Every Dictatorship That Hosted the World Cup
In just a few days, the World Cup will be heading to one of the most repressive countries on earth. A place where freedom of speech is curtailed for the citizens who criticize the regime and is used as an excuse for the elites spewing their propaganda, a place where citizens are summarily arrested and held without due process, and where they are shot at point-blank range if they resist their unlawful arrest.
Furthermore, the media of the country is increasingly pressured to align with the views of the ruling regime, and it feels like I’m writing the introduction to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Except this time around, the supposed home of freedom and democracy is hosting a tournament where one of the countries that is taking part had its territory recently bombed by the hosts.
This is who we have chosen to host the most prestigious footballing competition on earth? Actually, why am I surprised? Looking at the World Cup’s history, it’s more a dictator’s plaything than the most prestigious pinnacle of football, insert other hyperbole here. And if you still somehow have some semblance of optimism left in your body in the year of our lord 2026, let me ruin that for you by telling you a little story about the various World Cup hosts that are, let’s just say, not so nice to their own people, or others, for that matter.
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We like to think that this state of affairs has only been current since Gianni Infantino, a man who probably dreams of becoming a little Yorkshire Terrier so he can sit comfortably on the laps of the most heinous people on earth, won the FIFA presidency in 2016. As we are about to see, the history of the World Cup is far bloodier than its most recent iteration.
To understand FIFA’s soft spot for dictators, or rather any dictator’s soft spot for FIFA, we need to travel all the way back to 1930 and board the SS Conte Verde alongside Jules Rimet, the initiator of the World Cup. The ship was travelling to Uruguay, where the first-ever World Cup would be held. Mere months after the tournament, Uruguay voted in Gabriel Terra, who assumed dictatorial powers through a coup d’état.
To be fair to him, despite his antisemitism and ties to Italy, Germany, and Spain in the following years, he did introduce gender equality, social programs meant to alleviate poverty and provide jobs, and decriminalize homosexuality. However, it was all downhill from here when it came to the World Cup and its hosts.
Four years later, Benito Mussolini, witnessing the power of a potential World Cup win and the prestige of hosting the tournament, pushed hard to have Italy bid for the tournament, after their unsuccessful 1930 bid. When he seized power in 1922 through his coup, Italian football was a mess. Clubs rejected professionalism, the game was decentralized, and refereeing scandals were numerous, like in 1925 when Leandro Arpinati pressured the referee in a Genoa-Bologna game to award a goal for Bologna for an attempt in which the ball didn’t cross the line.
Leandro wasn’t just a random dude with a passion for Bologna FC; however, he was a friend of Benito’s from their anarchist days. Since a man like lil’ Benny didn’t care much for having a spine and ideals, his switch up from socialism to fascism resembled the switch up in his stance on football. Despite initially mistrusting it, preferring individual sports which were easier to control, the popularity of the game forced him to accept its supremacy over the Italian sports landscape.
Several reforms were implemented, which consolidated the northern and southern leagues into the Serie A, clubs were merged until there were only one or two in each major city, and new state-of-the-art stadiums were built. Since Mussolini’s newly acquired love of football wasn’t just a phase, all of the efforts had to have a conclusion, and that was to be had at the 1934 World Cup.
Italy was chosen over Sweden as hosts, some say, through the bribery and lobbying of Giovanni Mauro, the Italian federation’s secretary. You’ll be hearing a lot of “allegedly” in this upcoming section since all of this happened more than 7 years ago, and also because if the zombie apocalypse is coming, I really don’t want to be sued by a revived Mussolini.
Back in Italy, the word of the day was style. And that style had to reflect fascism as a successful political alternative. This World Cup was the first one where large numbers of Europeans could travel to, so, like a mediocre high school teacher who was up for a promotion, Mussolini decided to put on the best show for the travelling fans.
Everything got a new lick of paint, stadiums were upgraded or at least refurbished, including the Stadio Olimpico of Turin, now renamed the Stadio Benito Mussolini (picture Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico), and tons of merchandise were created (trump phone). All of this was meant to show what a successful country Italy had become and how happy its people were. Just don’t go around asking any political dissidents or colonial populations if they’re happy.
The whole World Cup endeavour obviously had to have the desired conclusion of Italy winning the whole thing, and the aforementioned reforms had positive effects, though not as positive as the Oriundi. Roughly translated, the term means returners and refers to South American players of Italian descent who came to play in the Serie A after the regime banned all foreign players, because you see immigrants are bad, but immigrants who are good at football are good.
The World Cup itself was pretty good from a footballing standpoint, even though the quarter-final game between Italy and Spain resembled more a medieval battle than a football game, and Italian referee Rinaldo Barlassina was accused of bias towards the weaker Czechoslovak side against the Germans, facilitating their entry into the final against Italy.
