has been organizing against the World Cup. They've been active since 2017, and they continue to be active today. And so I guess the thing about the World Cup, it is the most popular sport in the world, soccer, and I feel like we need to slow down and say, "We shouldn't let FIFA be able to steal this from us."

the people's game, and they are turning it into the plutocrat's game. And yes, they're walking off with profits, but they shouldn't get to steal all the joy from us, and they're doing their darnedest to make this a joyless World Cup. But that doesn't mean we can't come together with our friends and celebrate these incredible worker athletes who are going to be toiling under incredibly difficult conditions.

Let's not forget they're hosting this event in the hottest months of the summer. And when they're gonna do these water breaks, which for FIFA just means another commercial opportunity to show c- commercials. And there are moments where we can come together as people and push back against these real injustices in the sport.

And I guess, I'm- that's what I'm gonna try to do this summer, is come together with friends, get organized, and try to push back.

While we're talking about this corruption of FIFA and all of the many interferences in sports, I just still wanted to ask you, okay, now we insert gambling. That's gotta not be a great mix to add.

How do you think that sports betting and the legalization of sports betting, that's obviously another piece of this.

Sports gambling and sports betting is an absolute scourge on sports, and it's really ruining lives, and it's also ruining the ex- experience of watching sports. FIFA, it will not surprise anybody, has pulled up and teamed up with a new extremely shady gambling outfit, very shady group of people that's not even registered in most places.

So FIFA's definitely getting in on the gambling industry as well. And a- again, this is another one of those pushback points. There's a really important soccer magazine called Josimar, which has come out with numerous studies about how FIFA, but also other groups out in football world, have embraced sports gambling to the detriment of the sport and to the detriment of humanity.

So I highly recommend this alternative soccer magazine based in Norway called Josimar if you wanna learn all about the scourge that's all over sport, but especially soccer right now.

Absolutely. I'll just say finally, existentially, sports has been a savior for many outside-of-power people around the world, as, as is what you're saying.

And so I just wanna end underscoring it's not that the thing is awful, it's that almost every beautiful thing we have, some people will try to exploit. And that doesn't mean that we have to abandon what we love, but we might have to work to reclaim it.

Yeah, we need not devote ourselves to the death of complexity.

We can appreciate the athletic brilliance on the field of play this summer at the World Cup, but that definitely doesn't mean we have to sit idly by while the government carries out raids against people who might be just wanting to attend a match. So I think that the FIFA World Cup provides us with a chance to actually come together for real and defend our communities, against an invading force that is FIFA.

We've just heard clips starting with

Chris Jansing Reports examining Trump's receipt of FIFA's inaugural Peace Prize at the Kennedy Center, with Symone Sanders Townsend framing it as his ongoing effort to reclaim cultural legitimacy he lost years ago. If I were feeling snarky, I'd call it a participation trophy.

CounterSpin unpacked sportswashing as a tool used by leaders from Hitler's 1936 Olympics to Putin's Sochi Games, with Trump now leaning on the 2026 World Cup as his ratings fall.

Power Plays recounted how Mussolini recognized that mass spectacle in sport could unify Italy's regions and manufacture nationalism as he stripped away civil rights throughout the 1920s.

The Blazing Musket laid out how FIFA has ratcheted up its profit-taking for 2026, signing individual city contracts, inflating ticket prices sevenfold since Qatar, and collecting 30% on every resale.

MediasTouch walked through a damning survey showing that FIFA's "104 Super Bowls" promise is nowhere close to materializing, with visa barriers and anti-U.S. sentiment suppressing international demand across host cities.

And CounterSpin in part two of their discussion called on people to reclaim soccer from FIFA's exploitation ahead of the 2026 World Cup, citing Nolympics LA and the magazine Josimar as resources for resistance.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

But first, speaking of greed and avarice causing wealth to flow to the top while leaving the rest of us behind, I’m just reminding you of our current financial instability and the sad news that our new show, SOLVED! had to put on indefinite hiatus due to our ad dollars drying up, cutting our total budget by about 1/3.

Right now, I’m taking some time to rethink everything about the show, looking to boost and improve anything I can. Asking the basic question, if I were to invent Best of the Left today, what would it look like? The answer is that it would be quite a bit different from 20 years ago, and so I definitely have some work to do.

But, going back to basics and starting with low-hanging fruit, I’m looking to relaunch our listener feedback voice message segment that people frequently said was their favorite part of the show.

I think this particular moment is the right time to relaunch the voice messages because we’re looking to rebuild the audience and boost revenue for the long term and making this show once again be a bi-directional relationship is exactly the type of thing that helps spark interest in new listeners and keeps them coming back.

You, as a current listener of the show, are already a sort of insider. You managed to find the show while it was hard to find and have stuck around. Now, I need to recruit you, as members of our core audience, to help others find the show so we can make sure it keeps going.

So, in addition to telling everyone you know that they should be subscribed to this show, you can also help make the show itself better by using our voice message system to leave comments, just as Stewart and Truman have done!

[

Hi, Jay. this is Stuart from Northern California, calling in response to your AI commentary. So I'm disabled and retired, so

AI has been causing me minimal personal annoyance, mostly just dumb answers and garbage on the internet. Most of my friends in tech say that it's been forced on them, and it's making their jobs harder, not easier, because they're being asked to support the AI hype rather than being asked to support better products.

So I think the biggest impact is gonna happen when the bubble pops and my little bit of retirement savings disappears. But actually, I wanted to call because I think maybe it's good if everyone always boos AI all the time, even if it is technically sometimes useful. The whole AI umbrella is mostly a construction of marketing BS.

And I think it would be okay if it became, uh, shameful most of the time to use AI, even if that's irrational, uh, in order to motivate politicians and CEOs to change what they're doing. So I understand it may be useful sometimes. I appreciate you, you using it. That's just fine. But I think in general, I'm just gonna keep booing every time somebody talks about AI, 'cause it's mostly really dumb.

 

Hey, Jay and the rest of the Best of the Left team. My name is Truman, and I'm calling to vote in favor of reviving the voicemail segment. I'm a relatively new listener, found the show around this time last year actually, and it's quickly become my favorite way to keep up with news and politics. I'm actually listening backwards through the archive, so I'm looking forward to hearing what the old voicemail segments were like.

On a separate note, Jay recently used the word cozy to describe the feeling of listening to a great podcast, which definitely rang true for me listening to you all talk in the solved episodes. I really enjoyed those. It's a shame to hear them go for the time being. I hope the adpocalypse is temporary, and I upped my membership tier to help out in the meantime.

It's the least I could do. As for the unwanted AI integration question Jay asked in the most recent episode, I came across a video on Instagram that looked AI-generated, you know, it had a warped mouth, unnatural voice, you know, all the telltale signs, only to find out in the comments that it was a real video using Meta's AI voice translation, which is creepy, right?

And it made me think about all the voice actors who do dubbing for foreign movies who are probably being put out of work by this technology, which only annoyed me more. Anyway, thanks for everything that you do. Hang in there, and have a great day.

Ironically, something went wrong with the quality of Truman's recording, and so I ended up having to use an AI-powered cleanup tool to make him sound listenable, if a bit muffled, as opposed to staticky.

One quick thought on the creative community being impacted by AI voice translation, as Truman mentioned about voiceover actors for films. I think the ability of AI to actually reach the level of quality required for a truly creative project like a film is going to be one of those things where it's relatively easy to get 80% of the way there, pretty hard to get 90% of the way there, and damn near impossible to get 100% of the way there.

I've heard, not so much about movies, but in a sort of parallel skill of narrating audiobooks, that the human audiobook recording community is going to fight off AI by essentially upping their game and leaning more into “performing” the books rather than simply narrating them, because that's something that AI can't keep up with. Obviously, for films, the need for performing goes without saying so my hope is that those actors who do the dubbed translations may actually be safe for the time being, because AI can translate the words but can't translate the performance.

Meanwhile, the people making simple Instagram videos can use the AI translation to expand the reach of their message without putting anyone out of work.

So that's what a voice message segment sounds like and it’s up to you to keep it going!

To help, I’ve begun asking a discussion question in each episode to kick things off. Stewart and Truman just responded to a question I posed about the use of AI in everyday life.

So, here’s today’s question: Sports and politics have always been tangled together, whether we like it or not. So I want to hear from you, has there ever been a moment when you felt that tension personally, as a fan, as someone who loves a sport or a team, when the politics became impossible to ignore? Tell us what happened and how it changed the way you experienced the game.

You can record a voice message - re-recording until you're happy with it - by tapping the link in the show notes.

As a little bonus, I want to share this very old clip from a bonus episode discussion with producer Deon, who frequently doubles as our sports correspondent. He told this story a few years ago but it could just as easily be his answer to today’s question.

I instantly started thinking about sports before I got to the part in the article talking about sports because, you know, going to sporting events, like I guarantee if and when, like it's been a couple of years since I've actually attended a game, but if I go to a Kansas City Chiefs game, I'm not going to share the same politics as. I'm going to guess 95% percent of people in the crowd.

But for three hours we're on the same side. We are feeling the same feelings, we're the same direction. We leave everybody's feeling the same way when it's like leaving a game. One time was, it was like the most, I don't like, it was definitely a ritual. Like they have a spiral, uh, staircase down from the, the cheap seats and everybody was banging on the side as they were going down.

It was incredible. I've never felt that in sync with a group of strangers in my entire life. And that's just what that is. it's artificial, but also it's super real. it was a real feeling. It wasn't like I'm, I didn't get anybody's numbers. We're not hanging out.

But like in that moment, we're on the same side for sure.

If you’re a member and curious about the context, that was from bonus episode 283, before the SOLVED! era., and you should be able to find it in the archives.

Another quick note on the voice messages: I'm also working on a process to put out these kinds of questions on social media before the episodes actually air so that people can get their responses in to be played during the episodes on topic. If you're not already connected with us on social media or places like our Patreon community or our Discord community, find those links in the show notes to get connected.

And if you didn’t know already, you can join our Patreon for free to get posts like these questions. Plus, they’re doing some interesting work over there to try to implement some of the great aspects of social media while rabidly defending against those elements that turn other algorithmic feeds into giant piles of shit. So, whether you looked at Patreon before or never have in your life, now is a great time to check out what they're up to and you can start by joining our page for free.

Now as for today's topic,

the last time the World Cup came to the United States was 1994. I was 11 years old and had been playing soccer for about five years. That's when the US progressed to the Round of 16 and played an elimination game against Brazil in California, close enough to where I lived that we could attend. My parents bought tickets for that game.

I can't remember exactly, but I probably felt a combination of excitement and nervousness about going to a game like that, since I had never done anything like that before. As an adult looking back, what I can know almost for sure is that I didn't appreciate the rarity of what was happening. I couldn’t viscerally understand that the World Cup coming to your country is a special occasion, or that your home team playing close enough to you that you could attend is something that might not happen again anytime soon.

As I thought today about myself at that game, I realized that my experience as an 11-year-old might be a decent metaphor for unexamined fandom and surface-level patriotism. In essence, existing within, participating in, and supporting a structure without having the contextual awareness of what all is going on.

Turns out that, for the sake of this commentary, it's a meaningful coincidence that the 1994 game I attended fell on our Independence Day, the Fourth of July.

Starting with soccer, or as the rest of the world knows it, football. It's the most loved game on earth, and the game itself and people's love for it can remain pure even as the governing body, FIFA, continues to be widely known as one of the most corrupt institutions operating on the world stage. They have structurally built their operation to extract as much money as possible from the game while consistently promising host countries and cities benefits that almost never materialize. Their profits are locked in with broadcast deals, sponsorship, and their take of ticket sales, but the promise that benefits would also flow to the hosts generally turns out to be a mirage.

This time around, the eleven American host cities are staring at a collective shortfall of at least 250 million dollars, even as FIFA pockets nearly all of the eleven to fourteen billion the tournament is expected to bring in. In the center of everything is the fan who continues to love the game while potentially having nothing but contempt for FIFA. You can love and support the thing but despise the management, maybe you can relate.

