Boycott the World Cup? Football fans have more power to change the world if they organise

What on earth are we meant to do about the 2026 World Cup? The tournament is meant to be exciting and fun. People look forward to it for years before a ball is even kicked. Many supporters will spend thousands of pounds and weeks of their lives travelling around the world to support their teams. It’s a great big communal, global event that everyone can enjoy together – in theory.

Recent editions have become something else entirely. FIFA, the sport’s governing body, has seen fit to award the greatest show on earth to Russia in 2018, Qatar in 2022 and now the United States of America (partially) in 2026. Technically the USA is sharing the tournament with Canada and Mexico, but the Americans are the face of it, making them the third hosts in a row with serious questions hanging over them. 

The USA’s president and governing party has seen fit to wage illegal wars of aggression, threaten a genocide, kidnap a head of state, degrade international law and the courts which enforce it, worsen the climate emergency, revoke emergency lifesaving aid from the poorest people around the world and so much more. Then there’s what they do within their own borders. The ICE immigration raids, the erosion of public health policy, the gutting of the federal government and the open corruption. That only scratches the surface.

Laid on top of all that is the FIFA superstructure, the operating model of football’s governing body which is not fit for purpose. Nicholas McGeehan, the director and co-founder of FairSquare, a non-profit organisation, explains: “I don’t think FIFA meant to become a supervillain. But the way that football has grown is completely unsuited to FIFA’s governance structure. FIFA needs to make all its money in one year out of four. They want to wring every dollar or penny out of the host country.”

That means FIFA is structurally incentivised to go where the money is – regardless of moral or ethical concerns. It pays none of the costs of the World Cup and walks away with all the revenue. The host nation then passes the costs to supporters through hotels, food, drink and ticket prices. But what are supporters meant to do about this combination of ethical, moral and financial disasters?

How should we respond to a World Cup held in Donald Trump’s USA? McGeehan sums it up nicely: “I think supporters feel helpless because they’re like, what can I do? I love the game. I want to see this. I want to support my team. What do you expect me to do that is going to make any sort of difference?  

“Well, you remove your purchasing power. You say, ‘I’m not going to watch it’ or ‘I’m not going to go to it.’ And that makes some sort of difference, but supporters are then excluded from the game. They have no stake in how the game is run. It is now run in the interests of big business and authoritarian states. So where’s the entry point for supporters to say or do something?”

Saying no is often the only power we have in a capitalist world. But what if we want a lasting, long-term response to this World Cup that can lead to change? What if supporters want to do something more than simply say no?

The answer lies in collective action. Football supporters are the biggest group of people in most countries on earth. We are organised in numbers political parties, trade unions and religions would kill for.

We are intergenerational and represent every niche of society. Individually, boycotting the World Cup is easy for FIFA to ignore. Acting together across club lines and national borders, we could become a force which changes football and society entirely. That will require building mass democratic football supporter organisations, working with our traditional foes and using our collective influence to force media and political figures to listen to us. 

Imagining a better world built to serve the people rather than big business is idealistic. However football supporters are uniquely positioned to turn that idealism into reality.

We have so much in common already, and we already have structures to build around in the name of supporters trusts, the Football Supporters Association, Football Supporters Europe, Fans Supporting Foodbanks and organisations like FairSquare, Fair Game, Pledgeball and others. 

Read more:

• How can I protest the Qatar World Cup? Here are the options
• ‘Football is a force for good’: Homeless World Cup gets backing from FIFA
• How fan-owned football clubs are putting the power in the hands of the supporters

Most importantly, we have something we love deeply, and an enemy trying to take it away from us in the name of corporate greed. That’s the ultimate motivation. My upcoming book For the Love shows how supporters can get organised, the problems we face and the ways to overcome them.

The World Cup is the perfect time to look at your own club and get involved in organising with your fellow supporters. If enough of us do it, we can work together to change football and the world. 

Alex Timperley is the founder of MCFC Fans Foodbank Support

For the Love: How Football Supporters Can Change the World by Alex Timperley is out on 6 July
(Halcyon, £12.99). Pre-order it here. You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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