Is America a good fit to host the next FIFA World Cup and Olympics?

In the midst of a polarised and disrupted America under Trump 2.0 when it is unclear if the President’s many initiatives are going to bear good fruit, the next FIFA World Cup soccer tournament is scheduled for June 11, 2026, onwards till July 19. The FIFA World Cup in 2026, its 23rd edition, will feature 48 teams for the first time expanded from the previous 32, and be held in 16 different places. In Mexico with two locations, Canada with three, both auxiliary hosts, and all over the United States in 11 locations. This is the first time that the FIFA World Cup will be hosted by three nations. The last time it was hosted by more than one country was in 1992.

The final will be played in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium. In fact, all the matches from the quarter finals onwards will be played in the US. There are some who say that if the current turbulence with immigrants, political differences between the centre and some states, and visas persist, then some more of the 60-odd matches to be played in the US, out of the 104 fixtures, could be shifted to Mexico and Canada.

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Soccer has grown in popularity enormously over the last decade in America and the FIFA World Cup is expected to be both a money spinner and fill stadiums in all the venues selected. But will fans from over 40 countries on the American banned list, mainly Islamic countries, be able to attend? The Trump administration said yes to FIFA at the selection time, but some doubts persist on visa issues.

Then the Los Angeles Olympics will come in the summer of 2028. The 34th Olympiad will take place in recent illegal immigration-related riot, arson and looting hot-spot Los Angeles, between July 14 and July 30, 2028. The Paralympic 2028 will be held thereafter between August 15 and August 27, 2028, also in Los Angeles.

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America is of course the biggest economy and dominant military power in the world. It has hosted four winter and four summer Olympics already over the years. This, no doubt, gives it considerable experience on the smooth handling of such top-level sporting events without any mishaps. The US enjoys considerable global goodwill and confidence, and has all the wherewithal to meet Olympic standards, facilities and fool-proof security for the sports competing teams and individuals, and has the infrastructure to host the enormous numbers who will come as visitors to Los Angeles.

The concern with law and order, however, is a legitimate factor deserving of caution. The battle with millions of illegal immigrants and visa overstayers currently rages on under the Trump 2.0 administration. The federal government sees many of them as undesirables, criminals, gang members, drug dealers, particularly of the dangerous China-supplied drug Fentanyl, that is claiming many young addicts and resulting in quite a few deaths.

But apart from the immigrants, there are also a number of disgruntled American citizens, unhappy with the conduct of the Israel-Gaza-Iran-Lebanon-Syria War, the Ukraine-Russia war, and also radicalised visitors, prone to gun violence and mounting terrorist attacks.

However, this situation also prevails in Western Europe and other advanced countries, and has to be routinely tackled there too. The reality is that almost no country today is totally devoid of dissidents, fifth columnists, alien spies, resident moles, subversives, and security threats. It is just more acute in democracies with constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

Many of the illegal immigrants in America, numbering in their millions, quite a few from South America, Islamic countries troubled by war and extremism, even India, are now being expelled. They were, in many cases, sought to be regularised in the previous Biden administration. The Democrats see them as a labour resource and a growing vote-bank, not unlike those state governments in India that encourage illegal immigration from Bangladesh, Myanmar and even Pakistan. President Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans base sees them as usurpers of their scarce jobs and worse.

There is a sharp difference of opinion and perspective between the liberal-left Democrats and those who support Donald Trump, on the matter. The judiciary weighs in, sometimes on the side of the immigrants citing lack of due process before their attempted expulsion, and sometimes on the side of the Trump administration.

Meanwhile the Trump administration has ramped up its efforts to secure the borders and has warned both Mexico and Canada to do likewise, both for drugs and illegals, or face punitive sanctions and tariffs for this reason, in addition to economic balance of trade considerations.

This background atmosphere is unlikely to be completely brought to heel by the summer of 2026, and perhaps not even by 2028, a presidential election year for America. Both sporting events are therefore likely to be held under the watchful eye of a strong security presence and keen intelligence operatives.

So, is the United States presently safe enough to host these major tournaments? The answer is, on balance, yes. Not only does the central government not hesitate to use fully armed federal troopers and marines to supplement the various state police departments, but an attitude of zero tolerance against rioting, arson, looting, and terrorist violence is evident in the handling of this threat.

Besides many thousands, if not quite millions of the immigrants will have been deported within the year or so left before the FIFA World Cup, and more still by the time of the summer Olympics of 2028.

Uncertainty persists, but many in the MAGA base see the vetting of who can come to the United States as well as who must leave as a form of ‘draining of the swamp’ that stretches beyond Washington DC, to the heart of the nation.

America’s pugnacious political attitudes towards trade wars with China and many other countries, the funding of NATO, the various multilateral banking institutions, the United Nations, have also created fissures with persistent security implications. Countries under the American lash such as Iran do not easily forget and forgive.

Is America in 2025 still the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’? The jury is out on this one, even as the Trump administration strives to make it a safer country through its crack-down on aliens, enemies, and dissidents alike.

The writer is a Delhi-based socio-political commentator. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.