After the final, in a positively Trumpian move, Mussolini presented the Coppa Del Duce, a huge trophy nearly six times bigger than the World Cup trophy to the Italian winners. Several days later, he travelled to Venice to meet with his German BFF to formalize their alliance, which would plunge the world into darkness in the next decade.
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After World War Two ended and the winning powers congratulated themselves on a job well done, you know what, with ending imperialism and suffering and so on, FIFA was naturally wary of giving their World Cup to nations with dubious leaders. The next few hosts, whilst having some skeletons in their closets, can, however, be considered mostly decent.
I mean, what country doesn’t like to cling to its crumbling colonial empire or act as the bankers of some of the most heinous people on earth? Hell, even the Swedes probably did some bad stuff, like yell at a polar bear or something. Just don’t look into their forced sterilization of the Sami people, and we can still pretend they are a civilized nation. See, everyone is problematic, and I am above them.
In 1966, the next four hosts would be chosen all at once, with Germany and Spain withdrawing in favour of each other for the 1974 and 1982 editions, and Mexico and Argentina doing the same for 1970 and 78. Mexico had been on a hosting kick lately, having hosted the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Sadly for them, the citizens weren’t very happy with the government spending lavish amounts of money on an Olympic event whilst ignoring the societal issues plaguing the country.
The ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, had been in power since 1929 and used electoral fraud, political repression, and the general political apathy of the Mexican electorate to stay in power. To their credit, they presided over the so-called Mexican miracle of the late 40s and 50s, but by the end of the 60s, the cracks were beginning to show, and the Olympic Games had been the straw that broke the burro’s back. At the forefront of the anti-government sentiment were students and the rural population.
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As it often happens with students, at least well-educated ones, the movement quickly took a leftist leaning, which upset certain people. And by certain people, I mean the USA, which operated under the Truman doctrine. This foreign policy pledged American help to US-aligned states against communism and totalitarianism in the name of democracy and in opposition to the Soviet bloc. However, as with the US’s most recent wars, they liked to play fast and loose with what democracy meant.
In Mexico, it meant supporting a dictatorial regime against its citizens who wished to open up political discourse. But as long as the government was centrist or right-leaning and the dissenters had even a smidge of leftism in them, the battle lines were as quick to draw as a Clint Eastwood character. With the help of paramilitary groups funded by the CIA, the student movements were violently repressed in two massacres in 68 and 71, and as those student movements turned to guerrillas, the government used every tactic frowned upon by the Geneva Convention to deal with them.
The World Cup itself was a truly vintage one with Brazil beating Italy 4-1 in front of more than 100,000 people at the Estadio Azteca, with most of the world having no idea what was going on in the background. Oh, I forgot to mention this whole period in Mexican history is called the Guerra Sucia, or dirty war, and remember that because it will come up later. When exactly? Well, right now.
Remember Mexico’s dirty war? Of course, you do, you have an excellent memory. Well, a Google search for Guerra Sucia will return a result for Argentina first and then for Mexico since Argentina’s dirty war is far more well-known. Probably because it was more brutal and because it got involved in the Falklands war, which brought even more attention to its despotic regime.
Just two years prior to hosting the World Cup, the National Reorganization Process, aka a bunch of generals headed by Jorge Rafael Videla, seized power from Isabel Peron. FIFA naturally decided to close its eyes and ignore the political situation in the country instead of stripping Argentina of its hosting rights. The level of repression that the military junta instituted was even higher than that in Mexico, even bloodier than that in Mexico, and with more flavours of human rights violations.
Of course, as always, their targets were the left-leaning elements in the country, and seeing the nice work they were doing, the USA naturally supported them, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger totally fanboying over the stellar work they were doing in combating those dirty commies. Never mind that the regime was literally snatching babies from their mothers and running the country into the ground economically.
With the nation more or less broke and on fire, the junta decided that everything would be all right if they hosted a nice World Cup to show the world what a great country they are. However, the foreign press reported on the cruelty of the regime throughout the tournament, and the Argentine population held protests in the hopes their voices would be amplified by the surge in coverage by foreign publications.
Most notably amongst them the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who were seeking justice for the desaparecidos, the people kidnapped by the regime. The Netherlands and Sweden considered boycotting the tournament, and Paris was a major centre for protests against FIFA’s decision to go ahead with the tournament. As the tournament went ahead and the concentration camp inmates at the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy could hear the cheers of the crowd at River’s Monumental Stadium, the junta’s thumb was firmly on the scale when it came to influencing referees.
The most contentious game, a 6-0 win over Peru, crucial to Argentina qualifying for the final, was accompanied by allegations of grain shipments from Argentina to Peru, unfreezing of Peruvian assets held in Argentine banks, and of Videla and Kissinger visiting the Peruvian dressing room before the game. The junta ultimately got its win, but it did not help their situation, and after their failed invasion of the Falklands, their regime crumbled in 1983.
