We’re two weeks in and, as always with World Cups, humanity is winning through.
There are the inordinate distances, the deeply despised hydration breaks and fans of nations like Scotland stuck in limbo because of the bloated format, but we are remembering or discovering and acknowledging the immense warmth of American hospitality. So many of this nation’s people have told me they are grateful for that, because they feel Donald Trump has made them and their homeland a source of suspicion, the world over.
But for all that has been good about the tournament so far, the bombastic declaration by Andrew Giuliani, executive director of the White House’s World Cup task force, that the US might bid for the 2038 event, which could be expanded to 64 teams, really did make your heart sink.
It’s entirely feasible, of course, because the rapacious greed of Gianni Infantino’s FIFA machine will stop at nothing, even if it does raise the prospect of San Marino and Liechtenstein fighting it out for qualification for a 2038 finals’ knock-out phase. And because Trump has Infantino, the obsequious puppet, in his pocket.
But with all due deference to the USA – whose president has mercifully desisted from sending out ICE squads to find Brazilian and Mexican fans to deport, much like Vladimir Putin told his police to go easy, eight years ago – the watching world does not want it back here 12 years from now.
Giuliani may be feeling delighted with himself – ‘There’s no better country that’s positioned to host a World Cup than the United States,’ he said – but this festival is about new places earning that spotlight and sharing their culture and customs with the world.
Gianni Infantino’s FIFA has an unquenchable greed and an expanded World Cup – which could return to the USA – could be on the horizon
Nations such as England, Colombia, Italy, Turkey, Australia and India have either never staged a men’s World Cup or not done so for at least 34 years. The American people have taught us something very fine about the land of stars and stripes, but each of those nations would be far worthier hosts, 12 years on from here.
The first four of the quartet would also bring a quality which is probably beyond the wit of Giuliani to appreciate: a smaller geographical scale, which brings this carnival of all the nations up close together. Qatar 2022 had its critics and was benighted in so many ways. The widows of the Godforsaken Asian immigrant workers who died building stadiums will never be compensated. But the creation of a tournament whose stadiums all lay within a 33-mile radius of Doha generated a beautiful sense of community. This World Cup feels a universe away from that.
Staging the kind of one-nation event which many of us grew up with and loved will be a huge logistical challenge, now that FIFA has unleashed the concept of the 48-team tournament – which, incidentally, has brought teams here whose technical calibre simply didn’t belong in a World Cup. But by 2038, it will have been 72 years since England last had the event. For the US to be handed it a third time in that span of years would be a gross iniquity.
The US government did not seem to appreciate how deeply unpleasant it looked, amid some of the events preceding this tournament, which the football narrative has erased as always. Members of Iran’s backroom staff being denied entry visas for the US. That same squad being forced to switch their base from Arizona to Tijuana in Mexico. Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan also being denied access.
There was the same lack of self-awareness from Giuliani as he bragged about how great a job he’d been doing. The USA’s faculty to be the best was unquestionable, he said. ‘And I think we’re seeing that on social media.’ Stadiums had already been built. ‘So compared to other host nations, where it costs tens and tens of billions of dollars, you know, it cost us a couple of billion.’
Someone might want to take him aside and point out that size and scale and social media are no barometer and that football’s beauties transcend all that. Thanks USA, but one tournament here every half century will really be quite enough.
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