By Gabriel Kuhn
This text was published in Italian as a teaser for the Italian edition of “Soccer vs. the State: Tackling Football and Radical Politics”.
We are all familiar with the mantra of “not mixing sports and politics.” It is usually employed by the people in power who want to ensure that no sector of society, sports included, will become an arena for political protest. Needless to say, the mantra is mere hypocrisy. Everything is political, and the people in power have nothing against sports and politics mixing as long as it serves their interests.
If anyone needed final proof of this, there is no more striking example than the recent bromance between FIFA president Gianni Infantino and US president Donald Trump. We already got a taste of it when Infantino brought Trump along to hand out the trophy for one of the most useless tournaments in football history, the FIFA Club World Cup. Indeed, Trump was so excited that he didn’t want to leave the podium, beaming like a child in the middle of a celebrating Chelsea squad that he most probably doesn’t know a single player of.
But that was only the beginning. When, in early December, Infantino handed Trump the first FIFA Peace Prize, invented solely for him after missing out on the Nobel Peace Prize, he demonstrated what we suspected all along: he is a man who knows no shame. Trump received the prize while sending troops to American cities, bombing civilian boats off the coast of South America, and striking weapons deals with authoritarian regimes around the world.
The saddest part of it: We have gotten so used to these assaults on basic human dignity that there was hardly any outcry. Sure, most people find it ridiculous but shrug their shoulders. There are no consequences? Not for Trump, and not for Infantino. But how much longer will we accept that clowns like them turn everything that’s been created by people’s collective efforts into a travesty?
Football is not the world’s most popular sport because of FIFA. Football is the world’s most popular sport because millions of people around the world have been playing it for 150 years on improvised pitches, with pretty much anything that can technically serve as a ball, and with rules adapted to the situation they find themselves in. What unites them all is the joy of play, of motion and exercise, and of a communal experience that sometimes ends in strife but most often in making new friends, expanding one’s horizons, and learning more about yourself and the world.
Football truly is the people’s game, but it is under attack by the likes of Gianni Infantino who try to steal it for the only things they are truly interested in, that is, power and money.
It is high time to reclaim the game, to boycott FIFA, and to sabotage the modern football industry. Football associations, high-profile clubs, and celebrity players are, unfortunately, too caught up in the spectacle to be counted on. They will celebrate the 2026 Men’s World Cup despite all of the nonsense affiliated with it, from Trump’s shenanigans to an overblown starting field (well, good for Italy, I suppose) to a terrible ecological footprint with supporters being forced to travel thousands of miles between games. But there is a countermovement that has been growing for decades! It is expressed in “wild” and “colorful” leagues, tournaments such as the Mondiali Antirazzisti, calcio popolare, football fans protesting restrictive security measures, high ticket prices, and inconvenient kick-off hours (all for the broadcasters, of course). By tying these forces together, we’d create a movement to be reckoned with, not only in terms of securing a different kind of football but a different kind of politics. Today, overthrowing FIFA is more than just a symbolic political act, the ripple effects would be tremendous. Sports and politics are intrinsically linked, and we’ll have to make the best of it.
