The year when football turned into a political tool – Firstpost

Football, like most sports, is a unifier. It cuts across boundaries. It brings people together, and even though a few anarchic elements enter the game from time to time, it has largely been able to withstand and outlast those. Football also allows nations and people to dream. It creates stories. It drives them. It leads people to conclusions that they would have otherwise only imagined and felt possible through fantasy.

But because football has such standing, both in society and perhaps at the pedestal of sport, it also has a tendency to attract political motives, sometimes from the people but more often from the powers that be.

And all of it, through 2025, came to the fore. Most notably as fracas descended on the draw for the FIFA World Cup, slated to take place in Canada, Mexico and the United States of America in 2026. At times, it felt like some type of award show: glitzy and glamourous, without really understanding the gravity or the purpose of the event. Those who had turned up and tuned in, were there to watch where and who their teams would play. Only to realise this was some kind of political garlanding.

Donald trumps over World Cup draw

Had no one mentioned Canada and Mexico were co-hosts, most would not have known because Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America,
was front and centre for everything. Gianni Infantino, the FIFA President, stood side by side almost throughout, and that was the clearest indication yet of where the FIFA is leaning currently.

Infantino also accompanied Trump on a tour to the Middle East and the Gaza peace talks earlier in 2025. Trump, meanwhile, was bestowed with the first-ever FIFA Peace Prize – the merits of which remain debatable, although the significant departure for FIFA remains undeniable. Not to mention that
FIFA, ideally, has a duty to maintain political neutrality – a memo Infantino seems to have clearly and conveniently missed.

Saudi’s World Cup questions

This also comes at a time when FIFA has found itself in hot water for awarding Saudi Arabia the 2034 edition. Saudi Arabia, like Qatar, has been battling a lot of allegations. Around human rights, around rights for the LGBTQIA+ community, and around the rights and the treatment of women in the country. Yet, Saudi Arabia will host the global showpiece event in less than a decade from now.

The “principle of confederation rotation”, which FIFA have followed to allow continents to host these tournaments on a more rotational basis, will have played a role in how Saudi Arabia was the only bidder, in addition to three continents technically hosting the 2030 World Cup. But it still does not take away from how almost everyone knew that FIFA would opt for them as hosts, with the financial impact of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious project just too enticing for FIFA to turn down, even if there are other bigger and graver questions that remain unanswered.

No one, of course, knows how the world will look come 2034, or how Saudi Arabia might emerge as a nation in a decade. Or if the footballing calendar can be bent yet again to accommodate another winter World Cup. But the here and now, aka the World Cup next year, does not paint a very promising picture either.

Ticket prices touching sky

Tickets, if you had not heard, are
exorbitantly priced. And even that is putting it mildly. Football is what it is because of the various cultures, vibes and the atmosphere teams and fans from around the globe bring. But now, this World Cup could be reduced to one where only people in suits and those accustomed to travelling business class, will be able to attend. Because the average fan and the economy of watching their nation dream big and dream of being world champions, could just cease to exist.

It also does not help that FIFA is willing to accommodate and perhaps even side with Trump whenever there is an opportunity. The FIFA President clicking pictures with the president/office bearers of where the World Cup will be staged, has happened in years gone by but not to this extent, where it now seems like an extension for all that Trump wants to preach.

Some will say it is just. Some will say otherwise. But in any case, it should not be this way. Just because FIFA, fundamentally, is an independent body, and should ideally not be reliant or too much in cahoots with one single entity. Or person.

It is not as if football has always been isolated from politics. At different points and junctures, those in power have tried to use it as a tool to further their agendas and propaganda. It is not tough to understand why that is the case.

Football, as much as some may want to argue otherwise, is the world’s game. The sport that the tiniest of countries have lofty ambitions in, and the sport in which the wildest of dreams and narratives indeed come to fruition. It is also easily the most-watched sport in the world, meaning that if anyone wants to push anything through, well, this is the medium.

In this current landscape, though, the last thing football needs is for it to be outrightly labelled and accepted as a political tool. Especially because every decision is analysed through a microscopic lens, and is discussed far and wide by people who are now culturally more aware of what is divisive, what is inclusive, and what might ethically and morally feel wrong.

Football should be everyone’s game. Irrespective of where they come from, who they are and what they identify as. Rather than being reduced to a means for a select few individuals, who want to take it for a ride and bend it to their liking, just because it suits their way of thinking and intends to appease those who keep them in power.

And sport, anyway, should not mix with politics. That is easier said than done. Because there is at least one other sport (read cricket) that seems to be struggling with keeping itself insulated, leading to incidents and acts that have alternated between being absurd, ugly and ludicrous.

With all the people involved, and with all the money involved, there is no guarantee that football will ever be completely free of politics. Or from sportswashing, which is the term used to describe situations where the sanctity of the sport is leveraged to force through ideas that would have ordinarily been shot down.

But as a new year dawns, and a year that flirted perilously close to crossing a line the sport ought not to, finishes, maybe we can all hope and dream. That in the upcoming year, there will be some deviation, and that that deviation will be of the right kind.

Football, after all, is about the dreams it feeds, and the stories it creates. And the current one, unfortunately, is just leaving a bit of a sour taste. The fans do not deserve that. The game does not deserve it either.