Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter has backed a proposed fan boycott of the 2026 World Cup matches to be held in the United States, citing the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration at home and abroad.
Blatter is the latest figure in international soccer to cast doubt on the United States’ suitability as host, calling for a boycott in an X post on Monday.
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The United States will co-host the World Cup with Canada and Mexico from June 11th to July 19th.
Blatter backed comments from Swiss lawyer Mark Peace, an expert on white-collar crime and anti-corruption, who urged soccer fans to stay away from the United States.
“Given what we’ve talked about so far, I have only one piece of advice for my fans: stay away from America,” Peace, who also chaired the independent governance committee overseeing FIFA reform a decade ago, said in an interview with Swiss newspaper Der Bund last week.
“You’ll probably understand it better if you watch it on TV anyway,” Peace added. “And once they arrive, fans should expect that if the authorities don’t like them, they’ll be put on the next plane home, if they’re lucky.”
Blatter quoted Peace in his X post, adding: “I think Mark Peace is right to have doubts about this World Cup.”
The 89-year-old was president of the football governing body from 1998 to 2015, but resigned following a corruption investigation.
International soccer’s concerns about the United States stem from President Trump’s expansionist stance toward Greenland, his travel ban, and his aggressive tactics against immigrants and anti-immigration protesters in U.S. cities, particularly Minneapolis.
Two weeks ago, travel plans for fans of Africa’s top two soccer countries were thrown into disarray after the Trump administration announced a ban that effectively bars people from Senegal and Ivory Coast from following their teams unless they already have visas. President Trump cited “deficiencies in inspection and review” as the main reason for his suspension.
Fans from Iran and Haiti, two other countries that qualified for the World Cup, will also be barred from entering the United States. They were included in the first travel ban announced by the Trump administration.
“Qatar was too political, now have we become apolitical?”
Even before Blatter’s comments, soccer officials and political leaders around the world had expressed similar sentiments about the United States, which co-hosts the World Cup.
Oke Gottrich, one of the vice presidents of the German Football Federation, said in an interview with the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper on Friday that the time had come to “seriously consider” boycotting the World Cup.
“What was the justification for boycotting the Olympics in the 1980s?” Gottrich said. “In my calculations, the potential threat is greater now than it was then. We need to have this discussion.”
Gottrich has advocated upholding values, but is likely to resist calls for a boycott from German federation president Bernd Neuendorf and FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
“Qatar was too political for everyone, and now we’re completely apolitical? That’s what I’m really, really, really concerned about,” Gottrich said of the German federation’s opposition to hosting the 2022 World Cup.
Germany failed badly in that tournament, and the manager who took over said he wanted to avoid further political turmoil.
“As organizations and as a society, we’re forgetting how to set taboos and boundaries and protect our values,” Gottrich said. “Taboo is an important part of our position. When someone makes a threat, do we cross a taboo? When someone attacks, when someone dies, do we cross a taboo? I want to know when Donald Trump reached a taboo, and I want to know from Bernd Neuendorf and Gianni Infantino.”
Hamburg-based football club St. Pauli is located near the city’s red-light district and is known for blending sports and politics, especially left-wing positions. The club’s famous pirate skull and crossbones symbol was first put up by squatters who lived nearby, and later popularized by fans who identified as punks.
Gottrich dismissed suggestions that the boycott would harm St. Pauli’s national team players, Australia’s Jackson Irvine and Connor Metcalfe, and Japan’s Joel Chima Fujita.
“The lives of professional athletes are not worth more than the lives of countless people in different regions who are directly or indirectly attacked and threatened by the World Cup host country,” he said.
Voices for boycott grow from Europe to Africa
South Africa’s main opposition leader Julius Malema echoed the boycott call, calling on the South African Football Association (SAFA) and the national soccer team to withdraw from the tournament.
“Bafana Bafana has to withdraw. SAFA has to take the decision to withdraw from everything related to the World Cup which is being held in America,” Malema said in an interview last week.
He drew parallels between the Trump administration and decades of apartheid in South Africa, saying the United States has “a disregard for international law” as it did during South Africa’s apartheid era.
“Many countries have refused to trade with South Africa because it violates human rights and international law. So we have to boycott the World Cup in America and anything related to America,” he said.
“We cannot sit back and allow someone to destabilize the world. That will always be the case. That is despicable.”
Members of the British House of Commons are also calling on England and Scotland to withdraw from the convention, following President Trump’s recent threat to annex Greenland.
They called on the British leadership to “humiliate President Trump” by boycotting the World Cup.
Meanwhile, more than 100,000 fans in the Netherlands have signed an online petition calling on the national team to boycott the tournament. However, the Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) said it had no immediate plans to withdraw from the tournament.
“The KNVB is monitoring geopolitical developments and remains in close consultation with the Dutch government,” Dutch media reports said.
