The United States’ bid for the 2026 World Cup, which has long been seen as a slam dunk, is in trouble in no small part thanks to President Trump’s controversial attempted travel ban, according to a new report from ESPN.
The bid, which is a combined effort between the US, Canada and Mexico, is now seriously under threat from tiny Morocco, a North African country with just 33 million residents.
There are many reasons the North American bid is being challenged by Morocco, but ESPN notes:
The North American bid has had to counter an anti-American sentiment that stems largely from actions taken by President Donald Trump’s administration. Those actions include a travel ban affecting mostly Arab countries, public comments that perpetuate stereotypes and the reported use of profanity in describing poorer countries.
Because of Trump’s positions, ESPN notes, US soccer officials have been addressing a host of politically charged issues. For example, they have had to defend the very idea that foreigners would be welcome in the US.
ESPN asked Sunil Gulati, the former US soccer president who is heading the North American bid, if Trump has been a detriment to the bid.
“All three countries’ governments, at the highest level, have been very supportive of the joint bid and the desire to bring the World Cup to North America,” Gulati said.
The concerns being raised by soccer officials from around the world aren’t completely unfounded. Iran, for example, qualified for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, is a perennial power in Middle Eastern soccer, and is one of the countries targeted by Trump’s ban. The other countries on the list are Chad, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — none of which are major soccer powers.
There is no way to know, however, if Trump’s ban will even be in place in 2018, never mind 2026. The US Supreme Court only decided in January to take up the case, which will determine the legality of the ban targeting the six Muslim-majority countries.
Be that as it may, US soccer officials — still smarting from their team’s failure to qualify for this year’s World Cup — have been forced into a defensive position by Trump’s controversial policies even though their bid is far and away the best of the bunch. With the World Cup expanding for the first time to include 48 countries in 2026, the US was considered to be the favorite based purely on logistics. No other bid has the infrastructure, stadiums and hotels an event like the World Cup needs.
Additionally, because the US hosted the tournament in 1994, the Cup has either been hosted or will be hosted on every other continent around the globe, other than Antarctica. North America, it was felt, had waited its turn.
That stance, however, was based on the old FIFA power structure under fallen president Sepp Blatter. The 81-year-old Swiss administrator enriched himself while leading FIFA from 1998 till 2015 with a power base of mainly Asian and African countries. That all came to a screeching halt in 2015, when the US Justice Department indicted 18 high-ranking soccer officials from around the world in a wide-ranging corruption probe.
Blatter wasn’t named in the indictments, but his reputation was ruined nonetheless. He resigned soon thereafter as the Swiss government opened its own corruption investigation into Blatter. He then, in December 2015, was banned from the sport entirely.
Now, the ghost of Blatter’s past influence is coming back to haunt the US. Morocco’s bid is mainly being backed by Asia and South America — the continents that Blatter used to control.
The US, meanwhile, has the backing of Central America, Oceania and parts of Europe and Asia, according to ESPN.
The 2026 host will be announced on June 13.