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Geopolitics in the Football Realm:
The Question that FIFA has Never Answered
July 17 2026

WORDS William Brooks
PHOTOGRAPHY Marvin Heilbronn


For the very first time in the World Cup’s ninety-six-year history, a qualifying nation arrived while at war with one of the host nations. Throughout the tournament, the Iranian national team trained in Tijuana, Mexico and were forced to commute to the United States on match days after the host nation declined to host the Iranian squad. Iranian players were only permitted to enter the U.S. twenty-four hours before kick-off and were required to leave the country directly following the match. Following Iran’s second group stage match against Belgium, coach Amir Ghalenoei said his team played a “beautiful game” while playing under the “worst possible conditions,” citing short travel windows, visa complications, and minimal preparation against a Belgium side that is ranked No. 10 in the world (1). Several members of the support staff and team officials were denied entry into the U.S. entirely, with the Trump administration citing ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (2).

Iran has participated in seven World Cups, including four consecutive tournaments from 2014 through 2026, but heightened political animosity between the U.S. and Iran has made its role in this year's tournament unique. While coverage of the Iranian team in previous years focused primarily on the squad and its fixtures, this year's coverage has centered on the team traveling across the U.S.-Mexico border to play in a rival's stadium, competing under the weight of visa restrictions, having staff members barred entry, and facing other consequences of the geopolitical tension between the two countries.

Yet no FIFA statute offers guidance for the circumstance at hand; no clause or article addresses what should happen when a participating nation is at war with its host country. Nor is there any substantial body of precedent governing how FIFA navigates geopolitical conflict more broadly. As a result, foundational questions, whether Iran should be permitted to compete, whether the United States should be allowed to host, and who holds the authority to decide, remain without formal answer. This paper examines three historical instances of geopolitical conflict that prompted responses, and consequences, from FIFA's leadership, in order to situate the organization's handling of active geopolitical tension within the context of the 2026 tournament. As later sections will demonstrate, FIFA has struggled to articulate a consistent institutional response across these cases, exposing a deeper structural flaw in its governance model.





Politics Built This Game

The 2026 tournament is not the first time Iran and America have shared the pitch against the backdrop of geopolitical tension. At the 1998 World Cup in Lyon, France, the two countries met in a group stage match, which at the time was described as the “mother of all games.” Relations between the U.S. and Iran had been almost entirely severed since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis in which 52 Americans were held captive for 444 days. Then U.S. President Bill Clinton used the occasion to call for an end to the estrangement between the U.S. and Iran (3). However, Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei issued a far less diplomatic statement. Khamenei told his players not to approach the American players for the pre-match handshake (4). FIFA navigated the delicate situation by designating the occasion its annual Fair Play Day, proposing a joint photograph of the two teams in place of separate ones, and having the U.S. squad approach the Iranian players rather than Iran fulfilling its predetermined role of approaching the Americans. Before kick off, Iranian players offered white roses as a symbol of peace, the Americans reciprocated with USSF pennants, and the teams broke tradition entirely, posing together for a single intermingled photo rather than separate team shots. Iran ultimately bested the U.S., winning the match 2-1 and securing its first-ever World Cup victory.

Following the match, U.S. defender Jeff Agoos said that the players “did more in 90 minutes than the politicians did in 20 years. (6).” Agoos’s words have since been used to illustrate that football has the potential to transcend conflict and politics, and how a football pitch can, at times, can become host to what traditional diplomacy fails to achieve. However, it may more clearly indicate that football and geopolitics have been inseparable on the global stage for decades, that FIFA has faced tensions similar to those seen today before, and that the organization has never established a clear framework for addressing geopolitical conflict within the football arena.

Nearly thirty years later, the two countries are once more belligerents. The U.S. conducted military strikes on Iran with Israel on February 28, 2026 (7). Yet the country remained host of the tournament, and its players took the pitch on June 12th for their opening game. And the question raised in Lyon in 1998, how football should accommodate geopolitical tension and conflict, has never been formally answered.




