Why the World Cup should be decentralized | Leander Schaerlaeckens

In retrospect, the 2018 World Cup in Russia looks like a gentle genuflection, a dainty little bow before its strongman leader. Vladimir Putin and his Russian project of gradual conquest were most definitely centered and validated eight years ago: the tournament showcased his nation and awarded its leader prominence of place.

This summer, we will see something altogether different, as the runup to this edition of the world’s biggest and most popular sporting event has become a monument to Donald Trump.

The 2034 edition is going to Saudi Arabia, in spite of its dubious human rights record, offering the country’s de-facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, the chance to remake his image and that of the kingdom. Fifa has signaled a reluctance to create independent oversight of the treatment of Saudi Arabia’s migrant workers, suggesting the construction of the tournament’s stadiums could be every bit as lethal as they were for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

It has become increasingly evident, then, that the World Cup needs protection from the various forces forever tugging at it. So what now?

Break up the World Cup. Separate it into chunks, the way you might with a monopoly that has grown too powerful.

Some version of this is already happening, with the 2026 edition split across three countries, and the 2030 World Cup to be contested in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – which is to say, three continents.

I say: keep going. All the way. Play each group of the tournament proper in a different city or region, scattered across the world. A group in Paris. Another in Rio de Janeiro. One in Tokyo. Another in Sydney, Johannesburg, London, the Basque Country. Carve the knockout stages into three-game sets and sprinkle those all over the globe, too. Hold the semi-finals, final and third-place match in whatever place wins in some kind of bidding process, if you really must have one of those.

But the carbon footprint, you may say. The thing is, the participating countries are already flying in to the host nation from all over the world. If you tied the location of a group to the nearest median distance from the teams in it, emissions from flights would probably not be meaningfully higher than forcing 48 teams to crisscross an entire continent.

And in the end, the benefit will be worthwhile. The cost of putting on an entire World Cup that lives up to previous editions has grown so extraordinary that, increasingly, only hosts with a design on leveraging that outlay for some other ends need apply. With a broken-up tournament, the World Cup would no longer be so dependent on the whims of the host nation. A single leader, like Trump or Putin or Prince Mohammed, will no longer be able to manipulate the tournament for their own ends.

So decentralize it. The World Cup will remain the top prize in the sport, and would still accomplish a number of Fifa’s stated goals: developing the game in more regions; creating a truly global bonanza; bringing the sport within touching distance of more people.

Fifa contends that it has a fiduciary duty to its 211-member associations to extract the maximum revenue from the World Cup in order to then disburse all that money to its constituents. This premise provides cover for the mortgage payment-sized ticket prices at this upcoming World Cup, and creates a permission structure for the signing of sponsorships with shady prediction markets that don’t appear to be operational or indeed licensed in most of the world.

The thing is, spreading out the World Cup needn’t even cut into revenue. Assigning each host city or region a cluster of only a few games would create the premium that the organizers so prize. There are no bad, undesirable games when there’s only three or four of them.

We already have precedent here. The 2020 European Championship, punted to the following summer because of the Covid-19 pandemic, was scattered over 11 European cities. That tournament was broadly successful, before ticketless fans stormed the final at Wembley Stadium. It was interesting in its variation, produced the most goals per game in Euro history and might well have set an attendance record were it not for pandemic-related limitations on the crowd sizes.

Why not apply that model here? The best way to save the World Cup from its own cultural clout and the social currency it bestows may be to deconstruct it.

• This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond, helmed this week by Leander in Jonathan’s absence. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

• Leander Schaerlaeckens is a Guardian US contributor whose book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on 12 May. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University.