After four years of anticipation laced with anxiety and speculations over political upheavals around the world, CHRISTIAN OKPARA reports that the 2026 World Cup is kicking off today as one of the most controversial in the recent history of the sport.
The ideal of “fair play” that FIFA has preached for decades is facing its sternest test yet as the 2026 World Cup kicks off today. Touted as a grand celebration meant to unite the world’s finest footballing talents, the tournament’s buildup has instead been plagued by a looming sense of organisational chaos.
Central to this anxiety is the heavy-handed approach of the United States, a primary host whose national immigration policies have directly compromised the tournament’s integrity.
Rather than ensuring an equitable playing field, FIFA appears to have yielded significant leverage to Washington, triggering concerns that the global governing body has lost administrative control of its flagship event.
The most glaring manifestation of this power imbalance is the unprecedented repatriation of Omar Artan. Voted Africa’s Referee of the Year in 2025, Artan was poised to make history as the first-ever Somali official to arbitrate at a men’s World Cup finals. Despite possessing a valid visa and a diplomatic passport, he was intercepted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection upon landing in Miami, subjected to intense interrogation, and ultimately deported due to “vetting concerns.”
This exclusion directly mirrors the strictures of the travel ban targeting several majority-Muslim nations, including Somalia, which Donald Trump reinstated upon returning to the presidency.
This capitulation marks a sharp, hypocritical reversal from the firm stance FIFA previously claimed it would maintain. Back in 2017, when the initial travel restrictions were introduced, FIFA President Gianni Infantino explicitly warned that any country restricting access to qualified teams, supporters, or officials would effectively invalidate its hosting rights, stating point-blank that “otherwise, there is no World Cup.”
Yet, over the last two years, Infantino has heavily ingratiated himself with the Trump administration . This proximity has left FIFA paralysed, entirely unable or unwilling to call the United States to order or enforce the strict non-discrimination guarantees traditionally demanded of host nations.
Consequently, the 2026 edition is heavily endangered of being even more controversial than its highly scrutinised predecessors in Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022). While those tournaments faced intense geopolitical and human rights backlash, the structural disruptions were largely resolved before the opening whistle, allowing the focus to shift back to the pitch.
By contrast, the 2026 Mundial arrives with systemic, ongoing logistical and administrative dysfunction that threatens to overshadow the actual sport. Instead of providing an untroubled haven for the game, the tournament is starting under a cloud of intense legal and corporate scrutiny.
Adding to this cocktail of confusion, former UEFA president Michel Platini has elected that this is the best time to launch civil and legal proceedings against Infantino over corruption allegations from 2015, which he says derailed his bid to lead the governing body.
The criminal complaint, filed in the French courts, accuses Infantino and two former FIFA officials – legal director Marco Villiger and audit committee chair Domenico Scala – of malicious prosecution.
The build-up to the show has been marked by many problems, chief among them being the U.S. visa rejections, war on Iran and its fallouts, high visa application fees and the seeming American defiance of FIFA’s host country protocol that allows eligible participants to enter the country without hindrance.
After months of politically charged rigmarole between the U.S. and Iran, which led to them switching basecamps to Mexico instead, the Iranians are still not sure if they will be allowed into the U.S., where they have their group stage games, despite strict visa rules for players.
Although the United States have assured that the Mellis will be allowed to enter the country, they are likely to play without their fans, who cannot access entry visas to the United States.
The U.S. recently launched a FIFA Priority Appointment Scheduling System (PASS), which expedites visa interviews for fans who have bought tickets through FIFA. But that does not guarantee a visa. Last month, a group of nearly 150 Ghana football fans saw their visa applications rejected.
Apart from U.S. immigration issues, there are fears that the World Cup could open the way for the spread of such deadly diseases as Ebola and Dengue fever, among others.
The United States’ Embassy in Nigeria last week advised fans going to the World Cup to be well fortified with their medications, as some of the ailments prevalent in Nigeria, especially malaria, are not popular in America.
Events of this scale rarely cause major ou…
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