Our Copa: A Different World Cup Is Possible

Hey, so I filed this personal piece about the World Cup for Pressing Issues, the newsletter I co-edit at Free Press. And if you can take a second to subscribe there as well, I would appreciate it. And thanks to Pressing Issues for the permission to republish the piece. ¡Gracias mil! — JRV

I was 20 years old the first time I explored how the World Cup and authoritarianism melded together to the point where it was difficult to see where the fútbol ended, and a dictatorship began. Weeks before I graduated from college, I immersed myself in researching and writing a 35-page academic paper about the 1978 Mundial, when Argentina’s military government — one of the most brutal regimes of the 20th century — used bribery, fear, and torture to ensure the home team would take the Cup that year.

Around the tournament, the dictatorship carried out its plans to “disappear” thousands of alleged leftist sympathizers through state-sponsored violence. In fact, there was a concentration camp less than a mile from River Plate Stadium, where Argentina defeated Peru 6–0 to secure its spot in the final, which it won.

The suspiciously easy victory was controversial at the time, and years later, allegations emerged that Peru’s dictator had forced his team to take a dive in exchange for Argentina agreeing to jail and torture a group of Peruvian dissidents.

According to accounts from the Spanish-language essays and articles I found long before the internet was a thing, Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger showed up in Peru’s locker room to send a “message of unity” that was really an order to throw the game. Amid a campaign to make the Argentinian dictatorship look good in the eyes of the world and fuel nationalism at home, the fix was in.

From 1976 to 1983, an estimated 30,000 people were “disappeared” in Argentina. The 1978 World Cup was one of the most egregious examples of “sportswashing” to hide a regime’s crimes.  And it’s a story I can’t stop thinking about as the World Cup arrives in North America in 2026.

While Pressing Issues doesn’t normally publish pieces about sports, this tournament touches on many of the topics we have consistently covered over our previous 84 editions — like media consolidation, how tech’s hypersurveillance aids governments in quashing dissent, and how independent journalists are exposing corruption and telling the stories the corporate media would prefer to ignore. 

I have always loved the World Cup as a sporting event, but it’s difficult to be a fan when dictators and bad political actors align with a corrupt organization like FIFA and use the competition for political manipulation and propaganda. Argentina isn’t the only example. This relationship between dictators and the beautiful game has been around from Mussolini’s Italy in 1934 to Putin’s Russia in 2018.

In the new “Our Copa” podcast that I co-host with former women’s professional soccer player Merritt Mathias and soccer journalist guru Musa Okwonga, we decided to flip that tension and look at some of these political moments through a pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian lens.

“I have always been obsessed with sports and politics, and how power uses and manipulates sports and nationalism,” I told my co-hosts in the first episode. Over the course of six episodes, Merritt, Musa, and I highlight some of the sport’s most transformative political moments, such as when the Algerians fought French colonialism in the 1950s by forming their own national team that played all over the world. Or how Brazil’s famed Corinthians team of the 1980s led by the legendary Sócrates — an actual doctor, by the way — formed a true players’ collective and became an inspiration for the country’s democracy movement following years of dictatorship.

Such truth-telling is necessary to combat a tournament that props up power under the illusion of global harmony. The World Cup will always try to sell a worldview synonymous with those in charge, but there is no reason to stop those who believe the game is bigger than politics from chronicling those abuses in the interest of producing a better vision of what this world can be.

With the 2026 World Cup starting later this week in venues throughout Canada, Mexico and the United States, the stories of “Our Copa” form a historical blueprint for what could be possible this summer — a tournament where people power wins out over interests that are corporate, hyper-capitalistic and overtly political.

The World Cup is supposed to be for fans and players. It’s supposed to be a place where the world comes together to share a common love for the game. The reality is something else entirely.

FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, has been corrupt since forever — so corrupt that even Republicans in Congress have taken notice.

“[FIFA] really is a cabal run by elites,” Republican Sen. Todd Young (Indiana), a former Division 1 soccer player, said recently. “They really have had problems with corruption over the years, and one really does get the sense that they may overlook their singular mission, which is to help grow the sport, especially among young people around the world who wouldn’t otherwise have the resources to access soccer.”

This year’s World Cup has reached new heights of depravity. Let’s start with the made-up “Peace Prize” FIFA gave to placate President Trump last December. For all the talk about billionaires and big media companies rushing to curry favor with Trump while democracy vanishes, FIFA is undefeated when it comes to acquiescing to authoritarians.

FIFA anticipates raking in over $9 billion from the 2026 World Cup, making this tournament its most lucrative ever. They’re taking in all this money despite complaints of ridiculously high ticket prices, travel bans, visa rejections and a feeling that people from outside the United States are not welcome here this summer.

“This World Cup is not ours,” the head of Jordan’s football fan association recently told the BBC. “It’s not for Arabs this World Cup.”

Players, particularly those from Iran — that country the FIFA Peace Prize recipient started a war with — are still having visa issues days before the tournament starts and can’t even train in the United States. U.S. immigration officials detained Iraqi striker and star player Aymen Hussein at O’Hare for seven hours before allowing him to enter the country. A World Cup referee was denied entry from Somalia because of “vetting concerns.”

The travel problems also apply to credentialed journalists who were scheduled to cover this summer’s event. The International Sports Press Association (AIPS) wrote a letter to FIFA stating that “many” Iranian and African journalists were not granted visas, according to The Athletic.

“We find ourselves facing a long-standing and unacceptable problem for us journalists: the denial of entry visas to regularly accredited colleagues,” AIPS president Gianni Merlo wrote in the letter. “There are many cases: Iranian colleagues, African colleagues, some of whom have been given single entries, so if their team goes to play in Canada or Mexico and they follow it, they can no longer return to the States. The cases are countless and, I repeat, unacceptable. Politicians always say that sport unites and builds bridges between young people in countries in conflict, but in this case, we are going in the opposite direction.”

ICE will be deployed at U.S. stadiums, where massive security plans are likely deterring foreign travelers from even attending. The result, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that the promised economic boon is not happening for cities hosting events. Maybe people aren’t so thrilled about attending games where immigration agents in tactical gear might surveil and interrogate them. 

Fans need to be reminded that soccer is a sport of resistance. And the resistance is growing. See the citizen-led NO ICE movements in stadiums where local groups across host cities are holding “know your rights” trainings, publicizing support hotlines if detentions increase, and handing out “distributed kits with whistles and information throughout the community,” according to El País.

Mijente and Working Families Power, the team behind “Our Copa,” initiated a campaign to protect all fans and focus on the sport’s working-class and egalitarian roots. 

“We’re here to make sure this moment belongs to the people — the fans, the families, and the communities who make the game beautiful,” the “Our Copa” organizers note.

The sport’s ability to improvise and be unpredictable has a way of separating what the vast majority of soccer fans hate most about the game from what we love and keep coming back to.  So when you feel as if the U.S. version of this World Cup is already letting you down, remember the stories that make the game so great — both the ones on the pitch and the ones off of it.

¡Vamos!

Originally published at Pressing Issues.

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Episode 2 of “Our Copa” Is Out: Speaking about “Our Copa,” the second episode dropped this week, and it’s all about what Algerians did in the 1950s to form their own national soccer team.

Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter. He is also its current part-time publisher and executive director. He edited and published this edition.

The Latino Newsletter welcomes opinion pieces in English and/or Spanish from community voices. Submission guidelines are here. The views expressed by outside opinion contributors do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of this outlet or its employees.