If FIFA’s grift sounds eerily familiar, it's because Trump and his cabal are running the same play on the country. They're setting up structures to guarantee personal profits for himself, his family, and the businesses that collude with him, while the promises he made to everyone else go undelivered. So it's no coincidence that he's attempting to use these events; the World Cup, the 250th anniversary of independence, and the Olympics coming in a couple of years, to do what authoritarian con men always do. Reap the benefits for themselves while sticking the country with the bill, trusting that papering over his corruption with patriotism will protect him from close examination.

But his version of patriotism is the "don't look too closely" version, the one that says to love the country uncritically, to not think about structures. They encourage a childlike approach to patriotism and love of country.

Meanwhile, the left regularly comes up short when trying to answer that, and our generation is not the first to struggle with the idea that the right is trying to monopolize the idea of patriotism for themselves.

The classic go-to is to remember the words of Frederick Douglass in his speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" from 1852. He made the argument that the adult version of patriotism, the one that takes the time to examine the structures and work for something better, is to love the ideals and the promises of the country and use that love to work to make the country fulfill those promises.

My favorite metaphor to describe this is from Isabel Wilkerson's book "Caste," in which she describes the country as a house that was built long before anyone today was alive which means that we're not responsible for the fact that there's a crack in the foundation. We're not to blame for that, and yet this is where we live now and that makes it our responsibility to fix for ourselves, our fellow residents living here, and to future generations.

In short, I think that the thoughtful kind of patriotism comes down to people and the promises we collectively make to each other. That's essentially what countries and governing structures are and they only work when people make them work.

I certainly understand the reflex to look at the thoughtless version of patriotism that dominates the right, the "my country right or wrong" style of jingoism and nationalism, and to reject that whole cloth. To conclude that, if that's what patriotism means, then I want no part of it. And that feels like integrity, because it is, in a sense.

But in terms of the way that we collectively guide the direction of the country, it's also a form of surrender. It hands the joy that can be derived from working together to maintain the place where we live over to the political side that is looking to dismantle what's good about the country and hide rather than fix the parts that need repair, all while one person is essentially ransacking and looting the place for personal gain.

This isn't about matching that thoughtless kind of patriotism with our own flag-waving. It's loving and embracing the fact that we have a responsibility to maintain the place where we live for the sake of the people who live here, present and future.

The thin and thoughtless version of patriotism is just like me or any other eleven-year-old going to a soccer game, enjoying themselves but having no idea of the larger contexts. That's excusable for a kid because they can’t know any better, they just got here, but for adults, that kind of ready acceptance of simple narratives is how you get taken advantage of. That's how you get the wool pulled over your eyes while your pockets get picked, and no one likes the feeling of being scammed.

We have to be able to do both at the same time. If you have a love for something, whether it be a sport, your country, or just the people in your country who live around you, the goal is to keep the joy in that but also to keep your eyes open and recognize the responsibility you have to help maintain that which we have. Because everything; sports, governments, systems of laws, social norms, they are all just the collective result of people taking action. So, don't just be a spectator.

Come to think of it, that goes for the voice message section as well. Don't just be a spectator; it only exists when people like you take action and call in.

Note that we've begun putting my commentaries on YouTube so if you find them insightful, check out our channel and share them! Link in the show notes.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, TRUMP'S SPORTSWASHING PLAYBOOK

Followed by Section B, ORIGINS - THE FASCIST HISTORY OF THE WORLD CUP

Section C, THE FIFA GREED MACHINE

And Section D, PUSHBACK - TRAVEL BANS, BOYCOTTS, AND RECLAIMING THE GAME

I was gonna say, I'm excited to have this conversation with you because our show is really about where the world and America meet, and, this bid for, we'll say, collectively North America to host the 2026 World Cup, it's not just the United States. It's happening, in Canada, the US, and Mexico.

It was a joint bid that was put forth in 2017. Is that right? During the first Trump administration? Yeah. A- and I want to understand from you, what was the intention at that point? What did they want this thing to be? Because clearly, look, 2017, the first Trump term, it's not like the United States had the smoothest relationship with its neighbors at that point.

There's been a perennial- Sort of, issue with football is that it's a global sport, but there's one major country in the world where soccer doesn't really penetrate the national consciousness, and that is America. And it's actually just worth saying, what I'm talking about is the men's game, because the women's game is just com- it's at such an advanced- an elite level. And the US is actually the b- historically, over the last 15, 20 years, has been the most successful women's, football team in the world, right? It's just never been mirrored on the men's level. So this will be the second time that, the United States has h- hosted a World Cup. The first one is in 1994.

I wasn't around then, or I can't really remember much then. But it was supposed to be the sort of dawning of soccer landing in America. Not to usurp baseball, the NFL, or basketball, but to be maybe the fourth sport, right? So if you're gonna have a truly global sport, it's a bit weird not to have the world's biggest economy, which shapes so much of, soft culture and culture generally, not to be involved in football.

So this, I think, is still a continuation of, breaking America.

But doing it in collaboration, then, doing it with Mexico and Canada, what was the thinking behind that?

That is probably just economics. We are realizing very quickly that it is just not economical for one country to host a World Cup.

It's just financially very prohibitive to build stadiums, because what do you do with these stadiums afterwards? So if you combine Canada, the United States, and Mexico, they already have the existing infrastructure.

You've suggested that the expanded geography helps with sharing the burden of costs, and just putting on this big sporting event.

But I presume that it also presents challenges, right? To fly from, say, Vancouver in Canada down to Mexico, that's just a... It's a long distance.

Yeah, from the fan's perspective, this is basically a very non-ideal World Cup. If you think about how World Cups go, there's the group stages, so you know your country's gonna be playing at least three games.

You don't know what's gonna happen after that, whether they go into the knockout rounds, the s- the quarterfinals, the semifinals. So you know for the first couple of weeks where you need to be. So if your country is based in Toronto, you're playing your games in Toronto, you can just hang around Canada.

At best, you can go to New Jersey and New York. It's not that far. Yeah. But then, if suddenly you find yourself in a quarterfinal and you're playing it in Mexico City-

Yeah ...

it becomes a bit of a nightmare. So this is a stark contrast to the last World Cup, 'cause anyone who went to Qatar realized that everything was- It's tiny

probably within 15 to 20 miles. And it was much easier logistically. This is gonna be complicated, but it's worth saying this is just the reality of how tournaments are gonna happen now. Most bids coming in to host these tournaments are shared between three or four countries. So it's just becoming the new norm, actually, is to spread it out.

You said earlier that the United States had hosted the World Cup before, last in 1994. But- This seems different to me. Maybe it's also just 'cause, I'm older, I'm more aware of the advertising, the excitement going on around this all. But it is beginning to feel to me super American in some ways.

What's your sense of how this World Cup is being Americanized? For example, there's a halftime show. I've never heard of a halftime show happening before at a World Cup. It's obviously a quintessential part of something like the Super Bowl here in the US. I saw that, is it Shakira, Madonna-

Yeah

BTS, they have quite the lineup for this halftime show.

So halftime traditionally is actually only 15 minutes, so you wouldn't even get a chance to, BTS to, come out and do one song, let alone a whole show. We actually had a taster of what it felt like, last summer, where the US hosted something called the Club World Cup, which was a sort of a cl- conglomeration of elite teams across the world who'd won various tournaments qualified for this.

And I know that because my team, Chelsea, won the Club World Cup. So I had to sit through a halftime show-

Okay,

how was that? ... at the final against PSG. I, honestly, usually halftime's when I just go and make a cup of tea and I come back and, look at my phone. This thing went on for so long.

I think I went outside, had a kick around- ... spoke to my mum on the phone, came back- ... still saw some, the Jonas Brothers, whoever it was. Okay,

so who, who was performing? So you didn't actually watch the halftime

show. Balvin, I think, was there. I think it was J Balvin.

You were not so thoroughly impressed,

were you?

I wasn't locked in, to be honest. I don't- Oh,

our producer just wrote it was Coldplay Doja Cat, yeah

Oh, the Doja Cat J

Balvin. Yeah J Balvin, okay yeah. Oh, alongside special unannounced guest Coldplay

Oh, see, I missed the whole thing. So I wasn't even paying much attention. So if it was meant to impress grumpy Brits, it didn't, or at least it didn't with me.

But then I was like, "Oh God, this is weird." And the other weird thing was that when we played the game, before we played the game, Tru- Donald Trump walked out with the players- I do remember ... and very famously- Yeah ... Donald Trump celebrated with the Chelsea players, wore a medal, and then jumped around with them at the trophy presentation, which is one of the most bizarre spectacles I've ever seen.

And I was like, "God, if this is what the World Cup's gonna be like, there is a lot of content that's gonna be generated from the World Cup."

And I will say Donald Trump does seem to view the World Cup being played here on American soil as a great point of patriotic pride. He said just the other day that, and I'm gonna quote him here, he said, "We have the FIFA World Cup and our great American State Fair and the National Mall," and he lists off all these things, and he seems to view it as a point of pride in American identity.

How is that being received by fans elsewhere?

So there's another element to this, is that, so the man who runs FIFA is a man called Gianni Infantino. He probably made the headlines a couple of months ago because he gave Donald Trump a made-up peace prize after he didn't win. We did an

episode of the Global Story

on this, yes.

There we go. Yeah. Excellent. Yo, Infantino's behavior has been, I think, for a lot of global football fans, incredibly unedifying. It has been one of the more bizarre elements of the run-up to this World Cup, is how much the head of FIFA has been in and around the tr- he's constantly in the Oval Office taking pictures, yeah. I think from a political angle, they would, FIFA would say they need to, they need the president to be on side because if they need this thing to, to be a success, the World Cup to be a success. But when you have the head of the global governing organization actively inserting himself into some of the world's most sensitive conflicts, presenting himself as a huge ally and supporter of Donald Trump, it does add a huge political element to FIFA.

Tell me more about that. Why do you think sportswashing should be applied to the US?

First I think it's just a little bit ethnocentric that it was only applied to these other countries, where in reality if you just go by that definition that I offered there, there's a lot of reason to apply it to the United States. What would President Donald Trump be deflecting attention from?

His very low approval ratings, all-time low in both of his terms are, he's experiencing right now. The tough time that he's having in Iran. Things are not going well there. Of course, there's his long-term friendship with Jeffrey Epstein that he'd just as soon forget and have nobody talking about.

There are a lot of things he'd like to deflect attention from, and he, this gives him a chance to look important. Let's not forget that Donald Trump from the beginning has been a sports fan, and he has used sports more than any president in recent US history to his political advantage.

Yeah, the UFC tournament, the fights that are gonna be on the White House lawn as an example.

Definitely embracing sport as spectacle and also, messaging vehicle the Trump administration has. So you mentioned Russia as a host country, in, in 2018. That was just four years after the country had annexed Crimea and was accused of backing rebel groups in Eastern Ukraine. Qatar in 2022, was controversial over human rights issues.

Also, just the temperature and what that did to workers and, potential safety issues. And then, we're talking about this year the US and everything that you just mentioned. Is this a more recent development, this phenomenon of sportswashing, or has it been something the World Cup has always been entwined with?

The term sportswashing was only coined in 2015 by some human rights workers out of Europe who were interested in the upcoming European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan at that time. So the term itself is very recent, but there's elements of sportswashing that go far back into history. Your listeners will know about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin where Adolf Hitler used that event to make himself look important and legitimate on the world stage, and to deflect attention from his attacks on Jewish folks, Roma folks, others.

And to be honest, it actually worked. So when people ask, "Does sportswashing work?" They're often talking about an international audience, and if you look at The New York Times coverage of those 1936 Olympics, they were absolutely glowing about Adolf Hitler. He got great coverage out of the deal.

So you can also look at, the 1978, World Cup in Argentina, which I also write about in Red Card, and how there was a military junta in charge at that time, and they used that Olympics... Or sorry, they used that World Cup to sound important on the world stage, and they've had none other than Henry Kissinger roll through and to talk about how they were getting a bad rap in the press, and to watch a match or two with the Argentinian junta.

