FIFA’s former president is supporting a boycott of the US portion of the World Cup
It seems this won’t be all fun and games
Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter has signalled his support for growing calls to boycott the US share of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, whose various games are being played across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
In a January 26 post on X, Blatter quoted Swiss anti-corruption lawyer Mark Pieth, who said last week, “For the fans, there’s only one piece of advice: stay away from the USA!” Blatter added, “I think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup” and threw in a #DonaldTrump to drive the point home.
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Trump’s various travel bans have caused a real headache for the World Cup, which attracts teams and fans from all over the world. That includes fans from countries like Senegal and Ivory Coast, who in December found themselves suddenly barred from the US under a newly expanded travel ban. Fans from Iran and Haiti, meanwhile, were already denied access to the US under the administration’s first travel ban.
Add to that the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis, including immigration officers’ fatal shootings of two civilians; the agency’s continued arrests, detainments and general terrorization across the country; and Trump’s world-shaking threats to attack the US’s European allies by invading Greenland, and there’s plenty of reason for soccer fans outside the US to be wary of travelling stateside.
As Pieth put it, “Fans should expect that if they don’t please the officials, they’ll be put on the next flight home. If they’re lucky.”
Blatter is something of a foreign policy guy himself. As the president of FIFA from 1998 to 2015, he developed a support base in Africa and Asia, whose teams he expanded and financed, increasing their representation in the league and directly contributing to their presence in the 2026 tournament.
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All that patronage meant those new African and Asian soccer leagues supported Blatter when, in 2015, US prosecutors led a landmark corruption case against more than two dozen FIFA officials and corporate executives. Blatter himself was not charged and has always denied any wrongdoing.
With the help of the leagues he supported, Blatter went on to win a fifth term as FIFA president even as controversy swirled around him. And yet, the chaos was enough that, four days after his victory, Blatter stepped down, calling for organizational change. Further investigations saw Blatter’s name tarnished as well, and he was banned from the league until 2028.
All those international dealings place Blatter on the opposite team, so to speak, from Trump: the US is now banning some of the teams Blatter built up, and it was US prosecutors who sought to take down the league he ran. As usual with FIFA, soccer is only one of the games being played.
Anthony Milton is a freelance journalist based in Toronto specializing in long-form magazine writing. He previously worked as an assistant editor at Toronto Life, where he launched the Front Row newsletter. He regularly contributes all sorts of stories to the magazine, including deep dives on sports, business and housing as well as short-form commentary on our ever-changing city, from its obsession with cherry blossoms to its maddening NIMBYism. His work has also appeared in Maclean’s, Ricochet, TVO, the Trillium and more.
