Will Eyebrows Be Raised About 2026 FIFA World Cup?

The FIFA World Cup is always widely considered to be one of the best sporting tournaments in the world, and it isn’t really even that close. For decades upon decades now we have been watching in awe of nations and individual players, who manage to do things that others would consider to be virtually impossible. Of course, in order to get to the fun times on the pitch, you must first go through the nonsense that is the ‘behind the scenes’ work in football.

As you can tell by the name of the organisation, FIFA are the ones that arrange and sort out everything in reference to the World Cup. You can probably see where we’re going with this if you have your finger on the pulse of what’s been happening in the wider world, but even if that’s the case, we’ll just run through it quickly anyway.

The worry

As reported by BBC and The Guardian, Michel Platini was recently brought in for questioning in regards to some corruption charges. They stem from the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, which has been a move that football fans, players, managers and media members have long since criticised. Rightly so, too, given some of the reports that have been coming out about the working conditions over there – in addition to the fact that they’ve had to move the tournament to the winter months in order to accommodate the overwhelming heat.

Platini may or may not have had anything to do with what went down in the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar, but even if that’s the case, this is an incredibly bad look for the leading organisation in, well, the entire sport. Is there an off chance that nothing happened and this is all being blown out of proportion? An incredibly slim one, but the much more likely explanation is that there is something seriously wrong here.

Looking ahead

Because of all this, we’re starting to wonder whether or not there are going to be any ‘extra’ issues that are directed towards the 2026 FIFA World Cup. For those of you that don’t know, Canada, Mexico and the United States will all be collaborating with one another in order to play host to the 2026 edition of the tournament. A lot of people are understandably excited for this, especially in the wake of controversial destinations such as Russia and Qatar (although Russia wound up being a solid place to host the WC).

We worry for North America and their United bid here, and more specifically, we worry for Canada. The USA and Mexico are two established nations in international soccer, but this World Cup is set to do some great things for the progression of the game in the Great White North. We aren’t suggesting they are incapable of improving as a nation without it, but the newly founded Premier League isn’t quite going to be enough to encourage fans to stay tuned in on a week to week basis. Beyond that, from a financial perspective, there has already been a lot which has gone into getting the tournament to North America.

Of course, if any wrongdoing is found then punishment should be rightly handed out, but either way, we’re anticipating a ripple effect.