Selective Enforcement: A Brief History of FIFA’s Suspensions



FIFA, like any global institution, cannot escape the geopolitics that shape the rest of the international system. Suspending a national team is a relatively non-confrontational way FIFA can express disapproval, it costs nothing economically or militarily, but it hurts a nation's pride. The consequences are almost entirely symbolic, but symbolism still carries weight: it signals that a country has fallen out of step with the expectations of the broader international community.

FIFA hosted its inaugural World Cup in 1930, only a few years before World War II erupted. Unlike the Olympic movement, which grew increasingly caught up in the political conflicts of the twentieth century, FIFA has generally tried to present itself as above politics, as a neutral party. But football has never actually managed to stay separate from global conflict. Once the World Cup resumed its regular schedule after World War II, both Germany and Japan remained excluded from competition until the 1950s. In 1958, Indonesia, Egypt, and Sudan all refused to face Israel during qualifying, and when FIFA wouldn't accommodate their objections, all three withdrew from the tournament entirely. South Africa was blocked from FIFA competition for two decades, from 1970 to 1990, because of apartheid. In 1974, the Soviet Union refused to play Chile as a statement against Augusto Pinochet's regime. Yugoslavia was suspended in 1994 during the Balkan Wars. Myanmar was disqualified in 2006 after refusing to play a qualifying match against Iran. And since invading Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been suspended from international football entirely.

What FIFA has chosen not to act on is often just as revealing as what it has. Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Rwanda during the genocide against the Tutsi population were never suspended, despite qualifying for competition. Looking at FIFA's postwar decisions as a whole, the logic behind them barely holds together. South Africa was banned under apartheid, yet North Korea never faced the same treatment. Russia was excluded for its invasion of Ukraine, but the United States saw no consequence after invading Iraq in 2003. Turkey was never disqualified for invading Cyprus in 1974, yet the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus still isn't permitted to compete. Meanwhile, both Palestine and Taiwan field their own national teams without issue. Rather than a consistent policy on how to address geopolitical tension, FIFA’s history shows a series of reactions shaped by external political pressure and improvisation, none of which have ever become codified in a formal framework.


Three Conflicts, Three Different Outcomes

To understand what is happening at this year's World Cup, it's worth retracing how and why some of FIFA's previous decisions on geopolitical tension and conflict came to be. The following section examines three of the aforementioned examples in greater depth, highlighting the inconsistency in FIFA's decision-making and the reasoning behind each choice.

In 1961, South Africa was temporarily suspended from FIFA in response to its apartheid policy, which enforced racial segregation and barred mixed-race sports teams. Two years later, the ban was briefly lifted by then-FIFA President Stanley Rous, who argued that sport and politics should not become intertwined. The ban was later reimposed after African member nations pressured FIFA, and in 1976, following the Soweto uprising, South Africa was formally expelled. South Africa’s expulsion was only reversed sixteen years later when the apartheid system was dismantled (8). What is notable about FIFA’s suspension of South Africa is that the organization did not make this decision in isolation. International pressure played a massive role in swaying FIFA as there was a global consensus that South Africa’s discriminatory policy was incompatible with FIFA’s stated shared values.

In a separate case, Yugoslavia was excluded from the 1994 World Cup but for different reasons. In May 1992, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 757, imposing hefty international sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) for its role in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Part of the resolution directly prohibited Yugoslavia from participating in international sporting events (9). FIFA ultimately aligned itself with the Security Council, but barring Yugoslavia was more an act of mandate rather than FIFA acting out of its own volition.

Recently, and perhaps most notably, Russia was suspended from all FIFA and UEFA competitions on 28 February 2022, only four days after its full-scale reinvasion of Ukraine (10). The decision again was driven by international pressure. Poland, Sweden, and the Czech Republic all announced that they would refuse to play against Russia under any conditions, meaning qualification football would essentially be impossible without barring Russia (11). The Football Union of Russia was quick to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which ultimately upheld the suspension in July 2022. The Court ruled that FIFA and UEFA acted within the scope of the discretion granted to them by their respective statutes (12). The Court notably ruled that the statute did not require a ban, but only that the ban would not be prohibited by them. Ultimately, FIFA and UEFA made a choice to recognize that certain geopolitical actions warranted suspension.

