Studying the relationship between sport and politics and the impact of major events on host countries, American political scientist Jules Boykoff states, in an interview with Sheetthat, by limiting the entry of participants in the 2026 World Cup into the United States, the Donald Trump administration seeks to divert attention from internal problems (such as its low popularity) and reinforce a culture of security with a view to the country’s mid-term elections in November.
While many countries use sport as a tool of soft power —diplomacy without the use of force, but of cultural, artistic instruments and the values of a people—, the USA has not only wasted this chance, but instead has resorted, in Boykoff’s view, to sportswashing, using the sport’s good image to divert attention from problems and reap political dividends.
The term, in fact, is in the title of the academic’s most recent book, “Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine”, OR Books, 2026). Boykoff has a doctorate in political science from American University (in the capital, Washington) and professor of the subject at Pacific University (Oregon).
A former player for the US youth teams (up to under-23), he played his first international match, as under-20, against Brazil de Cafu, in 1990, at the Toulon Tournament, in France, (Brazilian victory 2-0).
He also lived in Rio between 2015 and 2016, as a researcher-scholar in the Fulbright program. Boykoff spoke to Sheet from Paris, where he is temporarily a visiting researcher at the University of Nanterre.
In general, as Mr. analyzes the problems that athletes and other FIFA World Cup participants have faced due to the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy? Does this surprise you?
The problems that athletes and fans have faced have been distressing and entirely predictable, unfortunately. The Trump administration’s exclusionary policies clash sharply with the spirit of the World Cup in general and certainly clash with FIFA’s oft-trumpeted slogan that football unites the world. Unfortunately, under President Trump… football is actually being used to divide, when it should unite us.
Why doesn’t FIFA face or complain to the USA about the problems that World Cup participants are experiencing with restrictions on entry into the country? Did the partnership between Infantino and Trump from the beginning silence FIFA?
FIFA no longer has the influence it once had, it has given up on it. Let us not forget that two days before the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the World Cup organizers decided that beer would no longer be sold inside the stadiums. What did FIFA do? Nothing, because he no longer had any influence. Think about what Donald Trump can do with the upcoming World Cup.
Furthermore, Gianni Infantino made a huge strategic error when he presented Trump with the FIFA Peace Prize in December 2025. Not because he didn’t deserve the Peace Prize — he absolutely didn’t, don’t get me wrong — but because Infantino should have waited and presented it as a possibility, saying something like, “oh, I’ll give you a Peace Prize at the end of the tournament.” It could have been an incentive for perhaps Trump to be on his best behavior. Instead, he gave up the gold before the tournament, eliminating any advantage he might have had over Trump.
The truth is that Infantino is a sycophant down to the molecular level and has made a series of mistakes along the way that have alienated him not only from football fans, but also from people within his organization who, I think, should speak out more openly against what he is doing.
Is it possible to establish a connection between these episodes and complaints about exorbitant prices of World Cup tickets? Could the political and economic particularities of the USA as a superpower make this an atypical edition of the World Cup, which generally takes place under practically the same “Fifa standard” wherever it is held?
What we see with the World Cup in the USA is the confluence of American-style hypercapitalism with the FIFA greed machine. They call it dynamic pricing… the word “dynamic” may sound good, but in reality it’s not good for anyone trying to buy a ticket.
And all of this contributes to the zeitgeist of inaccessibility. There is a paradox in this World Cup. On the one hand, there are more teams than ever participating in the tournament. On the other hand, we have people being excluded, literally, from the country – if you are from Iran, Haiti, Senegal or Côte d’Ivoire – but also through these high ticket prices, which serve to exclude people who are not extremely rich.
Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump came together to take the people’s sport and do their best to transform it into the plutocrats’ sport for a small, privileged portion of the 1% of the world’s population.
Sport has been a great soft power tool around the world. Do you think that, because the USA is still a superpower, they disregard this tool?
I prefer to talk about the World Cup from the perspective of sportswashing rather than soft power. If sportswashing is when political leaders use sports to divert attention from chronic social problems and human rights violations, allowing those leaders to appear important or legitimate on the world stage while creating opportunities for political and economic advancement, then what we are witnessing in the US now is definitely sportswashing.
Did we see sportswashing in Russia before the 2018 World Cup? Yes, we saw. Have we seen sportswashing before the 2022 Qatar Cup? Yes, we saw. There is a tendency, both in academia, journalism and the general public, not to use the term sportswashing when we talk about countries that consider themselves democracies. In my view, this is an example of ethnocentric thinking. Sometimes it becomes xenophobic.
What would Donald Trump like to divert attention from? There are his approval ratings in freefall, lower than ever. There is the fact that the war with Iran, which he wages alongside Israel, is an epic disaster. There’s the fact that he promised to solve inflation on day one, and inflation is extremely high. There are Epstein’s files, which he doesn’t want us to think about. It is clear that he is diverting attention from many different things and creating political opportunities for himself.
Often when people discuss whether sportswashing or soft power works, they are talking about whether it works with an external audience. But it is also necessary to consider the internal public. I don’t think Trump cares much what the rest of the world thinks.
So, the exclusion of the Somali referee and searches like those carried out on athletes from Senegal and Uzbekistan have to do with a performative security culture that, in fact, targets the internal public on the eve of the mid-term elections. [as chamadas “midterms”]. The worse Trump’s popularity gets, the more incentive he has to engage in sportswashing as his political lifeline.
Can criticism from around the world change this situation?
Not everyone needs to agree with sportswashing. That’s what politics is about. If people don’t do anything, don’t express their discontent with what we see now, definitely nothing will change.
The future is very uncertain in the USA, beyond the World Cup. But the World Cup is a kind of test that reminds us that sport is politics by other means and that, sometimes, it can give us an edge in politics in ways that are much more difficult to achieve with traditional electoral politics alone. I’m sure we will see protests in several stadiums in the US, in front of the World Cup venues. Will this make any difference? We’ll see.
X-RAY | Jules Boykoff, 55
A former US youth team player, he has a doctorate in political science from American University (Washington DC) and is a professor of the subject at Pacific University (Oregon). He is the author of “Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine” (OR Books, 2026), “Kicking” (Duke University Press, 2026) and “What Are the Olympics For?” (Bristol University Press, 2024), among other books.