So there's elements that go back in history, but I would argue that you really don't get the full-on sportswashing with all its important emphasis on money until the 21st century, where sports becomes a trillion-dollar industry.

Let's talk about the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino. He often cozies up to world leaders before a tournament.

He had moved to Qatar to pr- prepare for the 2022 World Cup. He had a tight relationship with Vladimir Putin leading up to the World Cup in Russia. What about this World Cup? What have you been watching when it comes to Infantino's activities and his relationship with the Trump administration?

It's absolutely remarkable, his relationship with Donald Trump.

And Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, has been the sports washing enabler number one for President Trump. He has bent over backwards to help Trump at every single step of the road. Of course, there's that moment in December of 2025 where he basically made up this idea of a FIFA Peace Prize, and then turned around and awarded it to President Trump.

Apparently, people on the very powerful FIFA Council didn't even really know about this ward, award. This was something that Infantino apparently came up with himself. You're right, Infantino cozies up to people in power, and he's done so over the last three World Cups. And basically, he has a real incentive to try to keep FIFA's money spigot wide open.

Let's be real, the FIFA Men's World Cup is supposed to make FIFA more than $11 billion alone. That'll make it the most revenue of any sports event in world history. And so he does what it takes. The other thing is, though, you mentioned political spectacle before. Gianni Infantino has a real penchant for trying to create political spectacle, and it seems like he just kinda genuinely likes President Trump.

He even went to Melania's opening of her movie. That shows something.

Yeah. although a number of people were there that were surprising. Tech leaders and, yeah, various, folks showing up to that, that opening that you wouldn't expect.

Next up, Section B, ORIGINS - THE FASCIST HISTORY OF THE WORLD CUP

So a short history of modern-day sportswashing begins with the Nazi Olympics. That was when Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Olympics and invited people from around the world to see the majesty of Nazi Germany.

So the Nazi Games were a very good example of Nazi Germany using sport to cover up its aggression against neighboring countries and its repression of people at home.

He

even had his own personal, what we would know now as a PR director, Leni Riefenstahl, who did a film about the majesty of Nazi Germany through the lens of the Olympics, and the torch relay through countries that Adolf Hitler intended to roll tanks through

So the term may be new, but once the idea of sportswashing in your head, you start to see examples of it throughout the 20th century.

In

1964, soccer's European Nations Cup was held in Spain when the fascist Francisco Franco was dictator.

And then hear the sound of Ali Bomaye. That's what the people say,

and you can- Ali Bomaye. That means Ali, kill him.

This is the most joyous scene ever.

In 1974, the Rumble in the Jungle heavyweight title match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman took place in Zaire, now known as the DRC, Congo, during the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko.

But the biggest sporting event in the 20th century has always been the Olympics, which after a pause in 1940 and 1944, World War II, restarted in 1948 just as the Cold War was heating up.

We go through the Cold War, where the political divide and the repression in the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc countries was competing against the democracies in the West, and you had a period of boycott.

US President Jimmy Carter issued an ultimatum. And I have notified the Olympic Committee-

The boycotts. So when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979, President Jimmy Carter didn't want to let the Soviets use the Olympics to distract the world from their aggression.

And the Moscow Games proceeded with the smallest turnout of any Olympics in decades.

In other words, Carter tried to prevent the Soviet Union from sportswashing, although the term hadn't been invented yet.

Now all the world around Los Angeles will know it has begun here.

In revenge, Eastern Bloc countries boycotted the 1984 games, the next ones, in Los Angeles.

The rich blue California sky providing a backdrop, and even the blimps say welcome.

Which again shows you sport is incredibly political The 1988 Olympics, the next ones after that, took place in Montreal with Eastern Bloc countries fully participating. The Soviet Union would fall apart in 1991, but another geopolitical rival of the US was rapidly rising. China had started its astonishing economic expansion.

But there was one event that would sully China's international reputation for years to come.

After hours of shooting and facing a line of troops, the crowd is still here. They're shouting, "Stop the killing."

And dozens of people- The Tiananmen Square massacre happened in 1989, and that really gave the Chinese government a black eye.

They rolled tanks against students and workers with terrible casualties on, visible to the world on television.

Two others were killed yards away. Two more people lay wounded on the ground near me.

After that, the then leader Deng Xiaoping told his entire hierarchy, "We will host the Olympics," as a way of reintegrating with the world and putting forward a better, cleaner, more humane face.

So China sought to host the Olympics first in the year 2000. They lost because of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was too soon after the bloodshed. But in 2008, they won the right to host. It wasn't just a Summer Olympics. It was billed as China's coming out party.

So sportswashing almost always serves two purposes. The first is actually a domestic purpose. So many of these repressive countries, they don't have regular elections. This is a way actually to, use a sports event to get your people interested and engaged in, something that is a very nationalistic thing, hosting.

The second area is it often leads to catastrophic and large human rights abuses. For the Beijing Olympics, Minqi says, the Chinese government forced the evictions of as many as 10,000 people to make way for new stadiums. Human Rights Watch documented abuses of migrant labor and increasing repression of civil society, LGBTQ people, women, activists, and journalists.

So Deng Xiaoping, back in 1993 when he set out to win the Olympics, actually set in play, set in motion a playbook that dictators and autocrats are using today. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the athletes of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games. Russia deployed that playbook when they hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics.

The state was so invested that they launched a massive state-sponsored doping program to rake in the medals. Here is the planet's ultimate game, the final of the 21st Football World Cup. And then in 2018, they were hosting the World Cup across Russia, but they used forced labor. They cracked down on journalists and LGBT people, in the process.

Flicked in by Griezmann and flicked on, and France take the lead in the World Cup final.

The Russia World Cup was a human rights catastrophe. Their research showed that North Korean slave laborers were building the St. Petersburg stadium. The Human Rights Watch researcher on labor abuses was arrested trying to report on l- migrant labor abuses.

A lot of countries took a look at this and said, "Hey, let's pull a card out of, the playbook of China and Russia. If they can rehabilitate their human rights reputation without having to actually do reforms, maybe we can do the same."

In the last couple decades, we see a lot of Gulf states have taken a particular interest in soccer, in tennis, in golf.

I wanna talk about soccer for a minute. Why and when did, soccer become an interest to countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the, UAE? Like, why soccer and when?

I really think that dates back to the extremely corrupt awarding of the World Cups for 2018 to Russia, and the awarding in the same crooked vote to Qatar.

The World Cup in Qatar in 2022 was under preparation for more than a decade. It was awarded in December 2010, and the infrastructure was simply not there. The World Cup in Qatar cost $220 billion. It was building eight new stadiums in the desert where they previously didn't exist. The human cost was also high.

Between 2010 and 2022, thousands of migrant workers lost their lives building stadiums and other buildings for the World Cup. Neither the Qatari government or FIFA ever investigated or explained these deaths, nor did they compensate the workers' families.

Into the middle, Fernandez. Lautaro Martínez. Save Messi!

Clear away. Did it cross the line? Did it cross the line? Yes, it did.

Many viewed the 2022 World Cup as a huge success. FIFA made billions of dollars.

We're talking about an event watched by five billion people worldwide, so it's the most watched and the most expensive sporting event in the world. And that's why countries are vying to host it.

let's start there. Beyond the fact, of course, that, this is the year of the World Cup, what led you, with your interests, with your, both sporting and political proclivities, what led you to this topic? And how much did you know about this history of fascism, dictatorship, military violence in the World Cup, the intersection of those worlds?

How much of that did you know before planning these episodes?

These are great questions, Dave. I think, let's take it back to the beginning, to answer your first question. So for me, everybody tends to know me as the MMA guy, and I know that's where I cut my teeth. But the sport I fell in love with first was football, and honestly, the first time I ever experienced politics in sport was in the world of football.

So I had just... I was, I'm the son of a, a doctor and a teacher, and they were living in Bahrain at the time, so we weren't even in Egypt. So I'd spent a lot of my youth in Bahrain in the Gulf, and I came back to Egypt around 15 for the last three years of high school. And when I came back, I didn't have that many friends, and my cousin told me, "Hey, come join my group.

We're about to go catch a football game." And it just so happened to be my favorite team in Egypt, Al Ahly, facing off in an exhibition game against Barcelona, and this was the Barcelona of old. We're talking a young Leo Messi, Samuel Eto'o, Ronaldinho. It was that legendary squad, and they're coming on our turf to play my favorite team, so I wasn't gonna miss that.

So what I didn't know at the time, though, this is 2007, the Al Ahly team with- its hardcore fans had just formed their very first ultras group, and this was the very first ultras group to exist in Egypt. Now, for those who don't know, an ultra group can be sort of anything from hardcore football fans to violent hooligans, to even fascists, depending on where you are in Europe.

But that really wasn't the case in Egypt. For us, young men had no hope. This is pre-revolution Egypt. Not that much has changed post-revolution, but pre-revolution Egypt, y- as a young kid growing up, you really didn't feel like you had much of a future. Being in a foot- in the football stands was really one of the only times you could actually express yourself.

So- We went and attended, and I got to interact with these ultras who were wonderful people. And they were just raising these tifo banners, chanting songs, singing, having a good day, and every once in a while would be chanting at the government. It just so happened that on this day, they pissed them off enough that I actually got to see police officers come into the stands, pull out kids who look just like me.

I'm 15. I bet you there was a bunch of other underage kids there as well. The oldest was, like, 18 or 19. So they're-- we're dealing with children here for the most part, and the cops are taking them out one by one, dragging them and beating them badly with batons, like ruthless attacks, and I had never seen anything like this.

I'm 15 years old at the time, and all I'm thinking in my head is, "Why is this happening? What did we do? What did we do to deserve this?" I got lucky that day. I wasn't one of the people picked on. My cousin had me on the side. Things worked out in that end, but it absolutely shaped my understanding of the world around me.

It became clear to me that the government has something it fears about young men gathering in a sports environment. And Dave, they were right to do the Egyptian ultras, these Al Ahly ultras called the Ultras Ahlawy, ended up becoming revolutionaries during the 2011 uprising. They actually, because of their sort of ability to fight the police officers, which is really the focus of the Ahly in Egypt, was attacking police brutality, going one-on-one, facing off with the cops.

They had that sort of guerrilla warfare experience, so when it came time to the revolution, they were the ones who knew how to handle tear gas, for instance. The sort of formations that the police had. They knew when they were leading them into sort of a dead-end street, and that stuff saved people's lives during the revolution.

Even one of Egypt's, post-revolution, the first female to run for presidency in Egypt, Bassem Youssef, basically out-- like specifically said that the ultras saved her life that day. Now, that goes to show you football can actually play a massive role in politics. This has always been in the back of my mind.

When people ask me why do I see the world as, the sports world as political, I tell them I never really had a choice growing up in Egypt, and this is the story I always come back to. So this sets the scene for why I wanted to tackle the politicization of international football specifically, and of course, we're heading into a World Cup here, and Trump aside, even before Trump became the focus of the 2026 World Cup, when Saudi Arabia was awarded the 2034 World Cup, I asked myself, "How did we get to this spot where the, it was simply handed to them on a gold platter?

No resistance-" "... no issues, voting secured 100%." And it came, and I came to realize that, and this is really the aim of the show, FIFA j- isn't just being exploited by authoritarian regimes. It itself, over the years, has morphed into its own authoritarian regime. This is what we really are trying to emphasize here.

We're telling the story not just of FIFA hopelessly and helplessly wandering into the arms of happy dictators. That's not the story here. The story is that FIFA, as it changed, as it became less transparent, more transactional, more corrupt, its perfect bedfellows were these dictatorships. Now, to answer your second question, if I learned something new here, absolutely.

I'll tell you, initially I thought to myself, "Oh, I must know this. The Mussolini story, 1934 World Cup? Come on. How much do I not know about this?" It turns out, quite a bit. Did you know that journalists, for instance, went home with little fascist tea sets, basically, to take home to their families?

That was h- that was happening, and it was one of those moments where I'm thinking to myself- Ah, we have been s- us as journalists have been complicit in so many events that we don't choose not to cover properly. Yeah. And it's not like people

didn't know what Mussolini was. Sometimes for the price of a tea set.

