TOM EATON | No matter how dirty, Fifa is always game

The 2026 Fifa World Cup has kicked off, a joyful spectacle celebrating humanity’s two favourite sports: football, and suddenly ignoring corrupt and oppressive systems the moment they start feeding us sweet, sweet hits of dopamine.

To be clear, I don’t want to knock footballers: God knows they fall down all by themselves long before that happens. And I certainly don’t blame the fans for being excited: given what’s in the news every day, it’s entirely understandable that many people would want to lie back, switch off and float away on the narcotic fantasies of sport.

At the time of writing, the South Africa-Mexico opener hadn’t yet been played so I also don’t know how that game ended, whether in a win, in a loss, or in chaos as American special forces helicoptered in to arrest both teams for being too dark-skinned and therefore in violation of Midwestern Americans’ god-given right not to see things that upset them.

Speaking of which, just hours before the tournament got underway, Donald Trump ― Jesus’s right hand on Earth, according to many evangelicals ― announced on Truth Social that the US is planning to steal Iran’s oil in the same way it has stolen Venezuela’s.

“At some point in the not too distant future,” he wrote, “we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets.”

At first glance, Trump’s latest attempt to distract us from his close relationships with paedophiles doesn’t seem to have much to do with the World Cup. But Trump is, of course, the only person in the world to have been awarded the Fifa Peace Prize, so this seems as good a time as any to remind readers that Fifa is an organisation that exists on a continuum roughly between the Sicilian mafia and a fatberg in a city sewer.

For the overwhelming majority, however, such protests barely register: the World Cup, after all, is a celebration of humanity, and one of the things humanity loves most is turning a blind eye to injustice as long as that injustice delivers some cheap thrills.

Of course, some already know this, as evidenced by a tiny ritual that takes place on the sidelines of the World Cup every four years, in which human rights organisations wonder why Russia is hosting the event after invading and occupying Ukrainian Crimea, or point out that Qatar has built its stadiums using slave labour.

For the overwhelming majority, however, such protests barely register: the World Cup, after all, is a celebration of humanity, and one of the things humanity loves most is turning a blind eye to injustice as long as that injustice delivers some cheap thrills.

The Romans called it panem et circenses, bread and games: hand out some carbs to the people as they watch gladiators kill each other, and you can keep running the empire and making bank.

Two-thousand years later almost nothing has changed, although, in its defence, Fifa is a lot less heavy-handed than Imperial Rome: this week, when a BBC journalist asked Fifa boss Gianni Infantino whether he was embarrassed by the US barring certain people from the country, Infantino explained that Fifa can’t dictate to sovereign countries who they should or shouldn’t admit.

(Aside: I hate to criticise my colleagues in the media in these tough, fact-resistant times, but it was a very silly question. Everybody knows that anyone who becomes the head of Fifa is biologically incapable of embarrassment.)

The point here is that Fifa’s policy is very clear: if a country chooses to bar certain groups of people, then that is that country’s right, except, obviously, when the people being barred are Israelis: in 2023, when Indonesia excluded Israel from the Under-20 World Cup, citing solidarity with Palestinians, Fifa swooped in and moved the entire tournament to Argentina. But as long as you’re not trying to exclude Israelis, sovereignty rules.

In short, sovereignty is a big, big deal to Fifa. Indeed, the Israeli settlers currently stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank and on the Golan Heights only have to declare it part of Israel and Fifa will tacitly endorse their claim.

According to a Mondoweiss report earlier this week, Fifa was asked in 2024 to investigate football clubs established in illegal Israeli settlements on the grounds that they might violate Fifa’s rules on territorial integrity and racism, and so far Fifa’s response has been to broadcast their matches on its streamer, Fifa+, while also approving the promotion of one of the clubs to Israel’s Premier League.

Yes, it’s a dirty, dirty game, entirely rigged by the powerful against the weak, but if you think it might be about to give you a no-feeling, don’t worry: there are two tried and tested ways to stop thinking.

The first is to shout “Sport and politics shouldn’t mix!” as loudly as you can. Ready? And … shout! Sport and politics shouldn’t mix! Sport and politics shouldn’t mix! Good. Can you feel your brain shutting down? Hmmm. So good …

What’s that? You still have a faint twinge of consciousness about the hypocrisy, cynicism, racism and gaslighting swirling around the World Cup? Well, here’s the second ― and ultimate ― prescription: kicky-ball!

Look at the kicky-ball! Look at the kicks! Looks at the balls! Oo, it almost went in the net! Oh, it bounced off that one’s head and onto that other one’s foot!

So exciting! Such good feelings! So much connection!

And … sleep.