This week, a record 48 countries will kick off the world’s biggest-ever World Cup, co-hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. But what should be a festival of sport is being overshadowed by controversies over immigration, travel woes, ticket prices, and the fact that the United States is at war with another participant, Iran.

On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Mehreen Khan, a sports and economics journalist at the Times in the United Kingdom. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: So, let’s start with this. What makes this year’s tournament exceptional?

Mehreen Khan: There are lots of things that make it exceptional. It’s the biggest World Cup ever, expanded from 32 to 48 teams. That means we’re getting record numbers of games—over a hundred matches. It means it’s longer; the World Cup will run from June 11 to July 19 and is going to occupy most of people’s summers. It’s happening across three countries for the first time ever. We’ve had shared hosts, but we’ve never had three countries (of course, they are contiguous; it’s one continent). There are various things that are being experimented for the first time, including new pricing systems that are making fans very unhappy about how expensive it is. It might be the hottest World Cup on record, and being in some parts of the United States at this time of the year is going to be incredibly prohibitive for athletes. So there are lots and lots of firsts.

It’s not the first geopolitical World Cup. Politics and geopolitics usually collide with World Cups. But if we’re going to think about it from the way that Foreign Policy readers would like to think about it, this is the second time the United States will host the World Cup. The first was in 1994. The global hegemon hosting a tournament gives it a slightly different dynamic, and when U.S. President Donald Trump is involved, it gives it an extra spicy dynamic. So in the run-up to this World Cup, there’s already been more noise, controversy, and sensitivities than I’ve remembered in any World Cup—that includes the ones hosted by Russia and Qatar, which are probably the two more controversial ones that people remember. So everyone’s not talking about the football right now, and that might be where we are for a while, actually.

RA: I want to talk a little bit about history. The founder of the World Cup was Jules Rimet, who fought for the French in World War I. And it’s notable that when they wanted to host the first World Cup, no one really wanted to do it. Uruguay stepped in. But as I was looking at the history of World Cups, it struck me that a lot of countries that have dubious politics have ended up as hosts. Italy’s Benito Mussolini played host in 1934. Argentina’s military junta hosted the cup in 1978. You mentioned Russia, under [President] Vladimir Putin—that was 2018. And then looking down the road, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is due to host in 2034. So there is a long history of autocrats and dictators who tend to put their hands up for hosting duties. Why is that?

MK: Football exists in a world where we’ve variously lurched between peaks of autocracy and totalitarianism toward the flourishing of liberal democracy, and maybe we’re in an era where the pendulum is swinging back. So in some senses, it’s just spotlighting the types of regimes that are around in the world at whatever point in time. If you are a strongman dictator who celebrates national pride, patriotism, something special about your country, there’s nothing better than sport, and in particular football, to whip up tribal feelings. That’s why it’s become normal to see your national leaders, your heads of state and government, in crowds at the World Cup supporting their team, because they want to ride off the coattails of the success of their national team.

These have also increasingly become diplomatic events. In 2022, the opening game was between Russia and Saudi Arabia. You saw Putin standing arm in arm with MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who’s set to be the host in 2034. The head of the Argentinian military, who carried out the coup two years before they hosted the World Cup, had never watched a football game before, but when Argentina was the host, he was at every single game. So football has been constantly exploited to whip up patriotism, and some would say more uncomfortable types of xenophobia, too. It’s always been there for the taking.

But the difference now is that we’re in an era where non-hegemonic countries, middle powers, use it to put their best face forward and wash their reputations. I don’t think the United States will be doing that. The bigger geopolitical question is whether we will look back at the United States hosting this World Cup, and the Olympics in Los Angeles in a couple of years, as the high-water mark of any kind of U.S. cultural soft-power projection, if indeed we are moving to a post-American world. I mean this in terms of geopolitics, great-power competition, and economic power, but also soft power, in terms of cultural and sporting power. This World Cup, which is already proving to be incredibly sensitive in terms of the logistics of people getting there and how they’re going to experience the tournament, may accelerate a lot of the existing trends in what we would call the decline of an imperial power, which is happening in so many other spheres. So it may end up being a much more significant political event than the World Cups in Russia, Qatar, or even Saudi Arabia looking forward.