Exa- a fascist tea set on top

of that. Fascist tea set. I'm, I'm, I hate to interrupt you, especially wh- when you're on a roll, but I wanted to ask you about that '34 tournament. Before you share anything about what happened at that '34 World Cup, it... I had that very question about how much of this is FIFA seeking out dictators, how much back then?

'Cause we see what it is now. But even in '34, almost a century ago, how much of it was this, incipient fascism seeking out the World Cup? And would you say that Mussolini was the first political leader to see the benefit in exploiting the global appeal of the sport, similarly to the way that Hitler would do two years later with the '36 Olympics, in terms of seeing this, the fascist tendency towards pageantry nationalism?

Absolutely. Mussolini laid the blueprint for how the FIFA World Cup would be exploited moving forward. It was a remarkable feat on his end because he didn't even love the sport. Mussolini, when you think of him, you think of race cars, you think of motor sports and what that meant to fascism. If he's talking about advancing his country technologically, modernizing Italy, fast cars really fit that bill.

Boxing was big for him. The idea, of course, the, the perfect Italian male and the idea- ... of your physical appearance. Football really didn't represent that. It was also not an individual sport, it was a team sport. But the way the Italians played the sport was absolutely brutal, and Mussolini learned that you can actually use the sport to unify different parts of Italy, which was, at the time, we think of Italy now a unified country, but at, before, this wasn't so simple.

It was a new, young country in its current form, and Mussolini figured out that football would be a great way to nationalize, the country's interests and unify it behind his vision of politics. And he really did that extremely well. What he actually did as well, because here's where we can talk about FIFA as a helpless player in the story.

Okay. Because its first president, Jules Rimet, was actually, as we've spoken to multiple historians on the, on, in the series, all agree that he was the best president FIFA's ever had. This is the man who truly believed in the fraternity between nations. He was a devout Catholic. He was, he believed in labor rights.

He was generally a good person, to the point that when the World Cup first went to Italy, he thought, " okay, great. It's gonna come to Europe. It was in Uruguay before that. This should be fine But he was so appalled with what he saw that when it came time to host the '38 World Cup, he actually chose to make it a very, as we found out, quiet World Cup.

No politics whatsoever. That one was hosted in France. We're talking right in the lead up to World War II. And he said, "No. No politics." And 'cause he was in control. Jules Rimet is French, so he had more influence in what was happening in France and said, "No. Never again. We're not gonna have that happen with our World Cup."

So this is the only time you actually see a FIFA president truly rebel against what had happened. You can sense he was, he felt guilty about it. He even said, "It feels to me that this wasn't an event organized by FIFA, but by Mussolini." That's how- Wow ... influential Mussolini truly was in the process. He understood it.

I'll give it to him. He really figured out the power of sports in that moment and the sheer force of the propaganda he could produce.

Wow. Incredible. And when Mussolini, looked to do this in 1934, how much... Because there's so much about the Hitler Olympics in '36 where the mind is also on conquest.

On not just, "Look at me, I'm the fascist leader. Praise me," but also we're also, laying out a propagandistic and even organizational framework for expansion and violence. How much of that was in the '34 World Cup as well?

It absolutely existed. Less than a couple of years later, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia.

He was laying the foundations from then on, but there was also some hypocrisy. He had, in order to create sort of an Italian team that was truly capable of winning the World Cup, he needed to actually look for, y- a, a diaspora Italians, basically. People who were living in South America, what were called the Oriundi.

And he actually brought them in and, happily, elevated their status so that they could compete in the team, and that's the team- Wow ... that helped him win the World Cup. But when it came time for him to invade Ethiopia, all those Oriundi said, "Yeah, we don't want any of this," and they went straight back to their countries.

So- Wow ... it's really interesting to see the hypocrisy of it all. It's yeah

Benito Mussolini took his role as head of a sporting nation personally. There's this photo of him from late in his reign on the cover of a French magazine in a black cap, black pants, and no shirt. The headline is Mussolini: Sporting Dictator. Football was never really Il Duce's thing. He liked boxing and auto racing.

He preferred big muscles and big engines. But at a certain point, Mussolini couldn't deny football's global popularity, and he realized that all it took to make football appealing to a fascist crowd was the right framing. Here's Baxa again.

Soccer or football, it becomes an ideal metaphor for the kind of unified mass fascist state that, Mussolini wanted to create.

It was an ideal sport because it's a game where the sum is greater than the parts, where individuals are asked to sacrifice themselves for the team. And the beautiful game is, it's a more modern, I think, description of it. I don't think the Italians ever played a beautiful game, to be honest.

It was a very brutal type of soccer, very violent form of soccer. So any sport that had a degree of violence to it, I think was okay with the regime

The regime took control of the sport. They created a top-down structure to run the Italian Football Federation, merging small local teams into citywide ones, and they banned most foreign players from the league so that they could strengthen the local talent pool. The regime knew their push into football would work as a way to bring the nation together because Mussolini had discovered something profound, not just about football, but about human psychology itself.

Mussolini was a student of Gustave Le Bon, the sociologist/psychologist who talked about crowds and how to influence crowds. He understood how an individual can lose oneself in a crowd, lose one's critical faculties and one's sense of individualism. It's very easy to get swept up in the emotions.

He was able to see that and exploit it.

By the time FIFA chose Italy as the host of the '34 World Cup, Mussolini understood something that few people did at the time, maybe not even FIFA President Jules Rimet.

The World Cup was more powerful than any diplomatic summit. It was a stage on which nations could legitimize themselves using the world's most popular sport. And Mussolini, he could use some legitimacy. For his entire reign, he had destroyed essential freedoms, assassinated rivals, and stamped out dissent.

By the '30s, his international ambitions were growing. And what better way to convince the world you're strong and secure and trustworthy than to put on a massive show?

So the regime poured a huge amount of money into the event. They wanted to dwarf the previous World Cup. If the Uruguayans had three stadiums, the Italians would have eight state-of-the-art ones. The trains running between them from Milan to Florence to Naples, they would run on time. Foreign spectators and journalists got discounted train fares and tea sets with the World Cup logo side by side with the fascist one.

Mussolini appointed generals to run the show and controlled each and every aspect of the tournament. Whatever FIFA said was an afterthought.

The regime in '34 kind of took over the event. It was always very closely curated. He really uses the World Cup as a stage to present Italy in a certain image. They pushed FIFA aside.

At the time, FIFA admitted as much. Rimet was quoted as saying, "It was not FIFA that really organized the World Cup, but Mussolini

I asked Baxa which of the games in '34 were most memorable.

It had to be the games against Spain in the quarterfinals. Spain was considered one of the top teams with Italy. Very rough game.

Spain was led by goalkeeper Ricardo Zamora. They called him El Divino. He was known for spectacular saves and the flat cap he wore on the pitch, and once goaltending through a broken sternum.

The Italians, under coach Vittorio Pozzo, kicked the crap out of him. The Spanish repaid them by breaking an Italian player's leg.

Pozzo said it was like being in an infirmary because so many players were injured. First game ended up as a tie, and so they played a second game, the next day, and both games were very animated.

Italy survived its quarterfinal with Spain, then shut out the Austrians in the semifinal to advance to the final against Czechoslovakia. The final was the culmination of this perfectly staged World Cup. It was also symbolic. Fascist Italy versus poor, ethnically fractured, democratic Czechoslovakia. It was a proxy battle between political systems, one Italy intended to win.

For the first 80 minutes of the match, that plan was in jeopardy. Italy was losing one-nil. Then the Italian squad tied it up and clinched the win in extra time

In the end, fascism was victorious. Mussolini presented his team not just FIFA's trophy, but the enormous one we heard about at the top of the episode called the Coppa del Duce. Instead of the goddess of victory, it depicted four muscular men fighting for a football, one triumphant above the rest

After the whole show ended, there were doubts about the tournament's integrity. There was some funky officiating and rumors of Mussolini meeting refs backstage before games. Baxa says these claims weren't ever proven, but either way, the spectacle worked. Stadiums were constructed, trains ran on time, tourists and journalists went home with their fascist tea sets, and Italy emerged victorious in a tournament broadcast around the world They had proven the power of fascism.

October 1935, Mussolini's fascist army invaded and conquered Ethiopia in seven months.

After the World Cup ended, Mussolini's foreign policy became more and more aggressive. Just one year later, in 1935, he invaded Ethiopia in an attempt to rebuild the great Roman Empire. Then in '37, he withdrew from the League of Nations, basically the UN of its time, and further buddied up to Nazi Germany.

The whole time, Italy just kept winning At the infamous Nazi Olympics in '36, Italy ranked third in medal count.

Baxa told me that these sporting strategies really did help legitimize fascism across the world as this new modern form of governance, at least on the surface. Beneath it, fascism not only destroyed human liberty, it left hundreds of thousands dead. So I wondered, back in '34, as so many inside Italy were already struggling under Mussolini's iron fist, did anyone have the will to fight back against the World Cup?

'34, no. That there's, as far as I know, there was no attempt to boycott that I know of.

The emphasis here is on that I know of. Because like with all closed societies, getting the truth is an uphill battle.

The problem with determining dissent is that the press is so closely controlled in this period.

Even the narratives of the games are not to be relied upon.

But Jonathan Wilson did point to one man so affected by the '34 World Cup that in the years that followed, he fought back against the regime. That man was FIFA President Jules Rimet.

I think Rimet was uneasy about what he experienced in '34.

Rimet had seen what the '34 World Cup was. He'd seen what the '36 Olympics was. He was terrified the '38 World Cup would be more of the same, and he pulled every diplomatic lever he could to get that tournament to France, where he could do things his way. In the context of a time to pull that off, I think is an extraordinary diplomatic feat, which is significantly underappreciated.

In 1938, the world was coming apart at the seams. Fascism was ascendant. The Nazis were drawing up plans to invade Poland. This World Cup was Rimet's stand on his home turf. And what he did there in France was make it a quiet World Cup, as much as he was able.

You have a very strange tournament in '38.

Bizarrely, given what else is going on, it is the least political of all World Cups in terms of the hosts. You have anti-fascist demonstrations. You have Italy playing in a black kit in the quarterfinal against France, which is clearly making a point. You have only 15 teams there, not 16, because Austria had been subsumed into Germany by the Anschluss.

You have China pulling out because of the war with Japan. You have Spain pulling out because of the Civil War. Your politics are there and they're swirling all around, but they're not coming out of the hosts. And I think that is Rimet's triumph, really. And I think that's where you see just what a great diplomat he was

Rimet was holding on to his ideal that international football could strengthen fraternity between nations. Even in 1938, just a year before the Second World War, when there seemed to be a little fraternity left

Italy won the 1938 World Cup. In 1940, it invaded France alongside Hitler and the Third Reich

Mussolini was the first dictator to fully grasp that in the twentieth century, power was no longer won by iron fists and military might alone. It was won through images and emotions and collective experience. The World Cup offered precisely that. FIFA as an organization would eventually absorb these lessons because the World Cup exerted a gravitational pull.

It attracted power, influence, and enormous sums of money. It was not just a sporting competition. It was political strategy

So let's get to South America and episode two. What, so talk first and foremost about the FIFA of the 1970s. How different was it from the FIFA of the 1930s?

You s- you spoke about that there was this transformation over the course of the 20th century to today, in terms of FIFA seeing itself not just as a, tell me if I'm, mischaracterizing what you said, but not just as a lick spittle to, fascist interests, but actually becoming a fascist, a self-conscious sort of fascistic interest unto itself.

Talk a little bit about where FIFA was by the time we hit the 1970s.

Oh, yeah. So in the 1970s, we're in a very interesting time for FIFA. FIFA has transitioned from Jules Rimet to a leader called Stanley Rous, and Rous is in trouble at this point. He's this old British guy, and he's set in his ways.

And for the most part, he was a decent FIFA president, but also one who, and I'm sure you've heard this mentality before, Dave, very much a, politics stays very separate to sports. And he's sort of- ... militant about that, to the extent that he was more than happy to allow South Africa, apartheid South Africa, to compete in the World Cup, which led to all sorts of backlash, including from member states who rebelled significantly against him.

