Can this FIFA World Cup distance itself from political tensions?

The football World Cup is finally upon us with its sweet summer sweat. Some will dance to remember, some to forget! A super-sized tournament — with 48 teams, 104 matches, 16 venues and three host nations — is FIFA’s morbidly muscular and mind-blowing experiment, hitting on the idea of capturing a dimension-tilting sporting zeitgeist.The iconic and rebranded Estadio Azteca will set the ball rolling on Thursday, with cohosts Mexico taking on South Africa until the spectacle will culminate in the final at New Jersey’s 82,500-seat MetLife Stadium on July 19.But as something gets bigger, it has its own pitfalls and paradoxes. The skyrocketing cost of tickets, issues over hotel affordability, massive logistical challenges and prevailing political tensions are all massive complications.Back in 2018, when FIFA members voted in favour of awarding the tournament to three nations in North America, Donald Trump was in his first term as president and the decision was hailed as a diplomatic coup given his vehement stand in setting up a border wall along with Mexico. Still, three’s a crowd and it has since stirred a deeper introspection into the project’s palpable vulnerability and manifold ambiguities.Yet by an overarching measure, football has a habit of ingeniously disentangling itself from the confusing and the controversial. In a little over five weeks from now, there will be for sure some pure football moments, inherently moving and cathartic — the last dance of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, Spain and France’s ambitious tilt at hegemony, Germany’s bruised ego, England’s eternal search for salvation or Africa and Asia’s relentless push for recognition as a force to be reckoned with. They are certain to create moments which are designed to pull at our emotional heartstrings and promised to linger.The path to chasing and realizing the American dream — that lofty pursuit of happiness in the land of opportunity and adventure, that parable of imagination — is there for the taking but it looks constraining and liberating all at once. Whenever the game has been forced into a dangerous tightrope walk, it has bounced back.When the carnival had arrived in the USA for the first time in 1994, and more than making an etymological alteration to ‘soccer’, the game was gasping and looking for a breath of fresh air. An Italia ’90 — struck by a string of unpunished fouls, boring theatrics and widespread time-wasting via repeated back-passes — was an antithesis to the beautiful game. However, the 1994 edition, the last World Cup with 24 teams, hit us with a new look — a three-point system for wins adopted, offside rule tweaked to give strikers more scoring chances and abolition of that dreadful ‘Higuita Rule’ preventing goalkeepers from picking up the ball after receiving it from a teammate.Diego Maradona’s expulsion for failing a drug test might have been out of the syllabus, but Brazil somehow restored order in 1994 and brought the Joga Bonito energy back by adding the fourth stars to Canarinho or the famous yellow jersey.As the game returns to North America after 32 years, it is facing its moment of truth. Nowhere has sports collided with politics so brazenly in World Cup history. The biggest stage has been caught on the wrong foot thanks to Trump administration’s controversial immigration policy.The celebrated Somali referee Omar Artan was denied entry. Iran’s team, training in Mexico, will be allowed to enter the US only the day before each of their three matches. Iraq striker Aymen Hussein was questioned for hours on his arrival in Chicago. Members of Senegal and Uzbekistan’s football teams were subjected to humiliating security checks. The ‘MAGA’ World Cup seems to be swimming against the tournament’s guiding principles, aesthetic goals and borderless laissez-faire spirit.Small wonder that the game, just like 1994, is again looking for a healing touch. Can Brazil restore the order once again? In appointing Italian Carlo Ancelotti as the first ever foreign manager, the five-time champions have broken a taboo to rediscover their soul in world football. Troubled by a nagging calf injury, Neymar is preparing for what is likely to be his last spin on the game’s grandest stage and it remains to be seen if his body can still match his imagination.In another convention-defying move, England have put their fate in the hands of a German, tasked with the challenge of ending their trophy drought which now stretches to 60 years. Thomas Tuchel has proved that England have in him a manager willing to roll the dice as the German has left big names like Phil Foden, Cole Palmer and Trent Alexander-Arnold out of the World Cup squad.Spain, who have not lost since bagging the Euro 2024 title, and France have emerged as bookmakers’ favourites. The prodigious Lamine Yamal is bound to attract the spotlight after enjoying a breakout tournament at Euro 2024. His potential duel with French star Kylian Mbappe, already a World Cup winner, is set to be placed in a larger and more absorbing context as Messi and Ronaldo are riding off into the sunset.Sport prefers to revel in a certain degree of romanticism and perhaps it lays on us an obligation to view this tournament as another Messi affair. Lionel Scaloni has retained the core with 17 of his 26 members from the 2022 World-conquering side. Can Messi make it a more enduring and magnetic climax of his career, something that even legendary Maradona failed to achieve? Every World Cup has an individual’s story: Cruyff’s turn against Sweden, Maradona’s magical solo against England, Roberto Baggio’s penalty miss against Brazil, Ronaldinho’s goal against England or Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt against Italy.The moment has arrived. For over a one month now, the game will search for its meaning.