The World Cup is supposed to be football's grand festival: a celebration of diversity, globalism and humanity's shared sporting heritage. It is meant to belong to the streets, the terraces, the workers, the migrants, the children kicking a ball in alleys and the millions who see in football something larger than commerce. Yet this World Cup has entered its final stretch not with joy and anticipation, but with controversy, anger and distrust. FIFA and the United States must accept responsibility for what has become one of the worst buildups to the tournament in recent memory.
Corporate Greed Overshadows the Game
The signs have been visible for months. Exorbitant ticket prices have pushed the event further away from its working-class roots, turning a people's game into a luxury product. Stadium rules that prevent fans from bringing even water bottles inside only deepen the sense that every inch of the tournament has been surrendered to corporate greed and branded sales. The World Cup should not feel like a marketplace guarded by security gates.
Geopolitical Tensions and Worker Unrest
Politics, too, has cast a long shadow. The fate of the Iranian team and Somali referees remains clouded by uncertainty, exposing once again how easily football's governing bodies preach neutrality while allowing geopolitics to infect the game. Now, at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, thousands of food and beverage workers have authorised a strike, demanding better pay and protection from immigration enforcement. This is what happens when football is treated less as a shared human inheritance and more as an extraction machine.
FIFA will speak of unity, spectacle and history, but the reality facing fans, workers and some participants tells another story. The World Cup should bring the world together. Instead, this edition has become a warning about what happens when greed, politics and coercive state power are allowed to surround the beautiful game. Excitement has been replaced by criticism, and FIFA has only itself to blame.