So in comes this Brazilian suave figure named João Havelange in 1974. He talks a big game, says, "We're gonna reform FIFA. We're gonna change FIFA." "And we're not going to allow South Africa into the World Cup and into competition in general." And this sort of wins him all this appeal. If it- it's a transitional moment because it feels like Stanley Rous himself didn't understand what was happening politically around him, and it just opened the path for somebody like Havelange, who he's saying all these wonderful flowery things, but this is a man who is the son of an arms dealer.

He's, Brazilian aristocracy to an extent. This is a man who is about to take FIFA and understand that there's a lot more money to be made. FIFA at this point, up until the 1970s, wasn't the multi-billion dollar enterprise it is now. They hadn't quite figured out the power of sponsorships and commercials and broadcasting rights.

That was João Havelange. So he be- is elected as FIFA president in 1974, and the deals start flowing in. There's a lot of money suddenly coming into FIFA, but FIFA's still structured as it was when it was, as one of our, as one of our guests end up saying, a chess club. Which is all well and good when you're a chess club.

But when you are FIFA, that simply doesn't work. It leads to an exceptional amount of corruption and kickbacks and bribery, and João Havelange thrives in this atmosphere. And he starts winning over member states. They start figuring out, hey, every single member, these countries get, they get...

you have a football association. You're a member of FIFA. Every single one of their votes counts the same, whether you're the US, whether you're Zimbabwe. It's all the same, vote. This is very different to the United States, and you think of, how many votes, Electoral votes per state, very different.

This is a one for one here. So he says, "Okay, instead of, being diplomatic with the big boys, the ones who have more skin in the game, the ones who have more leverage, say a Germany, a France, a US, those countries, I'm just going to go make friends with all the smaller countries and start giving them money- Ooh

in exchange for their votes." And that's how he'd do it. He ended up making, the association in South America called CONMEBOL and CONCACAF in North America just ended up became, becoming these voting blocks that would go in his favor, and that's how FIFA continued to maintain control. And to this day, since then, Sepp Blatter and right now Gianni Infantino, this is how they maintain power.

They call these

⏹ Highlight end: Egypt Ultras, Mussolini & Havelange's FIFA

things development funds, where they hand these very poor member associations a lot of money to develop the game, right? But in exchange for that comes your vote and your silence and your obedience. And a lot of the countries are more than happy to play along because it works in their benefits.

I'll scratch my back, you scratch mine. And yet everything else is ignored. And as you start leaning into more authoritarian regimes, there is no resistance because there's so much money at stake for everybody. So nobody stops the World Cup from going to, you know- to, to Argentina- All right,

Tina

for instance, right?

Like-

That's the question. Yeah. It's really interesting- How does this-- Everything you just described, Kareem, was so detailed. How does it then lead us to down the road of perdition to the Argentinian World Cup?

What's really interesting about the Argentinian World Cup is that it was actually handed to Argentina before the most recent of the coup d'etats that led to, General, Jorge Rafael Videla.

So the truth is that w- at the time, there was Peronism, and there was all sorts of-- Argentina was in a very difficult place. Between its former leadership under P- under Peron, and Peronism in general was under attack, and you had all sorts of coup d'etats simply happening left and right in the country.

And eventually, you have this military junta that takes over, and they inherit this World Cup. But the thing is, they were a vicious, regime from the get-go. They were disappearing thousands of people. And, at one point, there are reports that they were throwing people off planes straight into the liver- into the River Plate.

This is a horrific regime from the ground up. The torture cells that they started, right? It was truly a dark time in Argentina. So this regime is thinking, "Okay, we're about to get all this attention pointed in our direction. W- are we-- Should we cancel? Should we take it forward?"

And Videla says, "No. We're going to really lean into this World Cup, and we're gonna make it a big success for us. We're gonna, if, we're gonna, pressure the team to do well. We're going to invest in them. We're gonna put the resources, and everybody's going to ignore entirely what we're doing on the

side."

Here's the thing. It could have absolutely failed, but it didn't because Argentina did so well. So well, in fact, that they would go on to win the tournament. And to give you a sense of just how much, something like sporting success on that level, when it's your national sport, it's your national pride, and you are watching your team win despite your own life being miserable or despite your own personal suffering, there's a moment where you can suddenly escape from all of that and just embrace this moment unabashedly.

And that's exactly what happens to most Argentinians, to the point that there's an incredible story from one of the people who was tortured and was disappeared inside, this horrible network of torture cells that they had in Argentina. At one point, one of the generals looked at them and they s- and these, These torture victims and said, "You wanna see just how much nobody is thinking about you right now?

Come with me." And he puts them in a car, and they go. And Argentina had just won the World Cup, and they're in the streets, and they're in their car, but there are so many people in the streets that the streets get blocked, and the cars can't go anywhere. And this woman is inside saying, "I can just step outside, shout that I've been disappeared," and nobody's going to turn around or even think about her.

Wow.

And to her, she could never truly understand whether the general did this on purpose to show her this, or whether he was just-- he felt sorry for them and said, "Come on out and have a day in the sun with everybody else celebrating in Argentina." But it's very dark to think about that. That's just how powerful sports are, and it's not even just propaganda.

When you have such organic success like that, if your team is just doing so well and it's gonna win the World Cup, it does something incredible to people. I have seen Egypt in matches that aren't as important as the World Cup when the country is silent. Think of the African Cup of Nations and Egypt being one of the most successful teams ever there.

I have been in the country when we're watching the game. It is dead silent. And when a goal comes, you can almost hear the entire country erupt. All the buildings around you, all the apartment buildings, all the homes, everybody's cheering. It's a collective scream of joy that only sports can do. I don't think there's a political situation that does this.

I don't think, maybe music as well, but sports has this phenomenal ability to unite people even at the darkest of times, and FIFA and authoritarian regimes know how to exploit this.

Now, Section C, THE FIFA GREED MACHINE

As I mentioned at the outset as well, there's also this issue with FIFA trying to use its cartel-like power over controlling this tournament to force down huge licensing fees, in international jurisdictions.

So they're basically saying, look, India, for example, if when, if India wants coverage of the World Cup, come up with some joint venture and pay FIFA $100 million. And India was like, "Yeah, no, we're not gonna do that. How about $20 million?" So there was this JV between, an Indian company a- and Disney.

India's Reliance Disney joint venture goes, "We'll make a $20 million offer. We don't think the World Cup is worth $100 million And now we're weeks away, and normally you would have a licensing deal, I don't know, months ago, but FIFA hasn't made a licensing deal with India. Not only that, it hasn't made a licensing deal with China yet, and China's flexing its muscle and saying, "We just don't...

We're not gonna pay you what you want, FIFA." India's flexing its muscle and saying, "We're not gonna pay you what you're demanding." And these are massive markets, right? There has been no deal announcement for China, which FIFA says accounts for 49.8% of all hours of viewing on digital and social platforms globally during the 2022 World Cup.

Let that sink in right here And so you have that taking place. FIFA also so expensive. Like people like in, in the other host cities, there's not that many games in Mexico and Canada. But take a look at this. Mexico's out of reach World Cup tickets cause discontent among fans. Of the 104 matches in this year's World Cup, four will be played in Monterrey, four in Guadalajara, and five in the newly renovated, Banorte Stadium in Mexico City, including the opening match between Mexico and South Africa.

When FIFA released a second round of tickets in April, prices for the first game in Mexico on June 11th ranged from $3,000 to $10,000. The sky-high ticket costs are unaffordable for most Mexicans, who basically earn an average monthly income of about $1,000. And when people are saying this, it doesn't feel the same as the previous two World Cups.

This World Cup basically belongs to the United States. It doesn't feel Mexican. That's how it feels to me, because even ticket prices are out of reach for everyone. So where this is supposed to be a celebration of... was supposed to be a celebration of Canada, the United States, Mexico, right? The people who are part of the USMCA, or the Canada-Mexico-US agreement.

Donald Trump, wants to make this about him, and the ticket prices are just completely out of control right now as well. And we're seeing this as well. FIFA ramps up efforts to sell luxury World Cup hospitality tickets after what they're calling a revenue reevaluation. And so FIFA is upping efforts to sell luxury hospitality tickets for the World Cup, with packages still available for 102 of the 104 matches at the expanded tournament.

Mexico's Group A against South Korea and one last 32 fixture expected to feature Spain are the only matches showing a lack of availability on FIFA's hospitality platform. A new cacity- a new category of suite essentials has been added to lower-profile games, allowing customers to buy an individual ticket for a suite that would pr- previously have been sold to a group.

The Guardian understands the intensified activity follows a downward reevaluation by FIFA and its partner on location of the revenue expected from most lucrative, ticket categories. So these luxury boxes and these luxury experiences in 102 of the 104 games are basically not selling anything. People don't wanna spend 20, 10, 15, $30,000 on this.

And not only that But you have FIFA struggling to sell tickets to the first US game when the United States Men's National Team opens the World Cup versus Paraguay. You would think, wow, in the US versus Paraguay. Clearly that's going to be sold out you would expect, right? Nope. Ticket sales for the United States' high-priced World Cup opener are lagging behind other matches in Los Angeles, according to a document distributed to local organizers and a variety of other indicators.

The document, dated April 10th and shared with hosts to ensure, adequate planning, listed 40,934 tickets purchased for that June 12th match between the US and Paraguay, compared with 50,661 for the Iran-New Zealand match three days later. Let me repeat, more people are excited to see Iran play New Zealand in the United States than to watch the United States versus Paraguay.

But guess what? The stadium's capacity is 69,650 for the World Cup. 69,650 seats. Only 40,934 seats sold for that first game, with US versus Paraguay. 50,661 sold for Iran versus New Zealand. This is the World Cup. It's like saying the Super B- 104 Super Bowls, yet there's what, d- over 10, 20% of the, of the...

there's gonna be empty seats or they're gonna lower- they're gonna have to lower the prices. And then you have this article from the LA Times, "Fans vent frustration over high World Cup ticket prices for worse seats." And it says, it talks about the story. Aaron Levinson wanted to go to a World Cup game this summer, but he didn't wanna take out a second mortgage to pay for that.

So after winning a chance to spend $560 for individual tickets in a FIFA lottery last fall, Levinson backed out. Then he backed in again this spring. "Maybe the sticker shock started wearing off. I got caught up in the excitement." So Levinson decided to pluck down $850 for two category three tickets, among the cheapest available for he and his wife to go to the final group, US group play game at SoFi Stadium in June.

When his wife reminded him that his two sons would be visiting, he bought two more tickets, bringing his investment to $1,700, more than double the price of a seven-day cruise. And it goes on to say- and that doesn't include the nearly $250 for parking. "That's really steep," said Levinson, a Galaxy season ticketholder for more than a decade.

"But when are we going to get to go to another World Cup? This was special, until it wasn't." Levinson bought the tickets without knowing where the seats would be, but when he saw a color-coded seat map of SoFi, it showed Category 3 sections were in corners of the top deck, far closer to the stadium's translucent roof than the playing field.

Maybe the cruise would have been a better idea after all. "I don't know if disappointed is the right word. It's just bizarre. I like to sit in a certain spot. I like the sideline. I don't wanna be behind the goal. I just feel like for the price I paid, at least I can know where the seats are going to be."

And he's hardly the only person unhappy with their experience buying tickets for this World Cup. That may explain why tickets reportedly remain available for more than a third of the 72 group stage games, and many of the expensive hospitality packages also remain unsold, and that is rating- raising worries FIFA may have priced the World Cup so beyond the reach of many fans that some matches will be played before empty seats, despite the fact that FIFA President Gianni InInfantino told CNBC that all 104 games were sold out.

FIFA later clarified that statement, saying InInfantino meant to say that he expected the games would sell out. Either way, concerns about empty seats may be overblown, since the fourth and final phase of ticket sales don't begin until April 1, and the tournament organizers are confident demand will match inventory, although now we know in May that is not the case.

