Politics

The World Cup conundrum of Europe’s far right

Published

15 hours ago

July 19, 2026

BERLIN — As the World Cup comes to a close, there’s one group of politicians who’ve remained unusually quiet about the fate of their own national teams: Europe’s far-right party leaders.

Top officials from France’s National Rally, the Alternative for Germany, England’s Reform UK and others faced complicated dynamics in deciding how to talk about the World Cup. The broad, socially acceptable form of patriotism inspired by international sporting events like the World Cup seems at first glance like an easy fit for parties whose core message includes a return to strong national pride.

But in many of the countries where these parties are growing, increasingly diverse teams with immigrant backgrounds are at odds with the way these parties think about national identity — making it tougher for them to vocally support the home team without implicitly supporting the individual players who are part of it.

“For the right, for whom national identification and identity has always been more salient than for the center and the left, soccer fandom was a natural conduit to express its passion and commitment,” said Andrei S. Markovits, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies the intersection of sports and nationalism. “This has become a tad more difficult when the players hail from multicultural backgrounds, many of which the right sees as inferior.”

(Former Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy learned the hard way how people react when someone points out those multicultural backgrounds: The center-right pol came under fire for saying ahead of Spain’s semifinal match against France that the French national team was “without Frenchmen,” a not-so-subtle dig at the African origins of many of the team’s star players.)

“It would not be good in terms of their electoral strength for [far-right parties] to be critical of these teams,” said Alan Bairner, a professor at England’s Loughborough University who has researched sports and national identity. “But the fact that they might seem a bit lukewarm is in itself a telling thing.”

That’s perhaps why criticism from far-right leaders has been directed not at their own teams, but at other teams — or at using the tournament to chime in with nationalist narratives that serve their own purposes.

Geert Wilders, leader of the Netherlands’ far-right Freedom Party, posted an image of himself in a bright-orange suit to cheer on the Dutch team in the early stages of the World Cup. It was a sharp contrast with his comments a day earlier, when he’d reposted a picture of members of the Moroccan squad praying on the field with an anti-Islam insult as the caption. (Several players of Dutch-Moroccan origin opted to play for Morocco, rather than the Netherlands this year.)

And after the Netherlands lost to Morocco in a penalty shootout late last month and post-game celebrations led to clashes with police in The Hague, Wilders — long a vocal supporter of stricter immigration controls in Europe — used the occasion to call for the deportation of all Moroccans involved in the clashes.

Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, too, used England’s semifinal match against Argentina on Wednesday to hearken back to the two countries’ 1980s-era war over the Falkland Islands: “Let’s do it all over again just like 1982,” he posted on X.

(Farage got in trouble earlier in the tournament for posting a photo of himself celebrating an England win by chugging a pint in a Three Lions jersey … only for observers to note it was a picture from the 2024 Euros.)

But in most cases, far-right leaders have swallowed their criticism of their diverse national teams and offered the basic messages of support expected of them, or in some cases, just stayed quiet.

National Rally leader Jordan Bardella, despite his past jabs at French striker Kylian Mbappé, congratulated the French team on a good run after losing to Spain earlier this week and said they “thrilled an entire nation” with their World Cup performance.

And AfD leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla sought to downplay criticism of the German team’s diversity from within their party: Asked about one AfD state-level politician’s assertion that Germany’s national squad “has lost the quality of an authentic German national team” due to its diverse roster, both Weidel and Chrupalla were dismissive of those comments.

“If a player of an ethnic group whom you deem inferior scores goals for you, what are you going to do? Disavow him as belonging to the nation that you love?” asked Markovits. “No … you may deep down still doubt the genuine essence of his nationality, but you accept his goals and appropriate them as your own.”

Politics

That’s a wrap

Published

26 minutes ago

July 20, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Final whistle. After six weeks, that’s a wrap on our World Cup coverage and live analysis — tracking not the goals and games, but the power plays, political battles and geopolitical stakes shaping the tournament. Thanks for following along.

Politics

Will the 2034 cup be in 2035?

Published

42 minutes ago

July 20, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Saudi Arabia’s 2034 World Cup may not be a 2034 World Cup at all. The tournament is unlikely to be played in the summer — and the calendar math could push it into 2035.

FIFA has, of course, switched the World Cup to winter before to avoid playing games in intense summer heat, with Qatar’s 2022 tournament the first to ever break from seasonal tradition. But that Gulf precedent won’t carry to Saudi neatly. In 2034, Ramadan is slated to fall around Nov. 12 through Dec. 12 — squarely in the late-year window that Qatar used.

In Muslim countries, Ramadan does far more than shuffle mealtimes and deepen prayer. The rhythm of public life bends completely, with social, civic and work schedules pushed later into a day defined by the night. A Saudi World Cup during Ramadan would solve one problem only by creating another.

Alternative slots in 2034 are not much more forgiving. January and February would run into Salt Lake City’s Winter Olympics, splitting audience attention, sponsor dollars and media oxygen. Then around early March comes Hajj, a massive logistical undertaking that brings roughly 2 million pilgrims from across the world to Saudi for a highly coordinated week of rituals. Unlike a typical event on the global calendar, Hajj cannot simply be moved — its timing is set by the Islamic lunar calendar. Anything after that starts to nudge the tournament out of the cooler season that made summer untenable in the first place.

All of this primes an option that otherwise sounds absurd: early 2035. FIFA has not indicated that it is considering such a move, but the calendar constraints make it a scenario that cannot be easily dismissed.

The cleanest stretch looks to be between the Christmas-New Year’s time frame, which FIFA is sure to avoid, and Hajj, expected that year in mid-February. That leaves a plausible, though still narrow, six to seven weeks to stage a tournament across Saudi’s 15 proposed stadiums, possibly with 64 teams. That would be a tighter squeeze than this year’s 48 teams at 16 stadiums over five and some weeks.

