World Cup draw cartoonish, loathsome and repugnant

Believe it or not, a men’s World Cup will begin in just a few months. For the 42 national teams already qualified for the five-week, three-country, sixteen-city competition, a schedule has even begun to emerge. The full 48-team field will not be known until the last day of March, however, as FIFA has bloated the thing beyond recognition.

Anyway, if you’ve already forgotten that the Group Stage Draw was conducted on Friday, don’t worry. You’re not alone. The event that took place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., had little to do with the soccer set to kick off 187 days from now.

Instead, what we saw, what we’ll remember, was a clumsy pageant that put into speeches and songs what we’ve known for some time: that FIFA has completed its metamorphosis from sports organization to the promotional vehicle of a depraved American administration.

The actual draw took place the same day the United States, which will co-host the World Cup with Canada and Mexico, announced it would expand its travel ban to more than 30 nations — presumably including, as U.S. President Donald Trump described them in a tantrum earlier this week, “shithole countries” like Haiti and “garbage” like Somalia. Haiti, incidentally, will be a World Cup participant.

It was within this ear-piercing dissonance, heightened further by the Americans’ illegal, extrajudicial and frankly evil killings in the Caribbean, that FIFA boss and Oval Office lapdog Gianni Infantino used the spectacle of the draw to award the U.S. President a peace prize to stand in for the real one he’ll never win. Gaudy and gold, it features a globe upheld by appropriately tiny hands.

But there was more. After a video montage, Infantino proceeded to read off a list of “achievements” from a framed certificate that he also presented to Trump. Finally, he had a specially-struck medal brought out that the U.S. President — cosplaying a ridiculous Napoleon — picked up and placed around his own neck.

It was at once cartoonish and loathsome, but it was also the centrepiece of an afternoon to which the Group Stage Draw was merely a backdrop. Given that half those groups won’t be filled until the spring, the exercise of pots and balls was beside the point.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Head Start

Weekday Mornings

A quick glance at the news for the upcoming day.

Sign up for Head Start

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Had the event been more subtle in its repugnance, we might have been left to wonder what to expect next June and July. Now there isn’t the shadow of a doubt.

The American segment of the 2026 World Cup will be at best unwelcoming and at worst dangerous. As good as the soccer might be — and some of it will no doubt be excellent — matchday experiences will involve journalists being harassed by the secret service and everyone else who isn’t vanilla white having to dodge the immigration brownshirts.

And yet, there will be more to the story. Twenty-six games will be played outside the United States, including 13 here in Canada. Host cities Toronto and Vancouver will have a chance to show domestic and travelling fans a totally different World Cup.

Once we’ve recovered from the nauseating draw, that’s something worth leaning into. If we’re going to be a part of this thing, we might as well at least try to make it better.

winnipegfreepress.com/jerradpeters