Eric Striker
The Unz Review

America is merely weeks away from hosting the world’s biggest sporting event. The opening game on June 11th will feature hometown defenders Team USA against Paraguay, with a Super Bowl style opening ceremony headlined by Katy Perry. Expect to see a tumbleweed or two— thousands of tickets remain unsold.

It is well-known that outside of children, Yuppies, and immigrants, Americans are not interested in soccer. When asked if he would pay to see Team USA for $1,000, the extortionary floor price set for nosebleed seats, President Trump himself said he would not.

So why did the United States — with Mexico and Canada as supplementary hosts — fight for a tournament Americans can’t afford or aren’t interested in? And why did FIFA decide to overlook the severe public safety risks, collapsing infrastructure, widespread corruption, and political instability plaguing America?

Department of Homeland Security head Markwayne Mullin is already pre-blaming the Democrats for any major problems that occur during the games. This does not bode well for visitors or players.

2010 World Cup Bid Controversy

In 2010, President Obama, Bill Clinton, Morgan Freeman and other stars put in the strongest effort in a generation to make the United States the future home of the World Cup. The case for USA emphasized the country’s racial diversity and supposed leadership as a human rights superpower. As the world’s number one sport, hosting the World Cup — like the Olympics — is seen by governments around the globe as a way to showcase their country and build good will, so American foreign policy interests were likely most motivated by Russia not having it.

When America’s pitch failed, a temper tantrum ensued. The international FIFA World Cup voting committee chose two countries that reject American liberal values instead: Vladimir Putin’s Russia for 2018 and the Kingdom of Qatar in 2022, despite incessant side panel lobbying from pro-American figures demanding they be disqualified over “human rights” concerns.

Washington perceived this rejection as a geopolitical slight, but the FIFA committee’s decision making was sound: America was already given the World Cup in 1994 while the tournament had never been hosted in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, two regions where the population, unlike Americans, actually love the sport. Team USA lost, try again next time.

Rather than accepting the decision and preparing for a new bid in the future as several other countries do in this situation, US officials, both in government and in sporting, immediately began accusing FIFA of corruption to create an aura of stink around the whole process. The American and British Jewish press suddenly began a campaign to snipe at Sepp Blatter, then president of FIFA, who confidently defended the governing body’s decision and dismissed American concerns about supposed racism and gay rights in Russia and Qatar by telling potential tourists to simply respect their hosts and refrain from public homosexual activities.

On May 27th, 2015, two days before the FIFA congress’ presidential vote where Blatter was expected to be re-elected, the US Department of Justice dropped a massive 161 page corruption indictment against 14 FIFA executives who had supported Qatar and Russia’s World Cup requests over Americas in what is today termed “FIFAgate.”

The act was naturally seen by those targeted as political retaliation and an act of American imperial overreach. Somehow, a federal court in Brooklyn decided it had jurisdiction over men who were not American and did not live in America, as well as FIFA itself, which is based in Switzerland and controlled by Europeans. Nevertheless, some hidden lever of power was pulled behind the scenes and Swiss police dutifully raided the sporting association’s Zurich headquarters, detaining the wanted men at a hotel bar in preparation for extradition to the US. Through its power over global banking, American intelligence services seized $100 million dollars of FIFA’s money as “evidence,” with no plan to ever give it back.

Amidst the commotion, Blatter, who was not named in the indictment, was re-elected by his peers. American intelligence operatives responded to this act of defiance by anonymously leaking to the press that they were planning to get Blatter next if he didn’t get out of the way. Days after being elected, Blatter promptly resigned from his post. He was never charged in the FBI’s FIFA case and was eventually cleared of all wrongdoing in a separate Swiss case.

Waiting to be subbed in was Gianni Infantino, a man heavily implicated in corruption himself by the Panama Papers, who was officially put in power in 2016.

Whether Infantino was recruited as an asset, bribed, or simply operating out of fear is a matter of speculation and debate, but it can’t be denied that he has been the most deferential to the American empire FIFA president in history.

Washington’s “United Bid” (USA-Mexico-Canada) for the 2026 World Cup, featuring Zionist Jewish NFL billionaire Robert Kraft (whose football stadium will be rented for the games) as its Chairman, was suspiciously timed with Infantino’s rise in 2016, ultimately crushing challengers at the 2018 vote by a lopsided 134 to 65 margin.