The scheduling bind sharpens a test of hierarchy in the global calendar: which dates become constraints and which become variables.

The likelihood of another winter World Cup is already reviving 2022 resentment, especially in Europe, where it will interrupt club seasons. And that prospect feeds into a larger unease over Saudi as host, from human rights concerns that hang over the kingdom to the unusual circumstances surrounding its selection.

FIFA has spent years trying to present Qatar, and now Saudi Arabia, as proof that world football’s governing body is becoming less parochial and more global. That framing also serves a commercial purpose, courting football audiences and markets beyond FIFA’s traditional centers of power. A World Cup competing with the host country’s religious observances would put all of that under obvious strain. Even Muslims with no affection for the Saudi state, including those well beyond the Gulf, are likely to view any FIFA conflict with Ramadan or Hajj as an overstep.

Because the Islamic calendar is lunar, Ramadan and Hajj drift roughly ten days earlier each year, constantly shifting their collision points with global sports seasons. Hajj is a Saudi-specific factor, but Ramadan reaches across the Muslim world, a growing presence among host countries: Qatar in 2022, Morocco as part of 2030, Saudi Arabia in 2034. If that sequence hints at FIFA’s future, these calendar conflicts foreshadow a recurring tension.

This year’s North American tournament has also revived a broader question: whether the summer months can remain the World Cup’s permanent home as temperatures rise. That could eventually force countries outside the Gulf to begin reconsidering their own seasonal blueprint, making Saudi 2034 less an anomaly and more a preview of what’s to come.

Last October, FIFA President Gianni Infantino said that the soccer world should be more open-minded about tournament timing — suggesting that a game spread across climates and continents cannot expect to remain tied to the traditional June-July template.

Politics

Moroccan and Saudi World Cups draw human rights concerns

Published

1 hour ago

July 20, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Before the final whistle blows on the 2026 World Cup, a familiar tension is already bubbling ahead of its next two installments.

Morocco, which will co-host the 2030 World Cup alongside Spain and Portugal, criminalizes same-sex sexual activity. And in Saudi Arabia, host of the 2034 tournament, homosexuality is understood to be illegal under Islamic law.

Both countries submitted plans to address the potential human rights risks associated with hosting the tournament as part of their bids, but human rights advocates say the nations must guarantee that queer fans are not prosecuted under those laws. And they say FIFA, which has an ostensible commitment to fighting discrimination in football, should play a role in securing that.

“It doesn’t mean that FIFA is the world police and somehow has the power to tell countries what to do with their laws,” said Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s head of labor rights and sports. “But it can certainly engage and use its leverage to put in place measures that would be protective of that.”

The debate over what role FIFA should play in promoting human rights, and how far it should go to do so, is familiar to most fans of international soccer.

FIFA drew criticism from international spectators when it announced ahead of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar that it would deliver a yellow card to team captains who donned the multi-colored “OneLove armband,” while the Qatari Emir said that all would be welcome so long as they respect the country’s culture.

Critics also drew attention to Russian laws prohibiting so-called gay propaganda ahead of the 2018 contest.

Morocco’s human rights strategy document notes that its independent human rights committee and the Moroccan Football Federation would “encourage both the parliament and the government to ratify key international conventions,” broadly referring to widely understood human rights standards, though the document did not explicitly mention discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Saudi Arabia’s proposal similarly makes no explicit mention of addressing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but asserts that the federation would “continuously verify that our legislations and practices align with our commitments to various international agreements pertaining to anti-discrimination and implement any required enhancements.” The nation’s tourism ministry says on its website that it welcomes all people, but it asks visitors to “respect our culture and traditions and follow our laws as they would when visiting any other country in the world.”

“Like other governments around the world, visitors are not required to disclose their personal information and we will respect visitors’ right to privacy,” its tourism FAQs site continues.

The FIFA Congress, made up of its member federations, approved both uncontested bids. FIFA and the Saudi and Moroccan embassies in Washington, D.C., did not respond to requests for comment.

Cockburn, whose organization authored a 2022 report slamming both the Moroccan and Saudi human rights strategies, said FIFA must go to greater lengths to guarantee that queer fans are protected while attending the games. That’s on top of the slew of concerns directed specifically at Saudi Arabia over workers’ rights and a lack of a minimum wage, contained in its report.

Countries regularly guarantee bits of policy to FIFA during negotiations to host World Cups, including special tax arrangements and altered visa protocols.

“There needs to be a bit more of an upfront, honest, grown up conversation about this, so that everyone’s clear, that it’s not fudged and that fans are not left guessing about what the situation is and how to look after themselves,” Cockburn said.

The arrival of the world’s most watched sporting event in those two nations can contribute to “a fair degree of, sort of, cynicism or general, sort of, distrust” among some LGBT-rights advocacy groups that FIFA sometimes doesn’t take this issue on in a systematic way that we would all like to see, said executive director of FIFA’s anti-discrimination partner Fare network Piara Powar.

“They just seem very kind of cautious around it and sadly it’s just not really taking us anywhere,” Jon Holmes, spokesperson for the group Football v Homophobia, said of FIFA.

If history is an indication, however, it’s possible that such concerns over human rights at the World Cup could fade once the international drama of the tournament begins. Such was the case in the U.S., where concerns over potential ICE raids, overwhelmed logistical systems and more — which did cause some to boycott the games — largely faded away amid a wildly successful tournament.

“We all kind of get lost in the event, and the narratives, and the storylines, and the athletes, and the beautiful game, and the cultures all coming together,” said Ryan Trustcott, an associate professor at Gonzaga University who studies the politics of international sports. “But we lose track of the impact and the legacy when it comes to improving human rights.”