How can football brave the world’s political storms?

From protests in Iran to Trump's visa crackdown, the World Cup is more buffeted than ever by global turmoil

- Paul MacInnes

A protest gesture in Brussels against China's hosting of the 2008 Olympics

(YVES HERMAN/REUTERS)

Five months out from the World Cup the politics are impossible to avoid. There are concerns relating to one of the host countries, the US, with armed immigration officials roaming through its cities and visa restrictions stepped up against foreign visitors.

One qualifying nation, Iran, is experiencing a public uprising against its leadership, with the regime attacking its citizens in response. Among other qualifiers there are concerns over democratic backsliding in Tunisia, ecological crimes in Ecuador and, in the future host country Saudi Arabia. And that’s just for starters.

It sometimes feels as if the tournament Gianni Infantino recently described as “the greatest show ever on planet Earth”, will serve as an inescapable reminder of the depressing state of the world in 2026. But it is hardly the only tournament to have prompted ethical concerns and serves as a reminder that the issue of how sport should engage with such issues has remained largely unresolved.

In 1978, the World Cup was held in Argentina, which two years earlier had been taken over by a military dictatorship. It prompted a response from Amnesty International, which ran what is understood to be the organisation’s first campaign focused on a major sporting event. Under a slogan devised by its West German branch, Amnesty made an appeal for “Fussball ja - Folter nein” or “Football yes - torture no”. The campaign played a part in generating a debate over the ethics of participation in the tournament and West Germany’s Paul Breitner refused to play. The final ended with the dictator, Jorge Videla, handing the World Cup trophy to Argentina’s captain Daniel Passarella.