And of course, we know with the boycott, the regional instability, Trump's catastrophic war against the world, Ca- Donald Trump's tariffs against the world, that we're seeing the massive retaliation and backlash

So Seattle is expected to spend about $16 million on this World Cup, a lot of that going to security. They're also getting money from state and federal grants to beef up their ability to host the games. $11 billion in profit for FIFA, $16 million outlay for at least one host city. Multiply that by, across all the host cities in, North America. Why do cities do this? Do they get a benefit out of it?

One of the reasons why cities sign on is because they're told on the front end that this is all gonna be unicorns, rainbows, and lots of money in their pocket.

The reality, however, is much different. The FIFA business model could be condensed into saying that the public pays, Seattle taxpayers pay, and the private entities around, they tend to profit, the corporate sponsors, the broadcasters, the advertisers, and so on. That has long been the model. I've been seeing figures of, in the neighborhood of $100 million in outlays for cities who are now dialing back their public celebrations because they know they can't afford it.

Meanwhile, FIFA is giving zero to these cities. You heard in the news recently the governor of New Jersey, who they raised the ticket, or the t- ticket prices on the travel to the stadium to some whopping $150, and she got all sorts of flak for this, and she went public with the information that, "Look, FIFA is giving us $0, so unless I wanna put this on the back of my taxpayers, I need to figure out a way of recouping costs."

So unfortunately, that's just the business model that FIFA brings to the table, and now people across the United States are waking up to the reality of it now that the bill is kinda coming due.

Can FIFA be reformed? There was this huge corruption scandal that brought Gianni Infantino to power within the organization.

That case was brought by the US Department of Justice. Infantino promised to transform FIFA to be more transparent and accountable. What has happened since then?

In 2015, there was a remarkable corruption festival that people in FIFA got caught. And a lot of us who watch sport thought, "Okay, this is the moment where they're finally going to reform."

And in fact, that's when the current president jumped in and promised that he would, in fact, reform FIFA. But unfortunately, really nothing has changed. And in fact, there's a group in London called Fair Square, they're a human rights group that follows sports very carefully. They issued a statement not too long ago that argued FIFA is arguably more poorly governed today than a full decade ago, and they got a bunch of academics and activist groups, advocacy groups to sign on.

And full disclosure, I was one of those academics that did sign that statement. And part of the reason why people feel this way is because essentially the business model of FIFA, aside from the public pays and private profits, is an enormous patronage network where the president of FIFA gives millions out to football associations around the world in order to retain their loyalty.

At the most recent meetings in Vancouver, you got a glimpse at how this actually works. You had people from around the world already advocating for Infantino and endorsing him for the next presidential election, which isn't even happening until 2027. And so you've also got vice presidents and members of the FIFA Council who attend two to four meetings and make in the neighborhood of 250 to $300,000 a year.

So of course, they're going along with this great deal that they have and handing more and more power to Infantino. And so the whole deck is stacked in Infantino's favor, and it really doesn't help in terms of conjuring up a lot of oversight of the organization. And those are the reasons why we find ourself in the situation that we are today.

I'm talking with Jules Boykoff, professor of political science at Pacific University, and the author of the forthcoming book, Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine. It's gonna be out June 9th, so it'll be your companion book, folks, if you like, to the World Cup, hosted partially here in Seattle.

Jules, before we go, you love soccer. I love soccer. This is obviously not a benevolent organization, FIFA. It's out to make money. It doesn't really hide that intention very much. But when the World Cup comes to town, I'm going to one of the matches. I just, I love this sport. I think the World Cup is one of the most beautiful...

Once you get on the pitch, one of the most beautiful events there is in terms of just pure competition, sports, the beauty of the game, the passion of the fans from all over the world It's fun. I j- I love it. A- and I know all of these, things that you've laid out for me, but I still am gonna watch the tournament.

How do you reconcile that yourself as a fan of the beautiful game?

I am so glad you asked that because listeners might be sitting there thinking to themself, "Who is this grumpadelic academic- ... with a knee-jerk built-in penchant for slamming my favorite sport?" And, I, like you just pointed out, I played professional soccer.

I had the good fortune of representing the under 23 men's national US soccer team in international matches. Played against Brazil back in the day. I remem- I have fond memories of playing professional indoor soccer in the beautiful city of Seattle. I played in KeyArena. I remember one night I had a magical night where I was staying in the same hotel as Ziggy Marley, and he patted me on the back, and I went out that night and scored four assists.

It was an all-timer for me. So I've got all sorts of personal fond memories about soccer, and I love the sport. And here's the thing. I don't think we need to devote ourself to the death of complexity. We can both critique the heck out of FIFA and demand more out of them and appreciate these athletes, these worker athletes, if we're really gonna be honest about it, who bring so much joy to this world.

Soccer brings community. It forges community that can go on down through the generations. And I think soccer is worth fighting for. I don't support what FIFA's doing with it, but I think it's such a valuable thing in society that we should still continue to link our elbows together and fight for it to get better for the world.

Yeah, and that, it just seems, it seems incredibly difficult for something like that to really take place.

Because, this was supposed to have already happened. FIFA had a huge, massive scandal, right? The FBI shows up, arrests a bunch of... wasn't this, didn't we take care of the FIFA corruption ? Right? I re- I remember there was a time, I think it was back in, oh, Jesus, it was the longest, a long time ago, like 12 years ago now, where that was supposed to be it.

Hey, they're gonna have to clean it up now. They can't... But now, I think M- I think Miguel Delaney put it best, is he said that basically they used to, hide the corruption, right? They used to maneuver- ... and move money around. And it's all backdoor deals and envelopes full of cash.

But now it seems if we just do the corruption, out in the open, then, you can't call it corruption anymore. Yeah, and for people in the United States, that'll sound really familiar when you think about what's happening with the Trump administration, his various crypto ventures, his son Jared, or his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, getting two billion for his private equity company from Saudi Arabia.

It's all right there in the open. And perhaps that's why Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump seem to be getting along so well. They are people that love the spotlight. They love a spectacle, and they love, being around people that are rich, and they love enriching themselves and the people around them.

And so it shouldn't maybe surprise us that they're gonna come together. It's gonna be really interesting to see what they do at this World Cup. I think there's going to be lots of little footholds for people to push back, but this is a formidable one-two punch in Infantino and Trump. And I have to say, Infantino is the number one enabler for Donald Trump's sportswashing, and I'm really interested to see w- how it plays out in the coming month two before the World Cup starts.

Yeah, it does seem these guys all look up to each other. They copy one another. W- we saw our, we saw JD Vance, campaigning for Viktor Orbán in, in Hungary and, thankfully that, that, that didn't work out too well.

But, like you said, they all seem to learn and take notes from one another about, what they, what... And it's almost like sometimes it's just, it's almost like Infantino is just, daring. What are what are you gonna do? Are you guy- you guys all gonna try and, actually vote me out?

Are you gonna... Is there a country or a confederation that's gonna say, "Actually, you know what? This is too much for us. We're just not gonna go to the World Cup." I haven't heard any- serious rumblings of any country really considering not going. We didn't hear anything about that in 2022 as w- in 2022 the whole big thing was, " they're gonna let us wear these, armbands, to represent, LGBTQ, groups."

And then two days before the tournament FIFA's " a- actually even that little token thing that you were gonna do, you can't do it anymore." Yeah ... do you think we're gonna see similar surprises kinda sprung on us where FIFA will come out a couple days before the tournament and just, maybe come out and say, " you can't protest this.

You can't do this. You can't do that." And it just doesn't- ... give people time to, to react, right? It's gonna be too late by then. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that. For me there were two really interesting things that happened in the days right before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. And one of 'em was what you were talking about, this sorta kerfuffle over a pretty bland effort by players- to wear an armband, with, a rain- rainbow on it. Seems pretty, weak honestly compared to some of the options that are available to them. And FIFA said, "Oh yes, you might get a, you'll get a yellow card if you do that." And y- they were even bandying about the idea of a suspension. The other thing that happened right before the World Cup as you'll remember, is Qatar all of a sudden just decided, guess what, there's gonna be no beer sales inside of the stadiums at all.

And Budweiser, is paying like 63, million pounds for their sponsorship. They all must have been like, "What?" Qatar just did that and Infantino just let 'em. Now, you think about what could President Trump do two days before the World Cup when he's got maximum leverage. What's Gianni Infantino going to do?

Yank the World Cup two days beforehand? Yep. The closer we get to the World Cup, in a way the more power President Donald Trump has to do all sorts of wacky and horrible things that FIFA will not be able to stop him. The fact that, Infantino was trying to get Trump to stop, going after Iran and just allow them to participate in the tournament, or that some people are saying to Infantino now that he should put pressure on Trump to not have any ICE arrests during the actual tournament or in cities where there's games during the tournament at least.

That's all happening just right now. He has almost no leverage whatsoever on Trump, and Trump is obviously the most like erratic president in the history of the modern presidency. So if even if he agreed to Infantino, "Yeah man, like no ICE during the, World Cup at all," means absolutely nothing at this stage.

And so I think you're smart to look backwards to understand what might happen when we look forward to the 2026 World Cup. Yeah, that really is the thing for me is that, He is easily the most unpredictable president that, that this country has ever had. It's basically once the stock market closes every day, it's who...

who the hell knows what's gonna happen now? Yeah, but so I just wonder if you were considering traveling from outside the US to the US for the World Cup. Like I perso- I personally don't, I don't see how anybody could actually do that. Is, I, it just seem like you could be...

we're hearing stories about what you might have to do to get here in terms of... just forget the cost for a second anyway, if anyone can even afford all this stuff. But just the actual act of getting into the country, bringing your phone with you, not being detained at the border, not being harassed, in the cities that you're staying in because you look like maybe someone that shouldn't be here.

What, whatever that means. What... It just seems like the realm of possibilities of things that could happen to someone traveling here would prevent any person to just, put, and say, "Oh, you know what? Forget it. There's another one in four years. Yeah, I'm just not gonna do it."

Yeah. I have been arguing along with my colleague and often co-author, Dave Zirin, over at The Nation, that people shouldn't come to the United States for this World Cup. You just should not come. It is not a safe country to visit. Of course, it's not a safe country if you're a racialized person.

Everybody knows what ICE is doing thanks to the Kavanaugh doctrine or the Kavanaugh rule. Basically, ICE can grab somebody just based on what they look like. If you're somebody, a racialized person from Latin America, Africa, y- I don't even see the upsides whatsoever. It... It's, like, all downsides.

And it's not just racialized people. Some white guy plumber from Ireland ended up in, in detention for a long time. A woman from Canada and her daughter recently were in detention for a long time. The list goes on. German backpackers, teenagers. The list goes on and on.

This is unfortunately just not a safe place for people to come. Lacquer on top of that, the fact that the Trump administration has said to four countries participating in the World Cup that your fans cannot come. So if you're from Iran, you're from Haiti, you're from Senegal, you're from, Ivory Coast, Côte d'Ivoire, you are basically not at all welcome to come to matches in the United States.

And now, the Trump administration is saying that with an- another bash of countries, that include places that have qualified for the World Cup like Algeria, Cape Verde, Tunisia, that if you wanna come in, you have to pay $15,000 for a visa, that, per person, and that you'll get that money back if you don't overextend, overstay your visa or stay and try to get asylum.

That's also gonna box out a lot of people. How... Do we just sit around, me and you, with, 15,000 in spare cash that we can just drop down? And then, you wanna bring your daughter, now you're up to $30,000. It's just, ridiculous, and it's racist, and it's discriminatory, and FIFA's supposed to be the very opposite of that.

It's supposed to be against discrimination. It's always talking about how it's against discrimination. So there are just so many reasons not to come. If you must watch a World Cup match, I personally would strongly advise going to Canada if you're coming from outside of the country or going to Mexico to do it there.

And finally, Section D, PUSHBACK - TRAVEL BANS, BOYCOTTS, AND RECLAIMING THE GAME

Finally today, getting or not getting to the World Cup. The start of FIFA's big tournament is less than a month away. 48 national teams will face off in matches in Canada, Mexico, and the US.