While the World Cup has experienced a handful of geopolitical conflicts, including the three examined in this paper, each with a different outcome, the FIFA Statutes, the governing document intended to guide all decision-making, contain no article addressing war. Within these statutes, there is no suspension framework triggered by armed conflict, and no threshold to guide when a nation's aggression warrants suspension or expulsion. In fact, the word “war” never appears in FIFA’s suspension framework (13). Instead, the statute reads, “The Congress may suspend a member association solely at the request of the Council. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Council may, without a vote of the Congress, temporarily suspend with immediate effect a member association that seriously violates its obligations.” This gives FIFA's governing body considerable leeway in its decision-making, and the text never defines what constitutes a "serious violation," arguably granting the organization excessive discretion.

The Israel Case

While Russia has been banned and Iran forced to jump through countless logistical hurdles to make it to this year’s World Cup, the 2026 World Cup brought another conflict and has produced another divergent outcome. Despite the ongoing conflict in Gaza, FIFA has not issued any sort of suspension. The Palestinian Football Association submitted proposals requesting that the FIFA Congress discuss sanctions. The PFA cited violations of FIFA’s own statutes, including the operation of Israeli teams in the occupied West Bank, which FIFA’s rules prohibit, as member countries may not compete on foreign territory without permission (14).In this case, FIFA chose not to act, citing political neutrality as a defining principle for a football governing body.

The case of Israel is not a direct parallel with Russia. The situations differ in important respects. European nations have refused to play against Russia, while Israel's World Cup qualifying opponents and UEFA nations have done no such thing. The two conflicts are also incredibly different in their nature. Russia reinvaded Ukraine in February 2022, only eight years after it illegally annexed Crimea (15). On the other hand, Israel has framed its military campaign as an act of self-defense following Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack, while critics, including a range of human rights organizations, legal scholars, and some foreign governments, have challenged the proportionality and legality of Israel's response. The broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, unlike the Russia-Ukraine war, has remained a near-constant source of regional tension since the mid-twentieth century, shaped by decades of contested territorial claims, occupation, displacement, and repeated cycles of violence that long predate this current war. The legal frameworks are also different. Russia’s suspension was framed as a necessary measure in order to allow qualifying matches to continue. Conversely, calls directly from within the football space have largely rested on alleged violations of FIFA’s status regarding occupied territory and outcry over allegations of genocide has come from human rights organizations. This does not seem to meet the threshold for suspension set by FIFA's past decisions, in which a clear pattern emerges: unless there is considerable, unified global outcry, FIFA tends to allow nations to continue participating in international football.

Through looking at Russia, Iran, and Israel, we can see three different instances of sustained military conflict and three different responses by FIFA. Russia has been banned by both FIFA and UEFA. Iran, on the other hand, has not been banned but has been subject to extreme travel restrictions by the host nation, and FIFA has been unable to make life easier for the Iranian delegation. Israel has continued to compete on the international stage, and FIFA has invoked political neutrality as the reason for non-intervention. Notably, FIFA set aside political neutrality in order to suspend Russia, proving that neutrality is a choice, not a constraint. The problem is that FIFA has no clear policy or written framework for how it responds to conflict, only the discretion to invoke political neutrality when convenient and abandon it when it is not (16).


Infantino’s Stance

In an interview with Sky Sports in February 2026, FIFA President Gianni Infantino called for Russia’s ban to be lifted. He argued that it “has not achieved anything, it has just created more frustration and hatred (17).”  Infantino even went further and suggested that FIFA should “enshrine in our statutes that we should actually never ban any country from playing football because of the acts of their political leaders.” The FIFA President offered a similar comment in regard to Iran. Speaking at CNBC’s Invest in America Forum in April 2026, Infantino said that Iran would “for sure” be at the World Cup (18). In October 2025, after the United Nations commission of inquiry concluded that Israel had committed a genocide in Gaza, Infantino said: “FIFA cannot solve geopolitical problems, but it can and must promote football around the world by harnessing its unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values (19).” Infantino’s position is clear: politics should not be a reason to exclude a country from international football. However, FIFA’s ban of Russia doesn’t seem to follow this logic as the organization has been careful to protect Iran and Israel and guarantee both of their participation in international football matches. But critics still demand consistency. Why have Iran and Israel been allowed to participate given Russia’s exclusion? As Infantino said, he would like to see Russia participating in international football once more because the football pitch is a bridge that brings people together and should transcend politics (20).

