Scott Stinson: What if you hosted a World Cup amid a shooting war?

The conflict in the Middle East is just the latest reason to be nervous about the prospects of the biggest sporting event on the planet

Photo by Peter Glaser on Unsplash

By: Scott Stinson

Hosting a major international sporting event comes with a lot of tradeoffs. Some would argue that getting an Olympics or a World Cup is essentially one massive tradeoff: vast sums of public money in exchange for some great, time-limited vibes.

Canada’s role as one of the three hosts of World Cup 2026 was already looking pretty thin on tangible benefits: hundreds of millions of public dollars committed to host 13 games in Vancouver and Toronto.

But now the vibes aren’t even that great.

It feels a little beside the point to address the sporting implications of the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran, a little like coming across a raging hotel fire and wondering about the artwork in the lobby, but it’s a plain fact that the World Cup is coming to the United States, Canada and Mexico in less than 100 days and it will almost certainly land amid a giant geopolitical shitstorm. Or, more accurately, several geopolitical shitstorms, happening concurrently.

The big one, the Category 5 of the poop storms, is the don’t-call-it-a-war on Iran. Or, as explained by the columnist Barney Ronay in the Guardian, “the co‑host of the (World Cup) has murdered the head of state of the third‑ranked team in Group G.”

That team would be Iran, whose participation in the tournament was not of any concern to FIFA when its regime was killing thousands of its own people in the streets, but now seems unlikely to attend due to the fact that it is being relentlessly bombed by the nation in which it is scheduled to play most of its games.

In the days since the U.S.-Israel attacks were launched, no one has been quite sure what might happen with Iran’s spot in the tournament, if only because something like this has never happened before. As a rule, host nations do not launch military attacks against other countries while hosting major sporting events. It’s one of those things that doesn’t really require explanation. (The best guess of what might happen here is that FIFA would appoint another team like Iraq or the United Arab Emirates from Iran’s qualifying group, but let’s be honest: a lot could happen in that region in the next 100 days.)

Whatever happens with the tournament specifically, it seems impossible to imagine that the conflict in the Middle East will have subsided by the time the World Cup begins in mid-June, raising the very real possibility that one of the co-hosts will be shooting off fireworks and conducting bombing sorties at the same time.

The event was already not without its controversies, most of which are connected to the administration of Donald Trump, who remains, incredibly, the recipient of FIFA’s first-ever Peace Prize.

There are the trade wars he has launched against, well, everyone, including the two countries that are sharing co-host duties.

There is his on-again, off-again obsession with Greenland, which has been shelved for now, possibly because word got to Trump that Denmark and other European nations were talking seriously about a potential World Cup boycott.

There is his immigration crackdown, which has potentially made it impossible for visitors from four participating nations — Senegal, Ivory Coast, Haiti and Iran — to obtain visas, although U.S. authorities have said they will offer specific World Cup exemptions. The impact of the immigration crackdown could be felt more widely amid a steady stream of stories and images of masked ICE agents scooping foreigners off the streets and detaining them for long periods, often without any sort of due process.

Basically, if you are planning to visit the United States this summer, you are taking your chances.

Which is also true of Mexico, unfortunately, except for an entirely different reason. The killing of a cartel leader in the Jalisco region last month prompted reprisals against the military and left tourists stranded in normally idyllic spots like Puerto Vallarta.

That issue has appeared to cool off, and Mexican authorities insist that all will be well when the world comes to visit, but it does not take a vivid imagination to picture a scenario in which the cartels use the World Cup as an opportunity to create maximum chaos for the government and military, even without any intention of harming foreigners.

So, um, yeah. None of this is great. And that is before even mentioning the thing that I don’t particularly want to mention. The attacks on Iran, whatever their merits, have unquestionably made the United States a more likely target of a terrorist attack this week than it was last week. And that’s with a little over three months to go before it hosts dozens of soccer matches, all over the country, that each on their own present a globally significant soft target to would-be attackers.

The World Cup is usually a month-long celebration, a global party with the planet’s most popular sport at its centre. We shall see if the world still feels that way when the tournament begins in June.

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