Boycott the World Cup? Sure. Let’s Pretend That’s How Power Works.

Every four years, the World Cup arrives as spectacle and scandal in equal measure. Football, joy, nationalism, corruption — all bundled together in 90 minutes plus stoppage time.

Now it’s 2026, hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and some voices — including in the Netherlands — are asking whether teams should stay home in protest.

It’s a fair question. It just deserves an honest answer.

History isn’t kind to sports boycotts as tools of political change. The biggest experiments we have — the Olympic boycotts of 1980 and 1984 — were massive, coordinated, headline-grabbing, and ultimately ineffective. Over 60 countries skipped Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets stayed. Four years later, the Eastern Bloc skipped Los Angeles. U.S. policy didn’t blink.

But you don’t need to reach back to the Cold War. Qatar 2022 gives us a recent, visceral lesson. Thousands called for boycott. Fan groups in Germany hung massive banners in stadiums. Cities across France refused to broadcast matches. The #BoycottQatar2022 hashtag reached over 43 million impressions. And then came the moment of truth: seven European teams planned to have their captains wear “OneLove” armbands — a rainbow heart symbol supporting LGBTQ inclusion.

Gianni Infantino — FIFA’s president, the man who calls himself a champion of inclusion — threatened yellow cards at kickoff. Every single team backed down.

Hours before England’s opening match, Harry Kane — who’d said the day before he wanted to wear it — took the field without it. Meanwhile, Vinod Kumar — a 24-year-old migrant worker from India — died on a Qatar construction site in October 2020. (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/12/02/1140260086/the-world-cup-has-taken-a-toll-on-the-migrant-workers-who-made-it-possible).

His family got conflicting stories: workplace accident, then suicide, then cardiac arrest. No investigation. No compensation. His brother Ashwini still doesn’t know what actually killed him. Across Nepal, families like Urmila Devi Sah’s received bodies back in coffins with death certificates reading “natural causes” or “acute heart failure.” Her husband died in Qatar four months before the tournament. She has four children. The village had to pool money to bring his body home.

Moral gestures collapse the moment power applies pressure. Harry Kane — England's captain, a man worth millions — learned exactly what his solidarity was worth when it actually cost something: less than a yellow card.

The regime got its clean tournament. Vinod Kumar stayed dead. Urmila Devi Sah still wakes up at 5 a.m. to raise four kids alone. And Harry Kane — England’s captain, a man worth millions — learned exactly what his solidarity was worth when it actually cost something: less than a yellow card.

That’s the pattern. Moral gestures collapse the moment power applies pressure.

What did move was the cost — and it landed almost entirely on athletes. A 23-year-old sprinter trains for a decade, peaks at exactly the wrong moment, and watches their Olympic window close forever while politicians who made the decision retire comfortably on pensions. Careers don’t pause for geopolitics. Presidents didn’t miss a step, but sprinters missed their one shot at history.

Political historians and institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations have been blunt about this pattern: sports boycotts move symbolism, not governments (see CFR’s overview: https://www.cfr.org/timelines/olympics-boycott-protest-politics-history).

So if teams boycott the 2026 World Cup, who actually feels it? Not the migrant workers who built the infrastructure — they’ve already been exploited. Not the communities displaced for stadium construction — they’re already gone. Not Gianni Infantino — he’s still selling broadcast rights to 200 countries. Not Coca-Cola or Adidas — their contracts are signed. Not U.S. immigration policy, border enforcement, or detention centers — none of that changes because the Dutch captain stayed home.

Who does feel it? The 26-year-old midfielder who’s been good enough for exactly one World Cup cycle. The kid who grew up in a Rotterdam suburb dreaming of this. The player whose parents worked double shifts so he could train. Their absence becomes a footnote. Empty stadiums as moral statement? That’s what mega-events are built to absorb. Television fills the silence. Power remains comfortable.

If the World Cup is a propaganda machine, then abandoning it doesn't break the machine — it leaves it uncontested. When dissent stays home, the stage gets cleaner, not weaker.

If the World Cup is a propaganda machine, then abandoning it doesn’t break the machine — it leaves it uncontested. When dissent stays home, the stage gets cleaner, not weaker.

There’s a different option, though. Not withdrawal — presence without obedience.

What if all seven captains wore the armband anyway? Same day, opening matches. Make Infantino choose between his rules and his spectacle on live television in front of three billion viewers. What if players answered every press question with the names of dead workers? What if teams invited the families of workers who died in construction as personal guests, put them in VIP boxes where cameras would find them?

The point isn’t a perfect playbook. It’s recognizing that showing up and making noise is harder to ignore than staying home. Boycotts let the spectacle proceed smoothly. Disruption from inside makes it uncomfortable to watch. One lets power celebrate in peace. The other forces it to explain itself.

Boycotts feel pure. Participation feels compromised. But purity is cheap when someone else pays the price. When the athlete sacrifices their career. When Vinod Kumar’s family gets no answers, no compensation, no justice — but at least we didn’t watch, right? At least we kept our hands clean.

Here’s what history actually shows: when we skip the game, the regime gets exactly what it wants. A quieter news cycle. Fewer awkward questions. A smoother spectacle. The athlete loses their moment. The workers stay dead and forgotten. And we get to feel righteous.

That’s not resistance. That’s surrender with better PR.

So maybe the real protest isn’t walking away from the world’s biggest stage. Maybe it’s standing on it and refusing to perform the lie.

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Image generated with KLING AI using custom prompt.