There is coherent logic to this argument. Importantly, it is also how FIFA has operated historically. South Africa and Yugoslavia were both banned. Same with Russia. In each of these cases, FIFA framed its action as something nonpolitical, but rather as a compliance matter, administrative necessity, or safety concern. It has framed exclusions like this because the FIFA statutes have no language that supports bans grounded in political difference. This has meant that FIFA has dressed every ban or restriction in procedural language rather than acknowledging what it actually is: a political choice. This has also allowed FIFA to avoid ever truly denouncing or acknowledging the political actions that led to the bans, instead placing the onus on the global outcry that called for it. Infantino’s call for a statute change, if enacted, would, at the very least, make the choice more explicit – setting a precedent for future conflicts. The glaring problem, though, is that it would eliminate any mechanism that would permit the largest football governing body to respond to state conduct that it finds intolerable.


The Governance Problem

What the Iran situation has revealed to the world is that there is a structural vacuum at the very center of international football governance. However, FIFA insists that it is not political, and its statutes confirm this. “FIFA remains neutral in matters of politics and religion. Exceptions may be made with regard to matters affected by FIFA's statutory objectives (21).” The problem is that the exceptions have been invoked inconsistently and the basis for invoking them has never been clearly articulated. The final problem is that the decision ultimately rests with the Council, which in practice means it rests with whoever is leading FIFA at the time. The Council consists of 37 members serving four-year terms: the FIFA President, elected directly by the FIFA Congress; eight Vice Presidents; and 28 additional members elected by member associations across FIFA's six  continental confederations. 

While the President holds only one vote among the 37, they wield outsized influence by controlling meeting agendas, holding exclusive rights to propose key executive appointments, and leveraging FIFA's massive financial distribution to maintain political control over global football.

There is also a pattern to take note of from the three political bans that FIFA has imposed. The ban on South Africa was only pushed through because of sustained pressure from African nations and the international anti-apartheid movement. Yugoslavia’s ban was more direct. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that explicitly covered international sport, meaning FIFA did not need to make a political judgement. Instead, it merely had to follow a political mandate. Russia was, in ways, similar to the South Africa case. Several major European federations refused to play them, which created a practical and organizational problem for FIFA rather than a principled one. In each of these three cases, FIFA has acted under external pressure rather than moral judgement. If that external pressure were to be removed, the default would likely be inaction dressed up as neutrality.

This can be labeled as the governance problem. Football is the most-watched sport in the world. It operates across the entire planet and its tournaments attract billions of viewers. The claim that football can remain above politics and that what happens on the pitch exists almost in a separate dimension from what happens off it has never been credible. The case of Iran and what the players and staff have so far had to undergo at this year's World Cup makes this claim almost impossible to sustain. They qualified on merit, they trained across the U.S.-Mexico border, they crossed the border to play in enemy territory, and then flew back to Mexico within hours of the final whistle. The football was just as real as the politics beside it, and FIFA has had no rulebook to address this sort of situation.

An important question throughout this World Cup has been who it is really for,
who gets to participate, and on what terms.


Iran has helped answer that question in its most literal sense. The Iranian team has been operating not on terms set by FIFA's statutes, but by a White House task force. In the continued absence of a necessary framework, power continues to fill the gap. So far, FIFA has failed to recognize that football and politics cannot be fully separated, and for all its talk of bridges and peace, it has not yet shown any interest in enshrining its own stance in writing, consistency, or action, the very things a governing body of this scale and influence requires.




Endnotes

1.  LHeureux, David, and Nicholas Som. 2026. “Iran played 'beautiful game' vs. Belgium under 'worst' conditions.” ESPN. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49138797/iran-beautiful-game-belgium-worst-conditions-world-cup-2026.

2. Al Jazeera Staff. 2026. “Iran will have to leave US hours after every World Cup match, official says.” Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/6/16/iran-will-have-to-leave-us-hours-after-every-world-cup-match-official-says.