RA: Wow, fascinating. I want to delve deeper.

I have to say, though, you said football a few times.

MK: I did, I’m so sorry.

RA: I think we have to collectively just admit that we’re going to jump between football and soccer on this show. But everyone knows what we’re talking about.

Let’s get to immigration. Fans from many countries are going to find it very hard to come to the United States—for example, there are restrictions on fans from Haiti, Senegal, Iran, and the Ivory Coast. A star Iraqi player was held up in immigration for several hours this week. It’s not a great look for the United States.

MK: It’s not, and if we were talking a couple of weeks ago, I would have mentioned all of these visa issues and restrictions as theoretical issues which FIFA promised to fix. For example, if you’re a fan from one of the countries with very tight visa restrictions, if you proved you had a ticket, U.S. Customs and Border Protection was not supposed to stop you. Now we’re very close to the tournament, and this has gone from theory to a very real reality, because now we have stories that FIFA’s apparent exemptions are not actually working.

The most obvious case just happened a couple of hours ago with an official. Omar Artan, who was crowned as the best referee official in Africa, was stopped at U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Miami and sent back to Istanbul. He will not be able to get into the country to referee—the biggest moment of his life. This is an official who’s incredibly well respected, and he happens to be Somalian. FIFA said they can’t do anything about it, despite making promises that officials and team members who are affiliated with countries would still be able to get in. We’ve also seen pretty unedifying pictures of the Senegalese national team and their cohort being aggressively searched while deplaning in the United States. You mentioned the example of the Iraqi footballer who was interrogated for seven hours; a Swiss footballer [born in Cameroon] was also given these tighter inspections.

So there’s an arbitrary nature about it, and the promises that FIFA made to fans and their constituent members are proving to be pretty hollow right now. That’s the biggest story. Gianni Infantino, who runs FIFA, said in public that of course we can only host World Cups in countries where our players, our officials, and their cohorts are allowed to enter. We would not afford the privilege of hosting a World Cup to countries that don’t. But the reality of the Trump administration is that they don’t seem to care at all.

The other big story is that the administration is also talking about ramping up ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] presence in countries that are hosting the World Cup, which is another scary prospect. It’s already causing a blowback from mayors and governors in cities, including New York, where you are. So we’ve gone from theoretically difficult problems to having case examples of FIFA not coming through on its promises, and the administration not making any concessions when it comes to visa policy. So this is a pretty unique situation, I would argue.

RA: And then of course you have the fact that there are countries literally at war that are participants in this World Cup: Iran and the United States. Tense talks are still underway. And their fans aren’t being allowed in, but also their players are struggling. Talk a little bit about what you’re anticipating and expecting on that front, because it’s not like the stadiums are going to go empty, either.

MK: We could argue about stadiums going empty for other reasons, and that’s probably because of pricing. It’s worth mentioning that as we speak, two days before the first game, there are a record number of unsold tickets on FIFA’s resale site that you can still buy for the group stages. That’s another story.

The Iranian one is absolutely fascinating. Iran is a footballing country. They basically qualify for most World Cups, legitimately, through their regional rounds. And when they did qualify, there was not a war going on, and they were actually planning to have their base camp in Tucson, Arizona. That had to be moved to Mexico because the administration made it clear that it didn’t want Iranian players to be based in the United States. There’s going to be a bizarre spectacle because the Iranians have only been granted day visas to play their group stage matches, two of which are in L.A. and one of which is in Seattle. They have to get in and out of the country on the same day and go back to their base in Mexico. As far as we know, most of the players are here, but some of the support staff have not been granted visas. And as of today, the BBC reported that the United States has also denied Iran its mandatory allocation of 8 percent of fans in the stadium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be Iranian fans in the stadium. There just won’t be Iranian fans coming from Iran or affiliated with the Iranian football association.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Iran may garner more support within stadiums from neutral, non-Iranian fans than this administration may be expecting, because they have been treated absolutely shoddily. It’s worth mentioning that a couple of weeks ago, there was an envoy to President Trump who also tried to get Iran kicked out and replaced by Italy. He happened to be an Italian American. So there have been numerous ways to get them kicked out—not legitimate ones—and now there’s a hostile environment that the administration is creating for the Iranian team. Let’s see if it backfires or not. I don’t think footballers need motivation to perform at World Cups, but this might exactly be the kind of thing that could really get you fired up to overperform in a tournament like the World Cup on enemy territory.

