Top European football personalities join fray
The 2026 World Cup, to be co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, is being threatened by factors that have nothing to do with football. Most of these factors stem from the actions of the United States’ president, Donald Trump.
Recently, a group of United Kingdom politicians called for the boycott of the World Cup over what they termed unfair tariffs imposed on the UK. They were later joined by some parliamentarians, who are uncomfortable with Trump’s threat to annexe Greenland.
Yesterday, another group of people, mostly senior football stakeholders from Germany and France, joined the call for the European boycott of the championship over the Greenland saga.
Trump’s aggressive approach to immigration policy, his invasion of Venezuela, which he seized its president and the Greenland issue have brought the United States’ ability to host the World Cup into question.
According to cityam.com, the President of St. Pauli, a German Bundesliga team, Oke Goettlich, who also sits on the executive board of the Bundesliga and the German Football Federation, has called into question the wisdom of continuing with hosting the World Cup in the U.S.
In comments posted on professional social network LinkedIn, he said: “The question is indeed justified as to whether Europeans should participate in a competition in a country that is indirectly, and possibly soon directly, attacking Europe.”
Veteran French football coach Claude Le Roy, whose itinerant career has seen him manage Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon, Togo and Cambridge United, has similar concerns.
Le Roy, who led Cameroon to a 1-0 defeat of Nigeria in the 1988 Africa Cup of Nations hosted by Morocco, said:
“I wonder if we shouldn’t call for a boycott of the 2026 World Cup, given Donald Trump’s behaviour towards the continent.”
Le Roy also criticised FIFA and the compliance of its President Gianni Infantino, “who boasts of being on his (Trump’s) side, adding: “The leaders at the highest level of football no longer ever talk about football, only about money.”
Trump stepped up his push for Greenland, an autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark, by slapping tariffs on the UK and seven European countries over the weekend.
He has threatened to more than double those tariffs if a deal for the U.S. to take Greenland is not agreed upon by the beginning of June.
The U.S. says the mineral-rich territory is a “strategic imperative” for national security and specifically its missile defence capabilities due to its location in relation to Russia and China.
European chiefs have resisted Trump’s calls, with UC president Ursula von der Leyen calling the tariffs “a mistake” and promising an “unflinching, united and proportional” response.
Human rights groups have previously demanded assurances that overseas football fans will be welcome at the 2026 World Cup following the U.S. tightening entry rules for dozens of countries.
In this article