The Trump administration's immigration policies, including travel bans, have created concerns. But Washington now seems to be relaxing some restrictions.

NPR's Sergio Martinez-Beltran joins us to explain. Good morning.

Hey, Ayesha.

So remind us about this travel ban imposed by President Trump earlier this year.

There are 39 countries who are under either a full or partial travel ban. For 19 of those countries, the State Department has suspended issuing all visas.

For the rest, it has partially suspended it. The Trump administration has said they are doing this to, quote, "Ensure that individuals approved for a visa do not endanger national security or public safety." Now, Elisa, the issue is that four countries in those lists are expected to play in the FIFA World Cup and play matches here in the US.

I'm talking about Iran and Haiti, who are under the full travel ban, and Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal, who are under the partial ban.

Okay, so how does the ban apply to the players and coaches then?

This applies mostly to the people in those countries, the visitors, who are looking to come to the US to see family or attend the games, not the teams.

However, in the case of Iran, things are complicated because of the war against that country. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Iranian players are welcome as long as they have not served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This means that Iran's team captain, Mehdi Taremi, might not be granted a visa since he completed his mandatory military service in the Guard Corps.

I talked to Jamal Abdi. He's the president of the National Iranian American Council. He says the ban has created an untenable situation for many Iranians. It would be really great if Iranians and Iranian Americans could, see one another, and the people of our two countries could actually have a venue to celebrate.

But we're not even able to have Iranians have basic immigration processing move forward because of that suspension, not to mention the total ban. Abdi also worries about the threat of violence against Iranian Americans outside of the stadiums.

So what are the implications of these bans on tourism?

We're starting to see how Trump's immigration policies are having an impact on tourism for the World Cup, Elisa.

The American Hotel and Lodging Association released a survey earlier this month that found hotel bookings in many host cities are running far below projections, in part because of a perception that international travelers may face lengthy visa wait times, increased visa fees, and lingering uncertainty around entry processing.

So the impact could go beyond just people who would be traveling from countries included in the ban. That's what Victor Matheson told me. He is a big soccer fan and a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross. I think you're gonna g- see a lot of fans from European countries who have been at the butt of President Trump's, antagonistic words say, "Look, I love the World Cup, but, maybe I'll sit this one out and save my money for 2030 when the event comes to Spain and Portugal."

Okay, so another barrier from the Trump administration is a visa bond program. So nationals of 50 countries will have to pay up to $15,000. That will be refunded when the person departs the US. Has that changed this week?

Yes. The visa bond posed a huge barrier for people wanting to visit the US. This week, though, the Trump administration said the bond will be waived for those who have already purchased a FIFA World Cup ticket, but that might be too late.

B- buying a plane ticket now can be crazy expensive, especially because of the soaring jet fuel prices.

Donald Trump, the war criminal now. As Jørgen Noudit, explained back on March 22nd, 2026, when Donald Trump posted the following. Jørgen Noudit said, "Do a ticket for the World Cup in the USA? Sell it," Donald Trump posted back on March 22nd Last month he goes, "On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA agents who have stayed on the job despite the fact that the radical left Democrats, who are only focused on protecting hardline criminals who have entered our country, are endangering the USA.

They will do a fantastic job." So yes, as Aaron Rupar explains, enjoy the World Cup, visitors from around the world. I hope you don't end up in El Salvador because Donald Trump kidnaps people in the United States. He sends you to either concentration camps here, or he sends you to concentration camps in El Salvador, and I wish I was being hyperbolic, but that's literally what Donald Trump does.

Also, regarding the Iranian footballer, their national soccer team, just so you know what Donald Trump said specifically about them a few weeks back, he goes "The Iran national soccer team is welcome to the World Cup, but I really don't believe it is appropriate that they be there for their own life and safety.

Thank you for your attention to this matter." So Donald Trump threatening the life of athletes. But what else would you expect from a guy who threatens to destroy the entire civilization of Iran? It's obviously expected that he's going to threaten the lives of these soccer or football players when they're here to play the World Cup.

That's what war criminals, authoritarians like Donald Trump do. You had The Guardian saying a World Cup boycott over Trump. Football's hypotheticals cannot be dismissed anymore. Unprecedented times call for previously unthinkable conversations when it comes to the US-shaped problems. And then we heard, of course, from European officials, calling for the boycott as well.

We heard from top German, officials over, who were, top German officials who were, very influential in the World Cup saying that they would do these boycotts. You may recall a senior German politician suggested Germany could boycott in 2026. Jurgen Hart said the idea is meant to pressure Trump, noting how important the tournament is for him.

You're gonna threaten to invade Greenland, yeah, we're not gonna show up to the World Cup. How about a senior figure in German football by the name of Oke Göttlich, a vice president of German's Football Association? He's saying that, look, at the end of the day, based on Donald Trump's behavior, seems like the only logical decision is to boycott it.

▶ Highlight start: John Bishop boycott call

This is British comedian actor John Bishop calling for a boycott. Here's what he had to say. Play this clip.

My feeling- ... is boycott it. Really? Honestly, I think the World Cup is a joke. I think FIFA giving Donald Trump a big rosette- yes ... and a peace prize has undermined everything that football's about.

I think the fact that it's being played in a country that's threatening not to give visas to the players, to the staff, to the fans, I think is ridiculous. I think it's a complete embarrassment. Yeah. That wasn't the answer you were expecting. It wasn't, but it's not one I entirely disagree with. Yeah.

It's not exactly three lines on your check, is it? But it is... I think the World Cup is now a joke. I've, I don't think I'll be giving it any time. It's really undermined what football's all about.

And then as we turn our attention to the Saudi-funded LIV Golf tournament, this was the headline from The New York Times, "Saudi Fund to Back Away From LIV Golf Under Mounting Financial

⏹ Highlight end: John Bishop boycott call

Pressure."

The Saudi league, established in 2022, attracted some of the sport's biggest stars with huge contracts. Officials have said that the oil-rich kingdom is re-evaluating its priorities amid mounting financial pressures. Jake Sherman, citing the Golf Channel, says These golfers have no moves to make. They can join the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, or they can stop playing professional golf.

Those are the moves they can make. As Golf Channel writes, "With the news of a possible cease of operations of LIV Golf, which player's moves are you monitoring?" Sherman also writes, "Looks like LIV Golf, the circus tour, may be coming to an end." Very interesting. LIV is facing the possibility of imminent closure with Saudi Arabia's public investment fund on the verge of pulling its backing for LIV.

According to a person familiar with the matter, LIV Golf executives have been summoned to New York City for an emergency meeting amidst reporting that the league's future is in question. Players are reportedly in the dark over the future, and the meeting has nothing to do with potential DP World Tour merger, Telegraph Sports reports.

And just as an aside, Spirit Airlines going bankrupt could liquidate and shut down as soon as this week, CNBC reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Latest round of chatter about a deeply troubled airline, but rising fuel prices could be its death knell. Donald Trump killed LIV, Donald Trump killed Spirit, and Donald Trump killed something as lovely and beautiful and bipartisan and as something that should be bringing people together as the FIFA World Cup because he's tainted it.

He's made it a grotesque thing. But that's what happens when you have Donald Trump. Do you remember when Donald Trump was given that peace prize, by the head of FIFA, that FIFA bootlicker, sycophant, weirdo guy? You remember what happened? Here, play this clip right here. Let's play it.

This is your peace prize.

There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go . I'm

gonna wear it right now.

Okay. Let me hold... Ah, fantastic. Excellent

Yeah, that was sickening, so grotesque right there. And let's just hear what some of the Congress members are saying. You have Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia. Here's what she has to say.

Congresswoman, how confident are you that the World Cup is safe for people to come here under the Trump administration?

Seems to be like a lot of your colleagues are expressing some skepticism about whether or not-

I am a little concerned and early on I, when I met with our local organizing committee because the, the fan day or the fan The events are all gonna be in my district, and they're gonna be in Houston.

I'm concerned about security. I'm concerned about ISIS presence. And I did write a letter to DHS asking about that, and of course I got a very non-committal response. So I still am waiting to see what they're gonna commit to. But I know that-

So they haven't committed to any, to not being there?

Not that I recall. Okay.

So- But I know that our mayor's working hard with all the different regional task forces and the regional law enforcement to make sure that they do their job.

But what, what would your message be to people who are coming from all over the world?

That is it, should they come? Is it safe? Like- Yeah ... it, it seems a lot of people have seen what's going on and are very concerned.

I think they should come. They should come to Houston. We're a welcoming city. Yeah. And I know our mayor will do everything possible to make sure that they have a good and safe, event.

Then you have Congressional World Cup Caucus member, Nellie Pou. Here's what she has to say to, our team. Let's play this clip.

So Congresswoman, what are some of your concerns moving toward the World Cup in 77 days or so, now that the funds have been released to secure the venues and- Yeah

et cetera?

First of all, let me just say they finally did what they should have done a long time ago. If you really go back to their very own... When I'm talking about they, I'm talking about DHS, when, uh, when the Department of Homeland Security, when you go to their very own website, their website said back in August that they were going to be able to release those funds in September 30th of 2025.

So by their own admission, they were obviously, not only did we provide them, we being Congress, provided them the $625 million in order to fund the security and ov- for all of the host cities. But they then were much delayed back in January. Once again, the alarms went off. We've been talking about it.

Finally, they just, handed, or released the funds, I should say, that, was long in coming. The games are upon us, practically upon us in seven, seven days. I know that we really wanna make sure that everything's in place. And lastly, what I would say I wanna make sure that immigration, and particularly ICE, when I say immigration, I'm referring to ICE itself, that they are absolutely not going to create any kind of chaos for any of, the games that are going around and through the entire country, but especially, in my very own district of that of MetLife, which is scheduled to take place soon.

And I guess since the funds weren't approved or weren't, dis- distributed on time, through your work on the World Cup Caucus, is the World Cup safe? Are you confident that it's gonna be safe for people to travel here from around the world to see these games?

That is exactly what we will absolutely be working towards, making sure that fans and spectators and, community residents and all of our constituents that are super excited about being able to participate and see the World Cup, that they're able to do that, not feeling a concern or fearful of any actions that ICE can in fact do.

We know the chaos that they have been able to create. We wanna make sure that they are staying far away from doing that. We will be secured. That is, that I can assure you. It is absolutely one of the most, primary concern of all of us. But we also want them to feel as though that they're there enjoying the part- the viewing of the, and participating in these games without any fear.

Another Newcastle set piece then. They haven't made the most of their sequence of corners.

Newcastle is a city in the northeast of England. It has one soccer club, Newcastle United. For locals, it's a very big deal.

It's got massive support, and the thing about it is that it's part of the culture. It's part of working class.

It's a very working class city. The people- ... from the area are called Geordies. So it's a, plays a big part in, a central part of, uh, Geordie culture. Yeah.

John Hird is a Geordie and a lifelong Newcastle United fan. That's why I wanted to talk to him. In October of 2021, Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, they took an 80% share in the club, and I'm curious, what was your reaction to that?

My, initial reaction was obviously totally against it. On the day the takeover happened, there was thousands of people in the street. It was amazing in the middle of the week, and they were surrounding the stadium, people dancing, drinking, di- si- singing. But I think the majority were there because Ashley was gone.

He'd sold the club

John Ashley, the former owner, was and is a British billionaire. Ashley was not well-loved in Newcastle, to put it mildly. Under his watch, the club had a lousy record, so fans celebrated his departure.

He was a terrible, billionaire exploitative owner of the football club. It doesn't mean it's better to have the Saudi state i- in control of your football club.

In my opinion, out of the frying pan, into the fire.

John Hurd is one of the founders of Newcastle United Fans Against Sportswashing, which started organizing fans to protest against Saudi human rights abuses.

Salma al-Shehab.

They named names.

Nour al-Khaltani.

Two Saudi women who received long sentences for social media posts critical of the Saudi government.

When we raised those names and we had photos of them, we had placards with their names on, we got abuse on social media, and some fans started to echo what the Saudi trolls and bots were doing and say, "Oh, they're all terrorists." That was the answer to everything. Anyone imprisoned by the Saudi state is a terrorist.

