Over the past week or so, an idea that until very recently was only found among anguished liberals on the outer edges of social media has percolated into the mainstream: The international community must seize upon the upcoming World Cup 2026 tournament in North America — far and away the world’s largest sporting event — as an opportunity to resist Donald Trump’s authoritarian regime.
A Google News search for “World Cup boycott” yields more than a dozen articles published since the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, in such mainstream outlets as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the Guardian, Politico and the Los Angeles Times, along with a range of left-leaning and foreign-language publications. Most cite the same limited set of evidence: a public petition in the Netherlands, comments by a single German soccer exec (a noted renegade), headline-grabbing statements by a left-wing legislator in France and a right-wing member of the British Parliament.