Infantino broke with FIFA precedent by personally meddling to lobby in support for the United Bid, handpicking who would be on its exploratory committee, which ignored a laundry list of potential limitations to hosting most of the games in the USA and cartel-controlled cities in Mexico like Guadalajara. Donald Trump then got involved, less tactfully than the perfidious Obama, by publicly stating on the eve of the election that he would sanction any nation whose FIFA representative voted against America as host.

Under Infantino, FIFA has become a notorious spineless mouthpiece of Judeo-American ideology, going so far as to officially diverge from the International Olympic Committee by embracing “Black Lives Matter” displays on the field in 2020, banning the entire nation and population of Russia from all soccer events over the Ukraine war in 2022, and then brazenlyrefusing to do the same to Israel amidst global outcry over its genocide in Gaza in 2023, as well as partially moving its Swiss headquarters to Miami in 2024.

The humiliating cherry on top came late last year, when Infantino invented the “FIFA Peace Prize” and handed it to Trump, a president who has a year and a half into his term attacked several countries, murdered or abducted countless innocent people and world leaders, and is Israel’s top partner-in-crime in its Middle Eastern rampage.

Infantino is thoroughly Americanizing a spectacle stolen by a nation that doesn’t want it. Thanks to Infantino, tourists from all over the world will soon experience America in its 250th year: a police state ruled by runaway greed and scams, poverty, violence, and Zionism.

Inside the 2026 World Cup Part II: Showcasing America

Eric Striker
The Unz Review

From its inception, soccer has operated as a white European led cultural good shared with the world to foster good will through athletics. The spirit of the “beautiful game” is articulated under the United Kingdom’s 2025 Football Governance Act, which regulates the sport as a form of national heritage, mandating financial transparency and responsibility from owners, as well as enshrining the popular input of fans on matters ranging from changing a team’s names to ticket prices.

The sport is currently undergoing a revolution under Gianni Infantino’s pro-American tenure at FIFA as we approach the 2026 World Cup. From inside FIFA’s new office inside Trump Tower, an artistic, athletic and patriotic international spectacle has been transformed into a crass consumerist racket.

Financial Vampirism

The most controversial aspect of the 2026 World Cup so far has been the obscene prices for tickets and associated accommodations compared to previous tournaments.

FIFA’s Infantino has countered criticism by citing the “When in Rome…” defense, blaming the American entertainment industry norm of NFL stadiums heavy on VIP seats, a thriving Wall Street led ticket scalping market, and the largely unregulated “market innovation” of dynamic pricing.

Under the guidance of the 2026 FIFA World Cup Task Force, led by Rudy Giuliani’s son and Donald Trump himself, Infantino has found a welcoming home for his insatiable greed within the American cultural normalization of extracting the maximum while giving as little as possible in return.

New in 2026 is FIFA’s reseller policy. The first batch of tickets were sold in a lottery directly to fans already at a massive markup compared to Russia and Qatar, but a large percentage of these tickets are being given to the professional scalpers operating on FIFA’s official platform as well as private equity middlemen like LiveNation/Ticketmaster. This policy of running the pockets of visitors is exclusive to America, since under both Mexican and Canadian law markets ban this style of profiteering and only allow resale at face-value. The official endorsement of scalping amounts to tampering with demand and risks underattended games by charging 10s of thousands to millions of dollars for tickets to games in exchange for FIFA getting a 30% cut of the resale value.

International fans have responded with exasperation. Both large enterprises and private individuals specializing in treating event tickets as speculative assets and implementing “dynamic pricing” is seen as completely normal in America, the land of the “$1,000 concert ticket,” but this criminal practice is either strictly regulated or outright banned in much of the world, especially in South America and Europe, which will make up the bulk of attendees.

At the 2018 World Cup in Russia and 2022 in Qatar, as in Canada and Mexico during this tournament, resellers had to operate through official FIFA portals that banned inflated pricing, with individual scalpers facing serious criminal penalties in both countries. Fans fear that Infantino’s 2026 shift to a “Super Bowl” turbo-consumerist model that caters exclusively to the wealthy and corporate entities could be permanent, ending access to the sport for ordinary people going forward.

Stadium Rentals and the Epstein Network

The 2018 United Bid was chaired by Robert Kraft, an Israeli operative close to Donald Trump. The games were secured for the United States over rival Morocco by a multi-million dollar bribe-a-thon “lobbying” campaign spearheaded by Jared Kushner.

