This absorbing interplay of history, memory, identity, skill, athletic ability, and entertainment is why the FIFA World Cup continues to evoke passion on a scale unknown to any other single sporting event. Whether it will leave any lasting legacies on the major questions facing our world today will be debated long after a winner is settled on 19 July. For 39 days, meanwhile, the world can take a break.
When the FIFA World Cup kicks off on 11 June, Nigeria will be on the menu but not as a competitor. Nigerian musician, Burna Boy, will headline the opening ceremony in a duet with Colombian superstar, Shakira, for who this will be a second appearance at the opening of the World Cup. Her first was at the 2010 edition in South Africa.
Despite challenging trade and diplomatic relations between them, Canada, Mexico, and the United States will jointly host the tournament. This will be the second time in its history that the World Cup would be shared among joint hosts. South Korea and Japan did so in 2002.
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This year’s tournament occurs in a time of profound uncertainty and serious questions about the future of international peace and security. It could also be a showcase for coexistence in a time of global fragility.
To be sure, awkward political and diplomatic subtexts have never been far from the World Cup. Uruguay hosted the first edition in 1930 at the onset of the Great Depression. Underscoring an anti-colonial subtext, Montevideo’s Estadio Centenario, venue of the final match, was built to commemorate 100 years of Uruguay’s independence from Spain in 1830. Spain kept away.
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Thirteen countries participated in that inaugural edition. The hosts subsidised the costs of travel and accommodation, which ultimately enabled four European countries to participate: Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia.
Italy’s ruler, Benito Mussolini, hosted the tournament in 1934 and turned it into a prop for fascist iconography. Political machinations on and off field enabled Italy’s emergence as eventual winners. It was the beginning of an Italian spring in world football.
Two years later, Italy were again ascendant, beating Austria to the gold medal at Adolph Hitler’s Olympics in Berlin in 1936.
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By the time the third edition of the World Cup turned up in France on 4 June, 1938, Austria, one of the favourites for the title, was no longer in existence. Three months earlier, on 12 March – one day after the abdication of Kurt von Schuschnigg as Austria’s Chancellor – Hitler’s troops crossed the border from Germany and the Anschluss was underway.
Austria’s annexation was formally pronounced the next day and Hitler turned up in Vienna, the capital, to celebrate two days later, on 15 March.
Italy’s triumph at the final game on 19 June 1938 was the first time a defending champion would retain the World Cup. It was also approaching the highpoint of Hitler’s Nationalsozialismus – National Socialism – and Mussolini’s fascism. Fourteen-and-a-half months later, Germany invaded Poland to mark the beginning of World War II.
Racism was an early theme in the World Cup. Brazil’s Leônidas da Silva, the highest scorer in the 1938 World Cup, was a black man whose skills and talent upset the then prevalent notions of white supremacy. In his absence, Italy prevailed over Brazil in the semi-final, amidst suspicions that his exclusion from the match had been procured under pressure from the tournament’s administration.
The competition was to suffer an abeyance for the following 12 years. By the time it returned in 1950 in Brazil, Hitler and Mussolini had been defeated and decolonisation was in progress. India, less than three years as an independent country, was one of the qualifiers, but it withdrew shortly before the tournament began.
The 1978 World Cup in Argentina was a propaganda victory for the host country’s military dictatorship. Located at the Navy Mechanical School in the capital city, Buenos Aires, the regime’s largest torture centre was within earshot of Estadio Monumental, the venue of the final match, which Argentina won for the first time.
This year, despite ongoing conflict and an uncertain ceasefire between Iran and the US, FIFA has confirmed that Iran will compete in the tournament and play all of its three group stage matches inside the US.
Iran is one of the 48 countries that will compete in the tournament, over 104 matches scheduled across 16 venues in the three host countries.
The opening match between Mexico and South Africa on 11 June will be one of five matches to be played at the Azteca Stadium, the venue that hosted the coronation of Argentina’s Diego Maradona as the king of world football at the final match in 1986. Guadalajara and Monterrey, also in Mexico, will respectively host four matches each.
Thirteen matches will be played in Canada: seven in Vancouver and six in Toronto.
The MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, will host the final game. It is one of 11 venues for the 78 games to be played in the US. Other US venues include Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle.
The Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, will host seven matches, including a quarter-final on 9 July. The countries scheduled to compete in the group matches at Gillette Stadium — or Boston Stadium, as it will be known during the tournament — include England, France, Ghana, Haiti, Iraq, Morocco, Norway, and Scotland.
Despite widespread concerns about the effects of current US immigration policies, many of these countries share rich histories with the New England area, which could make for intriguing contests and guarantee enthusiastic fan interest.
For much of its history, the World Cup has, in fact, been a contest between European and Latin American countries. Decolonisation changed this. The result is expansion from 13 countries at the inception to the 48 who will compete this summer. Over the years, decolonisation has remained a durable sub-text of the World Cup. That is likely to be true of the 2026 World Cup.
The first match at Boston Stadium will be on 13 June between Haiti and Scotland. For Haiti, the site of the first successful slave revolt in the world and a country affected by current US immigration restrictions, there is evocative irony to the fact that it will play its first-ever World Cup match in the Boston area, once a hub in the transatlantic slave trade.
Similarly, Scotland and Boston share a storied history dating back to the earliest Scottish prisoners of war who were banished to the Boston Bay colony during the rule of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II in the mid-17th century. The Scots Charitable Society founded in 1657 in Massachusetts to help those in need after they completed their forced indentured servitude is reputed to be the oldest charitable organisation in the Western hemisphere.
Three days later, on 16 June, the Metlife Stadium in New Jersey will host the second post-colonial derby at the world cup between France and Senegal. When both teams met at the opening game of the 2002 World Cup, Senegal ran away shock but deserving victors. This time, Senegal will be likely to enjoy significant support from the substantial population of Senegalese origin in the New York-New Jersey neighbourhood.
The contest between England’s Three Lions and former colonial subjects, Ghana’s Black Stars, on 23 June could similarly inspire the absorbing passions of a post-colonial derby in a competition that will have a few more.
When Spain turns up three days later to take on Uruguay in Guadalajara, Mexico, on 26 June, both countries will be re-enacting the original post-colonial narrative present at the birth of the World Cup.
This absorbing interplay of history, memory, identity, skill, athletic ability, and entertainment is why the FIFA World Cup continues to evoke passion on a scale unknown to any other single sporting event. Whether it will leave any lasting legacies on the major questions facing our world today will be debated long after a winner is settled on 19 July. For 39 days, meanwhile, the world can take a break.
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a lawyer, teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and can be reached through [email protected].
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