So we said, look, we're not gonna accept this. We're not gonna accept that the Saudi state can manipulate public opinion in the Northeast, 'cause that's what they were doing.

John Hurd is an English teacher. His father was a union man, and John himself was a socialist as a young man in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was in power.

So maybe that's where he comes by his sportswashing activism.

Basically, if you're a human being and you've got some values, then you support human rights, and just because our team, which we love, our club is owned by the Saudi state, doesn't mean that we're gonna ignore, human rights, so that's the motivation.

And so I know that some fans, gave up their season tickets and there were various re- what, basically, what are the kinds of reactions that you saw as this sort of settled in as being the new reality?

If you ask what the fans, thought, I'd say it's in three parts.

Vast majority in the middle, good people. If you sit down with them and talk to them and say, "Look, we support human rights." We do. Most people do. But there's that small minority who have been basically sportswashed.

We work with a lot of fans groups around the world, and they all say fans don't wanna sit in a stadium that workers died to build.

Once again, Human Rights Watch's Minky Worden.

They don't wanna sit in a place where if they wear a rainbow shirt in solidarity with LGBT rights where they're tackled to the ground and beaten up.

That happened- ... in Qatar for- ... for fans who came from outside just to watch the World Cup.

What about the people that fans come to watch? What about the athletes? How do they figure into sports washing? While some very famous athletes are making a lot of money in Saudi Arabia, Minky says that most athletes have similar concerns as fans.

Soccer players, football players, men, women, no one wants to play in a stadium that workers died to build, and players have told Human Rights Watch this.

Athletic federations like FIFA and the Women's Tennis Association and Formula 1 have human rights requirements built into their charters, often crafted under pressure from Human Rights Watch and colleague organizations.

And yet, Minky says these federations often don't want their athletes to rock the boat.

The federations are increasingly muzzling these athletes. Along with boxing, football, tennis, and golf going to Saudi Arabia, the Formula 1 race has gone to Saudi Arabia. Top driver Lewis Hamilton wore for the race a rainbow helmet.

He didn't say anything, and he didn't need to. He was telling the world about his values. But ever since then, it's been documented that players are having to sign so-called non-disparagement clauses, and that means that even if they feel strongly about something, they're not allowed to speak. That's completely unacceptable.

Yet there are signs of athletes pushing Back in October, after FIFA announced that the giant state-owned Saudi oil company, Aramco, would be a major partner, more than 100 female soccer players wrote a letter to FIFA in protest. Here's a bit of that letter. "

The Saudi authorities trample not only on the rights of women, but on the freedom of all other citizens, too.

We deserve so much better from our governing body than its allyship with this nightmare sponsor."

So it's almost unthinkable that FIFA would move forward to award the World Cup in a place that has credible allegations of things amounting to modern-day slavery.

So what can people do about it, and about sportswashing more generally?

If you're a fan and your team or your favorite player is part of a sportswashing scheme, says Minky, you've got some leverage. So if you think about the ecosystem of sports- ... it's a big business. It's a multi-trillion dollar business, and guess what the product is? You. You are the product. Your love for tennis, boxing, Formula One, football, American or European football, that is what these companies are selling.

So there are absolutely pressure points. Your views matter. The pressure points are on the federations, but it's also on sponsors. So remember what underwrites these multi-billion dollar events? It's Coca-Cola, Adidas, Visa, McDonald's, Budweiser. What fans can do is tell these companies that you care about human rights.

You care about where these events are staged, and you don't wanna sit in a stadium that workers died to build, and you don't wanna participate in a sport where, that is not open and inclusive and welcoming of the players that make it possible.

Meanwhile, in Newcastle, fans like John Hurd haven't let up in their efforts to keep their club and its fans from being sportswashed.

John, one big question here. Do you still go to games?

I think I would be a, bit of a hypocrite if I went to games. But we've discussed it, and we don't call for a boycott. We distributed, posters of Salma al-Shehab, to Newcastle fans, and we said, "Hold them up in the stadium." All we say to Newcastle fans is, "If you go," and we're not saying boycott, but, "If you go, at punctual times, do a protest."

The Saudi A- human rights advocates have said to us that it would have a massive effect, so we've tried to do that. But I personally wouldn't go at the moment, no. But I watch them. I watch it on the TV,

yeah.

There is also the perception of the United States abroad. I'm curious what at play in terms of these policies that may be factoring into people's decisions to attend the World Cup.

Yeah, usually when you think about, which countries get to host World Cups, you think about ease of travel.

Are there enough flights? Are there enough airports? What's the kind of visa system, whether something else. So under the second Trump administration, there have been much tighter restrictions on what types of people can come to the United States and get access to visas. So there are 50 countries in which if you want to visit and you're from these 50 countries, you have to pay a bond, which is something around $15,000 to enter the United States because the c- the immigration authorities argue that people come and they stay, when they're supposed to leave, so the bond gets repaid on your exit.

Now, 5 of those 50 countries happen to be countries that have qualified for the World Cup. So this was immediate problem number one that most people haven't encountered. Okay. So one of the things that FIFA's had to do as a diplomatic, and this is maybe why Gianni Infantino spent so much time around Trump.

He was like, "Well, this is going to be a nightmare if you have people from... " And let me try and name the countries. I think it's Algeria- Okay ... Cape Verde, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Tunisia. They are the five countries whose visitors would've been subject to the bond. FIFA has actually said, "If you've got a ticket, so you can prove you're coming to the World Cup, we will waive that fee.

The United States will not charge you the bond at Customs and Borders."

Okay.

So that means you need to have a ticket already, and we've already spoken about the difficulties of getting the ticket. Yeah. So immigration policy is just becoming a logistical problem for some countries.

Okay.

And then there's the whole, and I've experienced this as a Brit who went to the US last year.

I got stopped at custom border police. I couldn't get through Dulles Airport- Really? ... for a while, right? And it's never happened. Oh. And I think these anecdotal stories about ICE at borders, much more stringent checks on anyone. There's been rumors that, Customs and Border police will look at people's social media.

There is this- ... huge unpredictability factor about what happens when you land at the US border, even if you're a football fan, and it just adds, I think, to another one of those should I go for it or should I not go for it? So immigration policy's really becoming an issue.

It's not just the reputation.

You're saying not just if you face additional questioning. There's an actual travel ban for, is it for participating countries?

Yes. The two strictest travel bans, so travel embargos, are for Iran and Haiti. So only the coaches, the World Cup kind of officials, people associated with the Iranian football team, at the World Cup are gonna be allowed entry.

So Iranians that are not already in the United States will not be able to travel. And then there's other countries like Senegal and Ivory Coast who some of whose fans can be able to get through if they do have a ticket, but it's gonna be more complicated 'cause they're also subject to slightly stronger restrictions.

So it's just a little bit up in the air. So yes, immigration bans means that if you wanna hold international tournaments, you by nature are just saying, "Well, there's some countries that are just not gonna be able to have fans in the stadium for their games."

I wanna ask you specifically about Iran, because Iran is slated to play at the World Cup, and I don't fully understand what that's gonna look like.

You have Iranian athletes coming to play i- in the US, and the US government has been actively at war with Iran.

Yeah. So this is one of the many, I think, problems of the entry of Gianni Infantino when the war broke out. So Iran, it's worth saying, is a country with a footballing history. They actually qualify for plenty of World Cups.

In the last World Cup in Qatar, the US and Iran were in the same group. They played each other. The, most of the encounters, sporting encounters between the US and Iran actually are in soccer. So they legitimately qualified for the World Cup through their Asian regional to- rounds before the war.

I think there hasn't been that many calls for Iran to be kicked out of FIFA, because of the war. But there have been slightly informal attempts to kick Iran out, and the most, I think, bizarre one happened a couple of weeks ago, which was broken by my colleagues at the Financial Times. Which is that Trump has a American Italian envoy who proposed, to Trump that Iran should be kicked out of the World Cup to be replaced by Italy.

So there was this idea that we should kick Iran out because we, Iran is the persona non grata country in the United States, and we should get Italy in primarily because I think US and Italian relations have been pretty strained because of the Pope- ... because of relations with, Giorgia Meloni, who's the Prime Minister of Italy, and Italy's a real country, and also a lot of Italian Americans probably want to see Italy play in the World Cup.

This idea went nowhere because to be fair to the Italians, they were like, "No- ... we did not qualify on merit. We are not gonna take this bizarre, weird political backdoor route into the World Cup." So as it stands, Iranian athletes, Iranian coaches, and the Iranian sort of World Cup delegation will be allowed to travel to the United States to play, in, the World Cup.

What the dynamic in the stadium's gonna be, I don't know. There is one game, though, which I was looking at which I think will be quite significant, not from the sporting element, but it's Iran against New Zealand in the group stages, which is being hosted in LA- Yeah ... which has a reasonably big Iranian diaspora- who've been very vocal as against the Islamic Republic's regime. Yes. FIFA have already said that the Iranian flag, the pre-revolutionary Iranian flag- ... which is the Iranian colors with this sort of gold em- emblem on it, will be banned from the stadiums because it's not the official representation of the Iranian, of Iran's, as a constituent country.

So that I think could be a little bit of a flashpoint. Wow. A bit... the fact that I- Iran is there is probably, already gonna be weird, but then you've got this unique dynamic of you might have anti-regime Iranian diaspora fans in LA who are gonna turn up to that game and probably use it as a political moment to make their voices heard about the conflict.

So yeah,

it's gonna be, there's just gonna be a lot of these sort of flashpoints- It's gonna be ... that are gonna happen. And I th- I think this is probably the bigger point that I, interests me as a fan, but also as a journalist, is, football has always been a- For me, at least, a form of escapism from the horrors of the real world.

It's just 90 minutes when I can just switch off and just think about, tactics and be emotionally involved in a game. It's cathartic. It's what sport's supposed to be, the gladiatorial environment where you can live out emotions in a different place, and then you have- ... to go back to the normal world as soon as you've switched the TV off or gone out of the stadium.

It's just so clear now that football is actually not, no lon- far from an escapism. These big international tournaments where countries are coming together, in a world which is splintering, where multilateralism is becoming- ... less normal, where big diplomatic events to fix world problems are less of a norm, where the might means right.

Weirdly enough, World Cups are becoming diplomatic moments in and of themselves because by accident they happen to be when, 48 countries are gonna be getting together. Football has this uncanny ability because all of the prime ministers, presidents, and heads of state wanna be there representing their countries and wanting to ride off the coattails of the success of their countries, right?

So they're all going to be there, and they're going to be in close proximity, which just makes it interesting at, from a geopolitical, analysis. We already mentioned how bizarre is it that Iran is gonna be playing a World Cup in- Yeah ... the United States at this particular moment in time. There's nothing else but football that's hap- managed to happen, make that happen by accident.

To quote one of my co-hosts, on a podcast I did, Simon Cooper, World Cups are not gonna predict what's gonna happen in the world, but they do shine a spotlight about what's happening in the world at that particular moment in time. Every four years it's away, it becomes a marker for us to understand where we were at that particular point in time.

I, I really hope that, if I'm being optimistic, it's a corrective to the increasing isolationism of the US in other spheres of, politics and activity. Yeah, and if you're in Kansas City, I don't know what the demographic is of Kansas City, but if you've got a load of fans from Jordan turning up, to, invade your city-

and these hotels for a couple of weeks. That, that's an interaction in and of itself. You are hosting the world too. And that is a corrective to what we hear about US immigration policy. It is a corrective to how much we hear about the United States doesn't wanna open its borders up to the rest of the world.

It is gonna have to do that for at least six weeks. And Americans will have to, be confronted with it. And maybe I'm quite the

patriot, but I do think we're quite hospitable face to face.

I think you're quite hospitable, too. Compared to the Brits, I think you're much more hospitable. But I think that kind of organic level interaction and love of sport and understanding that the world is actually pretty good.

So that's the, that's actually the beauty of the whole thing, I think.

That's going to be it for today.

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Rights & Wrongs

Edge of Sports

Power Plays

MediasTouch

The Blazing Musket

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