Possibly wary of another stain on their reputation, FIFA played it safe with their next hosts, and yes, some of the countries selected had some gremlins, but they were the usual ones like corruption, a government that is more concerned with prestige than the standards of living, or becoming a hegemon. But they were the good guys, right? Right?….
For the next decades, the World Cup’s main issues could be summed up by one word: greed. The same greed that caused the footballing world to be rocked by a corruption case in 2015 led to the election of Gianni Infantino in 2016. To be fair to the rotten egg, he didn’t oversee the selection of the 2018 and 2022 hosts, as that happened in 2009, with Qatar’s involvement directly leading to the corruption case that saw Infantino elected.
Having had this situation thrust upon him and following such a corrupt FIFA regime, you’d expect the organization to turn a new page and at least criticize the hosts for their shortcomings and strive to do better in the future. But no, Infantino instead embraced Russia and Qatar’s regimes with open arms.
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First up was Putin, who awarded Infantino the Order of Friendship medal after he described the 2018 World Cup as the best ever. The football was surely good, but I doubt the North Korean workers who died during the stadium construction had any fun. Fun was also not to be had for the regular Russian people since, on the day of the tournament, Vladimir Putin raised the retirement age.
Now, if those people also happened to be part of the LGBT community or any other race other than white, they would have to face Russia’s increasingly discriminatory laws. Usually, international organizations tend to turn a blind eye to what regimes do to their own people, but this time, FIFA chose to ignore Russia’s foreign policy, too. Never mind that the Russian disinformation campaign on social media and the numerous hacking attacks had started even back then, the 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea should have seen the tournament moved to another country.
But money and corruption are more important to FIFA, so the 2018 World Cup went ahead, and it was a celebration of all the worst, most violent attributes of Russia. Four years later, the controversies surrounding the human rights abuses of Qatar were even more widely reported on, with a specific focus on the country’s intolerance of sexual minorities and the awful abuse of migrant workers.
That being said, Qatari outlets veiled those bans on LGBT individuals as a so-called culture of purity and religiousness. So, I guess as long as you pray the right way, you can call yourself pure even if you sit in a stadium soaked in blood and gawk at OnlyFans influencers who attend the games to boost their social media presence. Right before the World Cup began, Infantino, always a tactful and intelligent individual, tried to defend Qatar’s despotic regime by saying that on that day he felt “Qatari, Arab, African, gay, disabled, and like a migrant worker”.
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Now, by my calculations, the last three of those things would have seen him die in Qatar, and it certainly would have been very funny for someone to Charlie Kirk him exactly as he said it. But no, the world’s first winter World Cup was a celebration of artificial footballing clout and small-mindedness built on the backs of slave workers.
With the World Cup now being less a sporting celebration and more Gianni Infantino’s football circus for dictators, the next tournament is heading to the USA, and even before it started, Donald ‘Benito’ Trump has started two wars, banned legislation protecting its most vulnerable citizens, and started a fight with the pope himself. It’s not going to get any better once the tournament starts, since the hell scape of America’s late-stage capitalism will be used to full effect to scalp as much money from travelling fans as possible.
I’d like to tell you that the future is looking better, but barring a brief reprieve in 2030, which will see the World Cup head to civilized countries. We are heading to Saudi Arabia in 2034. For his most special dictator, Mohamed Bin Salman, Infantino truly rolled out the red carpet. Having effectively excluded South America from hosting through the ingenious idea of naming Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay as centenary match hosts, the only eligible continents remaining were Asia and Oceania.
So, get ready for another round of migrant worker deaths in the thousands as Saudi Arabia employs the same slave labour system as Qatar, with some human rights abuses towards minorities sprinkled on top just for good measure. But worry not, Gianni will once again tell us about how gay he feels. Let’s just hope this time someone decides to play a little prank on him and show him how gay people are treated in Saudi Arabia.
Just as I finished this article, it was announced that the 2026 World Cup will have halftime shows, and it’s quite easy to get disheartened about the direction football is heading in, but you have to remember, the fans hold the power. If you have any love for football, the game itself, not just one team or one player, stop being complacent and letting casual fans dictate the direction the game is heading in.
If you don’t like the halftime show, turn off your TV during its duration; if you don’t agree with where the World Cup is hosted, stream the games illegally; if your club signed a rapist, boycott their games. Many fans are forgetting that football without them is nothing. They can move the Champions League to Saudi Arabia for money, but if nobody watches it, it will die in 2 years. So, if you want to do something about this mess, start fighting against it, even in the smallest ways.
By: Eduard Holdis / @He_Ftbl
Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Getty Images