3. Longman, Jere. 1998. “WORLD CUP '98; Diplomacy And Urgency As the U.S. Faces Iran.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/21/sports/world-cup-98-diplomacy-and-urgency-as-the-us-faces-iran.html.

4. Lewis, Aimee. 2022. “A match like no other. When the US played Iran at the 1998 World Cup.” CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/28/football/iran-usa-france-1998-spt-intl/index.html.

5. Bonagura, Kyle. 2022. “An oral history of USA-Iran at the 1998 World Cup: Political tension, teammate betrayal and humiliation.” ESPN. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/37634212/oral-history-usa-iran-1998-world-cup-interviews-photos.

6. Billingham, Neil. 2022. “USA vs Iran at France '98: the most politically charged game in World Cup history.” FourFourTwo. https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/usa-vs-iran-france-98-most-politically-charged-game-world-cup-history.

7. U.S. Department of War. 2026. “Operation Epic Fury | U.S.” Department of War. https://www.war.gov/Spotlights/Operation-Epic-Fury/.

8. Streamline. n.d. “FIFA’s Red Card: A History of World Cup Bans for Political Reasons.” Streamline. https://streamlinefeed.co.ke/news/fifas-red-card-a-history-of-world-cup-bans-for-political-reasons.

9. Mumford, Robin. 2025. “3 Countries FIFA Has Banned From World Cup For ‘Political Reasons.’” GiveMeSport. https://www.givemesport.com/countries-fifa-banned-world-cup-political-reasons/.

10. FIFA. 2022. “FIFA/UEFA suspend Russian clubs and national teams from all competitions.” FIFA. https://inside.fifa.com/tournaments/mens/worldcup/qatar2022/media-releases/fifa-uefa-suspend-russian-clubs-and-national-teams-from-all-competitions.

11. ESPN. 2022. “Czech Republic join Poland, Sweden in refusing to play Russia in 2022 World Cup playoffs.” ESPN. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/37625846/czech-republic-join-poland-sweden-refusing-play-russia-2022-world-cup-playoffs.

12. RFE/RL. 2022. “Court Of Arbitration For Sport Dismisses Russian Appeals Of FIFA, UEFA Bans.” RFE/RL. https://www.rferl.org/a/sport-dismissal-russian-appeals-soccer-fifa-uefa-bans/31945565.html.

13. FIFA. 2024. “FIFA STATUTES Regulations Governing the Application of the Statutes Standing Orders of the Congress.” (May), 1-41. https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/16d1f7349fa19ade/original/FIFA-Statutes-2024.pdf.

14. FairSquare. 2024. “FIFA has multiple obvious grounds to suspend the Israeli Football Association.” FairSquare. https://fairsq.org/fifa-has-multiple-obvious-grounds-to-suspend-the-israeli-football-association/.

15. European Union External Action. 2021. “Seven years since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.” European Union External Action. https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/seven-years-russia%E2%80%99s-illegal-annexation-crimea_en.

16. FairSquare. 2025. “FIFA continues to stall and misrepresent over Israel sanctions.” FairSquare. https://fairsq.org/fifa-continues-to-stall-and-misrepresent-over-israel-sanctions/.

17. Sky Sports. 2026. “Gianni Infantino interview: FIFA boss apologises to British fans, says Russia ban should be lifted and defends Donald Trump peace prize.” Sky Sports. https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/13502501/gianni-infantino-interview-fifa-boss-says-russia-ban-should-be-lifted.

18. ESPN News Services. 2026. “FIFA president Infantino: Iran 'for sure' will play at World Cup.” ESPN. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/48495900/fifa-president-gianni-infantino-iran-play-world-cup-usa.

19. BBC. 2025. “Gianni Infantino: Fifa 'cannot solve geopolitical problems' amid Israel sanction pressure.” BBC. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c740y9k77k0o.

20. ESPN News Service. 2026. “FIFA president Infantino: Iran 'for sure' will play at World Cup.” ESPN. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/48495900/fifa-president-gianni-infantino-iran-play-world-cup-usa

21. FIFA. 2024. “FIFA STATUTES Regulations Governing the Application of the Statutes Standing Orders of the Congress.” (May), 1-41. https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/16d1f7349fa19ade/original/FIFA-Statutes-2024.pdf.
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