The question of how much money venue owners will make from renting the stadiums and selling concessions remains a closely guarded secret, but is a likely factor calculated into FIFA’s unusually high ticket prices. It is important to make a distinction between arenas owned by public sports authorities and privately owned stadiums will be used (which will host about 1/4 of the games), as for profit business interests will pocket the money while stiffing the taxpayer for the many alterations and security needs required to accommodate large numbers of people.

How FIFA picked which venues and cities to utilize for the games is also being kept opaque. FIFA curiously chose to pass up highly viable, technologically superior and more conveniently located publicly owned venues in Washington DC/Baltimore (M&T Bank Field), Chicago (Soldier Field), Las Vegas (Allegiant Stadium) to give an unusually high share of the matches to connected Jewish Epstein associates like Stephen Ross (owner of Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium), the Tisch Family (Metlife Stadium), as well as Kraft himself. Some of the winners and losers when doling out contracts has been commonly perceived as a product of influence peddling (in other words, corruption) especially in the case of Kraft, and fans will suffer for it.

While advertised as being in Boston, Gillette Stadium is actually an hour away in the suburb of Foxborough, which can only be reached by car and has practically no nearby amenities. A friendly match played last March between Brazil and France tested how Kraft’s stadium would fare in a World Cup environment. The game wound up causing a massive traffic jam that caused 7,000 fans to be late to the game. Overwhelmed planners in the Boston suburb of Foxborough have yet to come up with any solutions to this problem, citing innate technical limitations of roadways and a lack of public transportation.

Ross’ Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, which will also host seven matches, shares many of the same accessibility issues that Gillette Stadium suffers from and is one of the worst rated venues in America. Hard Rock Stadium is nearly 40-years-old, and despite being located in South Florida, it lacks air conditioning. A noteworthy incident happened at the Copa America final in 2024, when inferior management and infrastructure flaws nearly caused a deadly stampede at the soccer final.

The dirtiest decision was FIFA’s choice to host the final at the Metlife Stadium in “New York” over the world class AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas.

Metlife Stadium, which is co-owned by the billionaire Tisch family, was hastily constructed in 2010 so that the Jewish dynasty and their partners could get out of a profit-sharing contract with the state of New Jersey, which owned the now demolished Giants Stadium, after New York/New Jersey won a bid to host the 2014 Super Bowl.

While marketed to Europeans and South Americans as being in New York City, Metlife Stadium is actually 32 miles away in a swamp in New Jersey. The stadium, which was privately financed by the Tisch family on a low budget, lacks the amenities of modern sports facilities such as a retractable roof, interactive screens, and climate control.

When it comes to transporting fans to the venue, controversies have erupted around low-effort solutions, such as charging spectators $150 dollar train tickets and renting out a fleet of buses where you can ride for $80 dollars a seat. When outrage mounted, both New Jersey transit and New York State reduced the price of the train ticket to “only” $98 dollars and are offering rides on yellow school buses for $20 dollars. Many are negatively comparing this to their experiences in Russia and Qatar, which provided World Cup ticket holders with unlimited transportation free of charge and in Qatar’s case, free rides between stadiums.

Most intriguing is how Metlife, which is ranked the 29th worst NFL stadium out of 30, was able to beat out the ultra-modern and impressive AT&T Stadium, which by contrast is typically listed in the top five.

The answer to this riddle is the Trumpworld Israeli mafia. According to a November 2024 report from the New York Times, Jared Kushner personally intervened to turn the tides at FIFA against previous favorite AT&T Stadium. This decision will take money out of the pockets of the city of Arlington and give it to the Tisch dynasty, who are multi-generation associates of the Kushners through shared membership in the Chabad Lubavitch sect and New York City business world.

Climate scientists are warning that Metlife Stadium will be dangerously hot for fans and players, risking a sluggish game and potential fatalities. FIFA’s response has been to monetize this problem by having water breaks every 20 minutes that will double as commercial breaks.

Integrity Risks

Sports gambling has long been a part of soccer culture, but America’s largely unregulated “Prediction Markets” in tandem with some suspiciously timed new FIFA reforms practically guarantee that many matches will be fixed.

