I’ve been to the last nine men’s soccer World Cups, and the dominant mood is almost always international friendship. The same vibe usually prevails on the field, even after hard-fought matches. One of the tournament’s most famous photographs, from 1970, shows the great Brazilian Pele, and the great Englishman Bobby Moore, both shirtless, beaming into each other’s eyes like lovers just after Brazil beat England in the group stage.
That is not the spirit of the United States under the Trump administration, primary host of this summer’s tournament in North America. Its basic message to foreigners seems to be: “We hate you.” The feeling is mutual. Many of the world’s soccer fans are dreading a tournament in a country that a growing number of foreigners are afraid even to visit. Happily, the Democratic cities that are hosting almost all games in the United States can seize the opportunity to show the world an alternative, a better, America.
Like countless foreigners, I grew up loving the United States. I’m British, but spent much of my childhood in a small Dutch town, kicking a ball against a garage door on a street called the President Kennedylaan. I later studied in the United States, and married an American.
I’ve never known Europeans — or a world — as anti-American as they are today. International opinions of the country have cratered since President Trump returned to office, and in Europe have hit record lows, according to the pollster YouGov. Mr. Trump is, after all, not only an American problem, but a global one: just look at his bombings, tariff bluster, threats to annex Greenland and Canada and his deadly slashing of global humanitarian aid. From the outside, it can feel like once-friendly America is nothing but MAGA.
Trump knows the World Cup will be an enormous media event, and probably won’t resist trying to make it all about him, commenting on the daily action or inserting himself into the spectacle. The tournament will coincide with his grandiose plans for America’s 250th anniversary. As he put it in the State of the Union: “I’ve got the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and I wanted to claim the 250th, but I didn’t get away with that one.”
The model is his gate crashing of Chelsea’s celebrations after the team won last summer’s World Club Cup in the United States when Mr. Trump was filmed tucking a winner’s medal into the breast pocket of his suit.
Much about the coming tournament already feels Trumpian. At the draw in December, FIFA, which opened an office in Trump Tower in Manhattan, awarded him a specially minted Peace Prize. He also chairs the World Cup Task Force. The tournament’s astronomical ticket prices make it entertainment for rich people. And then there’s the widespread fear among people overseas of even entering the United States. (The World Cup is the only time I personally plan to set foot in the country during the Trump administration.)
Many visitors worry about being deported, or even locked up, based on the whims of a border official. Accounts of weekslong detentions of apparently blameless visitors have circulated widely, worsening the “Trump slump” in tourism.
In December, the Department of Homeland Security floated a proposal to require visitors from 42 countries to report their social media history. What might happen if you ever posted something critical of Trump? That’s if you can come at all: Most Ivorians, Senegalese, Iranians and Haitians cannot even get visas to support their teams in the United States. (It’s currently hard to imagine that Iran will play at the World Cup following the attacks by the United States and Israel on Saturday.)
Fans of Latin American descent wanting to gather in bars to cheer for their teams will have to reckon with roving bands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and risks of detention and deportation. Apart from those fears, and the moral repulsion, the United States now hardly feels like the right venue for a joyous international festival.
So far there have been a few scattered calls from European politicians — angered in part by Mr. Trump’s threats against Greenland — to boycott the tournament. These would surely grow if the president attacks other countries. But boycotts of World Cups almost never happen, and probably shouldn’t.
Rather than scrapping the World Cup, we should scrap Mr. Trump from it.
Historically, host nations have leveraged the tournament to try to remake their international image. Germany in 2006 aspired to seem cuddlier. The tournament’s slogan, accompanied by a logo of smiley faces, was “A Time to Make Friends.”
South Africa in 2010 yearned to show it was a sophisticated country, equal to the logistical task of staging what officials there kept calling a “world-class” World Cup. Even President Vladimir Putin’s Russia in 2018 tried to put on a happy face. Exceptionally, fans with tickets to the World Cup were allowed to enter the country without a visa.
I’ll always remember the scenes in Moscow after Russia beat Spain to reach the quarterfinal. That night, crowds drank and danced in front of the Kremlin. Red Square belonged to them. In most countries, this would be a normal scene after a big football victory. In Moscow, it was extraordinary.
Foreign visitors took it for granted that the streets were theirs. Russians did not have that relationship with public spaces. But gradually they began joining in with the foreigners, while police officers looked on benevolently (at least that month).
Whereas the burnishing of a country’s image at a World Cup is sometimes a top-down project, in the United States this summer it needs to be borne by ordinary people. Blue state Americans often insist, after Mr. Trump’s latest outrage, “This is not who we are.” Nevermind the fact that he is an unmistakably American figure — a mash-up of white supremacy, reality TV, tech-enabled misinformation and billionaire class worship.
But the United States is more than just Trumpism. We saw that in Minneapolis, where people risked their lives to come out and protect immigrant neighbors from ICE. That’s the United States I’d love to see at the World Cup.
Ordinary citizens and their city governments can seize the chance to show the rest of the world a better America. Nine of the 11 U.S. host cities this summer have Democratic mayors, while dark-blue Santa Clara is led by the nonpartisan Lisa Gillmor, and Dallas’s mayor Eric Johnson only switched from Democrat to Republican in 2023. No wonder Trump occasionally threatens to move games to other venues.
Why not let your mayor, instead of Mr. Trump, speak for the United States, or have your street throw a party for visiting fans? You could even offer visitors a room in your house, in a country whose prices are unaffordable for many foreigners. Show them the best spots in your city, or just buy them a drink. On days when teams like Mexico or Colombia are playing, fly their national flags from your car to confuse ICE patrols.
Invite brilliant singers from their countries — especially from those he has demonized — to perform in their languages, from Haitian Creole to Arabic. Use the freedom of the soccer stadium to chant against Mr. Trump, which might even dissuade him from showing his face at the tournament. (There’s a reason he didn’t attend the Super Bowl.)
Seattle has already branded the hoped for upcoming Egypt-Iran game at Lumen Field the Pride Match, a centerpiece of the city’s L.G.B.T.Q. celebrations, to the dismay of the federations of both teams. It’s a gesture that says: “This is also who we are.” The World Cup could help the world love the United States again — or parts of it, anyway.
Simon Kuper is a Financial Times journalist and the author of the book “World Cup Fever.”
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