The World Cup soccer tournament starts on Thursday with the Mexico-South Africa match.
Just under four years ago, the most politically explosive World Cup tournament in football was played in Qatar.
That’s when the exploitation of migrant workers and the position of sexual minorities on the tiny peninsula took center stage. Many sighed with relief in advance, because the next games had already been awarded to long-standing democracies.
How wrong were they?
The World Cup 2026 will surely be remembered as the tournament where the barrier between sports and political influence was broken once and for all.
Danger of riots
The riot police are ready to calm down the surroundings of the World Cup arena. ZumaWire / MVPHOTOS
In Mexico City, a 1.5 kilometer security zone will be set up around the Azteca stadium on Thursday, and thousands of riot police from different parts of the country have been sent to the capital to monitor it.
President Claudia Sheinbaum wants to convey to the world an image of order and social peace. However, the teachers’ union is challenging it by demanding exactly one hundred percent salary increases.
To speed up the demands, the union showed its strength with a huge demonstration just before the opening match.
Teachers in Mexico are demanding double pay just on the eve of the World Cup. PDO
The police stopped it just a few hundred meters before Azteca. It is not expected that the situation would be resolved satisfactorily, at least from the point of view of the teachers, before the end of the World Cup.
“Not to the United States”
However, the greatest pressure is north of the border in the United States. President Donald Trump’s the wayward foreign policy meant that, for example, no Fifa referee was chosen for the World Cup Omar Abdulkadir Artan reached the ground at all.
Chief Referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan was returned from Miami to Mogadishu. EPA / AOP
Most of the Iranian team has received a travel permit, but the team’s game performances will certainly be affected by the fact that Trump continues to bombard the country.
Country fans have no business with stadiums. Citizens of Haiti, Senegal and the Ivory Coast also have the same grim fate.
In total, more than a quarter of the supporters of the countries participating in the World Cup have had travel bans, visa fees or restrictions on their opportunities to participate in the tournament.
Among them are, for example, South Africans, who must apply for a visa with the DS-160 form, wait for an interview invitation from the US embassy and pay about 185 dollars, and show sufficient funds for the return journey as well.
– I don’t want to go to the United States. I could have applied for a visa, but I decided to stay on Mexico’s side, Odwa from Johannesburg told Iltalehte on the pedestrian street through the center of Mexico City.
Odwa cheers on Bafana Bafana in Thursday’s opening match. Janne Palomäki
He had been planning his World Cup trip for two years. When it became clear that Bafana Bafana would have to go to Atlanta to play their second match of the opening group stage against the Czech Republic, he decided to skip the match.
– It was by no means a difficult decision. I actually have a lot of Yankee friends who come here to support South Africa.
– Partly it’s about Trump and his politics, but I find it unbelievable that the host of the competition is at war with another country playing in the competition. Unfortunately, only money talks.
The United States and Iran are possibly on a collision course on the World Cup turf as well. If they both finish second in their groups, they will meet each other in the first playoff round.
That match would be played in a suburb of Dallas on the eve of the 250th birthday of the USA.
The goal is a further place
Odwa does not have any specific plan for the Czech match. Of course, vacationing on another continent costs money.
– Everything is extremely expensive. I had to fly to Amsterdam first and spend a couple of days there before I got here.
– Maybe we’ll go somewhere else in Mexico. We’re not going to the United States.
South Africa has never made it past the preliminary group of the World Cup. The trick was close to succeeding at the home games in 2010, but then Mexico slipped ahead thanks to their better goal difference.
The teams will also face each other in Thursday’s opening match – just like 16 years ago. Then the Barcelona top by Rafa Márquez The 79th minute equalizer broke the hearts of Bafana Bafana fans.
South Africa’s tournament opening ended in disappointment in the match against Mexico in 2010. Now the teams will meet at the same stage again. PDO
Odwa was watching the match on site at the Soccer City stadium. On Thursday, he hopes for a better result from Azteca.
– I just want us to advance from the first group. After that I would just take it one day at a time.
The winner of Group A will also play their first playoff match in Mexico City. Odwa stays to watch it if his own team plays in it.
The fate of the group second is to travel to Los Angeles.
Qatar included
By the way, Qatar is participating this time as well. It secured its place in the competition for the first time purely on sporting grounds, and at the same time the blade of criticism about the country’s human rights violations was blunted.
The pressure of 2022 forced the country’s authoritarian government to make small concessions to the status of migrant workers.
In the end, the football pressure had practically nothing to do with the exploitation.
Qatar begins its World Cup match on Saturday in the San Francisco area against Switzerland, home of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization WHO.