Under US law, prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket operate as illicit sportsbooks that are treated like financial exchanges via its system of staking “contracts.” 50 countries have banned prediction markets as a form of gambling, but in America, they operate without restrictions in large part because the Trump family profits from staving off regulation through Donald Trump Jr’s comically corrupt 1789 Fund, which has a multi-billion dollar stake in Polymarket.

Studies from organizations such as the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities have suggested that this environment has opened the flood gates of rampant fraud in the world of competitive sports due to unique difficulties in identifying anonymous contract vendors, jurisdiction issues related to money allocation, and unusual activities in prediction markets that would otherwise trigger oversight in ordinary sports books.

FIFA’s decision to expand the number of teams at the World Cup from 32 to 48 will only exacerbate this problem by introducing many small, non-competitive teams. If speculators and gamblers in the US military are ready to put their own lives at risk making insider bets tipping off wars with Iran or Nicolas Maduro’s abduction, what’s stopping the players of the Curaçao National Team from taking certain measures to fulfill a long shot micro-bet, like getting two red cards and scoring an own goal? What’s preventing a Nigerian referee’s family members from putting a big bet on an underdog then tilting the game in a certain direction?

The threat of rigging games is not imagined. Multiple games were fixed at the 2010 South African World Cup by a Singaporean organized crime syndicate.

In 2024, FIFA decided to move its integrity inspection unit — agents who monitor gambling sites for unusual influence on games — to Miami, losing two-thirds of their most experienced staff in the process. With a skeleton crew over seeing hundreds of billions of dollars in bets, one could almost deduce that FIFA is preparing to look the other way.

America’s Hellish Atmosphere

With World Cup tickets and accommodations potentially costing visitors 10s of thousands of dollars, the prospect of being turned away at the US border is keeping many at bay. The hospitality industry servicing hosts cities, initially promised multiple Super Bowls worth of money, are now telling the press that bookings are at or below a typical year.

Markwayne Mullin, currently the head of the Department of Homeland Security, is viewed inside the United States as the dumbest and least qualified political figure in the country. Mullin has failed to adequately communicate what visa rules will or will not apply to World Cup ticket holders, causing confusion and cancellations.

The dystopian environment in the United States, related to its favoritism of Jews and Israel, has also chilled eagerness to visit the country. For example, in April 2025, DHS invented a new rule which will force visa applicants to hand over five years of their social media activity to be inspected for “Anti-Semitism.” The absurd rule grants Customs and Border Patrol the right to turn visitors away if they have ever criticized Israel on the internet.

Additionally, the Trump administration has decreed the World Cup a National Special Security Event (NSSE), which will grant federal agents sweeping warrantless surveillance powers that can be used against random citizens and tourists in designated zones, as well as potentially create an intimidating, turbo charged militarized environment in cities hosting World Cup games with spy drones and rooftop sharpshooters.

But don’t mistake the suspension of your civil liberties for public safety. At the 2024 Super Bowl victory parade for the Chiefs in Kansas City, a World Cup host city, 22 people were shot. Last year in Philadelphia, another 2026 soccer destination, two people were gunned down at Super Bowl festivities. Tourists who dare venture outside of the immediate vicinity of stadiums and fan zones in America’s major cities should take it for granted that they will be victims of violent crime, especially if they are white or Asian.

The Trump administration is by no means the only political faction bound to make guests feel threatened and unwelcome. The “woke” city of Seattle is preparing to welcome conservative Muslim players in the Egypt vs Iran game they are scheduled to host by declaring it the “Pride Match,” painting the whole stadium in rainbow colors and hosting drag queens and naked men engaging in explicit homosexual acts. It is expected that members of Iran’s repugnant diaspora will travel north from California to taunt the players with anti-Iranian, pro-Israel flags and symbols.

The Iranian soccer federation has been appealing to FIFA to show the players respect and keep the mandatory participation in offensive sexual displays and politics out of the stadium or at least move the game to Mexico, but so far they have been frustrated. The combination of threats from the Israeli controlled Trump administration to the players, ranging from visa denials to arbitrary detention, in conjunction with the left-wing attempt at humiliating and insulting the players raises the prospect that Iran will simply not play its games.

The World Cup has in recent years been used as an opportunity for states to showcase the best that their nations can offer. The opposite is bound to happen at USA 2026. Naked greed, corruption, terrible infrastructure, widespread violence and mental illness, and other factors making life in a declining America oppressive and impoverished will serve as a snapshot of what an empire marching towards destruction looks like.