RA: And to your point about the diaspora trying to attend, part of the challenge there is that if ICE, the U.S. immigration authority, is indeed at large around these stadiums, then if you’re someone of, say, Haitian or Iranian origin, you may think twice about whether you could be apprehended.

MK: Yeah, and Hispanic origin, too. If you want to walk around brazenly wearing your Colombian football shirt or showing your colors, that could be a target on your back for ICE. The World Cup has already been an opportunity domestically for political opponents of Trump to talk about how much they oppose things like ICE in sanctuary cities. The mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who’s a big football fan, recently came out and said that he will not tolerate ICE or extra ICE presence in New York. He made it very clear that eight members of the U.S. men’s national team are immigrants. Immigration has made football great. It makes American soccer great. And so this is an opportunity for Democrats, particularly those on the left, to use the World Cup to bring international and domestic attention to the cleavages and fights that are going to happen at the midterms, which, once the World Cup is over, will only be about three or four months away. There is a collision of domestic politics and broader international sensitivities. All of it is going to be at play. And it’s incredible that we’re talking about the World Cup and I haven’t spoken about the soccer at all. We’re only talking about the other peripheral things, which in and of itself is pretty telling.

RA: Yeah, indeed. This is truly the world’s biggest sport, a global sport. But we should, of course, mention that some of the world’s biggest countries by population didn’t make it: China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan. Those are five of the top eight most populated countries in the world. When you take a step back and look at the countries that do well at soccer and the ones that aren’t able to make even an expanded World Cup with 48 teams, what is the correlation between success and being at the World Cup?

MK: You’re right. Can you really talk about a geopolitical World Cup if China and India are not there? Nigeria is another massive footballing country that just didn’t make it out of the qualifying stages. I’ve already mentioned that Italy, a four-time World Cup winner, is not going to be there. What’s the correlation? There’s no point saying that only big countries are good at football. In this World Cup we’re going to see Cape Verde, Jordan, and other countries that have never been represented before at World Cups, and real underdog countries, like Bosnia and Herzegovina.

What’s the correlation? Soccer traditionally has had a stronghold in Europe and Latin America. There are correlations between how to become a successful national soccer team and your level of development at home, infrastructure, and talent. Countries like Morocco that have become incredibly successful at the international level have basically done it by tapping into their diaspora. Moroccan diasporas in Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, across Europe—the Moroccan football association for the last couple of years has made a concerted attempt to make sure that those European-born diaspora players come and play for Morocco, which has had an incredible impact on their team.

So there are lots of dynamics at play. I don’t think there’s a correlation or a formula that you can put it down to. Countries like India and China have historically never been big footballing nations. In India, of course, cricket is still the no. 1 sport. I think football, or soccer, is the fastest-growing sport in all of these countries, but it hasn’t really materialized at the international level. It’s also worth saying that we talk about America as a country where soccer’s not big. That’s only true of the men’s game; it’s not true of the women’s game, where the U.S. women’s national team has been dominating world soccer for most of the last three decades. The women’s game has always been huge in North America; it has not been translated into its men’s games.

It’s worth talking about the U.S. men’s national team. They’ve got an Argentinian coach. There’s clearly an attempt, by having a Spanish-speaking manager, to tap into Latino Americans to become supporters of the U.S. men’s national team and create this constituency of natural American football—soccer—fans. Young Americans are watching more soccer than they ever have, and it’s a growing sport. Unlike in 1994, where it was a bit of an alien thing, soccer has penetrated a little bit of the American men’s sporting psyche. The whole point is that’s what FIFA wants. How can you have a world sport when the world’s biggest economy and its most powerful country is not really tapped into soccer culture? That is what this World Cup is meant to achieve.