For generations, the Fifa World Cup represented one of humanity’s rare common languages. Every four years, passports became secondary to jerseys, rivalries remained on the pitch, and billions celebrated the simple idea that talent, not nationality, should determine victory.
The 2026 Fifa World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico has begun to challenge that ideal. Instead of becoming history’s most inclusive tournament, the expanded 48-team competition has become a reminder that global sport cannot escape geopolitics. Visas, mobility restrictions, sanctions, and unequal access for the have-nots of the world have become as decisive as tactics, fitness, or finishing.
The world’s most beloved game is increasingly being asked to operate under rules that resemble international politics where only the less powerful faced injustices and suffer the consequences of a Red Card.
Justice, not football, is the real casualty. The irony could hardly be greater. Fifa’s statutes emphasise political neutrality and prohibit discrimination on the basis of nationality or politics. Yet neutrality becomes difficult to defend when athletes may travel while supporters, journalists, officials, referees, and even football administrators face obstacles that have nothing to do with the sport itself, just in case of Cape Verde and Iran.
Human rights institutions warned months before kickoff that restrictive travel policies could prevent thousands of legitimate supporters from attending matches. Reports documented visa delays, entry denials, concerns over aggressive immigration enforcement, and uncertainty affecting fans from multiple participating nations. Reuters similarly reported warnings of a “climate of fear” surrounding the tournament due to visa restrictions and immigration policies. Football cannot truly call itself global if the world cannot reliably enter the stadium. The numbers alone demonstrate what is at stake.
The 2026 tournament is the largest in Fifa history, featuring 48 national teams, 104 matches in most inconvenient and unhealthy timings for our part of the world, and an expected audience measured in billions. FIFA and host organisers anticipated millions of international visitors and tens of billions of dollars in economic activity. Yet these economic projections depend on one simple assumption: that football fans can actually travel. Mobility has quietly become football’s newest competitive advantage.
Some supporters have encountered visa refusals despite holding valid tickets. Others have faced lengthy administrative delays, while officials, journalists and referees have reportedly experienced entry complications. Several participating nations have seen their ordinary citizens affected by broader immigration restrictions even where players themselves received exemptions. None of these decisions determine who scores goals. Yet they determine who gets to witness them.
This is not merely an administrative inconvenience. It strikes at the philosophical foundation of international sport. Football has always claimed that qualification should occur on the pitch. Increasingly, qualification for attendance depends on passports, politics, and diplomatic relationships. The result is a hierarchy of mobility that mirrors global inequality itself.
History offers a warning. The modern Olympic movement and the Fifa World Cup were created partly because sporting competition offered something politics often could not: equal rules applied to unequal nations. Once access itself becomes selective, sport begins losing the moral authority that makes victory meaningful.
The concern extends beyond visas. International football has witnessed growing debates over sanctions, suspensions, selective enforcement, and differing institutional responses to conflicts around the world. Regardless of where one stands on any individual case, consistency matters. Rules perceived as inconsistent inevitably invite questions about legitimacy. Justice is measured not only by outcomes. It is measured by whether identical principles are applied consistently.
That lesson is hardly new. One of the oldest principles of justice appears repeatedly across civilisations: laws derive legitimacy from equal application rather than selective enforcement. When exceptions become political, institutions gradually lose credibility even if their intentions remain honourable.
Football is no different. The danger is that Fifa increasingly finds itself navigating pressures once reserved for institutions such as the United Nations Security Council, where geopolitical influence often shapes outcomes as much as formal principles. Football should never become another arena where power determines access while fairness becomes negotiable.
Supporters do not buy tickets to participate in geopolitical competition. They buy tickets because they believe football belongs equally to humanity. That belief has enormous value. The World Cup succeeds because a child in Muscat, Lagos, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Casablanca, or Sarajevo can dream under exactly the same rules.
The moment that dream becomes conditional upon geopolitical privilege rather than sporting merit, something much larger than football is lost.Fifa cannot solve international politics. Nor should it attempt to. But it can defend the principle that football should remain the world’s most accessible global gathering. It can work with host governments to minimise unnecessary barriers, improve transparency surrounding entry procedures, protect accredited participants, and consistently defend equal treatment wherever the tournament is held.
The World Cup was never meant to celebrate only those fortunate enough to possess the right passport. It was meant to celebrate humanity itself. Because football can survive controversial referees. It can survive difficult weather. It can even survive disappointing finals. But if it loses the universal promise that every qualified nation, and every peaceful supporter belongs, then the Beautiful Game risks becoming something far less beautiful.
A World Cup that gives the have-nots of the world a red card is no World Cup at all.
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