The fact that the 2026 World Cup will be played in the USA, Canada and Mexico is more interesting and symbolically charged because it concerns a continent that has been characterised by various problems and challenges over the past ten years. Not least, it concerns questions and processes of whether the continent should become more politically, culturally and economically integrated or whether the opposite development should take place?
The continent is primarily affected by the fact that the US federal government will be led again from 2024 by President Donald Trump and his supporters, who are driven by various nationalistic, populist and authoritarian ideas and human perspective. Therefore, the World Cup will be a test of whether our time will be characterized by global division and discord through distrust, hatred and fear or whether the world will be characterized more by optimism, collaboration and better institutions in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Given Trump and his far-right MAGA movement, it is understandable that many people think and feel that “we should boycott the World Cup in the USA”. At the same time, The World Cup is fundamentally globalist also because it is about nations having to agree and cooperate. National teams still have to follow, accept and create common rules in order to be able to practice the sport on a supranational level. This means that even the Trump administration, ironically, has to be involved in organizing one of the world's largest global events.
Football often divides but also unites people
The case of the USA shows that even a nationalistically oriented administration must deal with the fact that the world is organized through international flows of people, security, logistics, media, money and culture. In research, football has long been described as an example of many expressions of sociocultural globalizationThis is largely due to the fact that sport connects local and national identities with global networks, international rules and a more globalized culture that extends far beyond the matches themselves.
In this way, football at the world level is not just entertainment because it is also an example of how people learn to participate in something bigger than the country, the city or the group. One could call it globalization, transnational culture or even an everyday form of practical internationalism. The point is the same where football shows that people already live in a world where the common cannot be reduced to the national, not even when politicians like Trump try to do so.
This does not mean that football is devoid of conflicts, risks and challenges. On the contrary, since a World Cup is characterized by corrupt behaviors, national rivalry and geopolitical ambitions. But the format itself reveals something important: even when national teams compete against each other, they do so within a common global order. They share rules, institutions, calendars, qualification systems, refereeing systems, broadcasting rights, transport, security work and a common symbolic language that billions of people understand.
Bosnia's football history as an example of division and unity
Another example of how football is often linked to politics and is characterized by local-global interactions is the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The national team consists of several players born outside the country or who were refugee children given the major economic problems and migration from the country since the 1990s. Bosnia is still characterized by the consequences of war, ethno-political division, institutional blockage and a daily life that is often described as one of the most complicated countries in the world.
Therefore, football takes on a special significance because it also reminds us that there are other traditions in the country's history than the nationalist ones. One of the most interesting is that Bosnia's older football history is in many cases about clubs that grew out of labor movement organization, socialist and communist ideas as well as ideas to create community beyond religious and ethnic divides.
Such historical examples show, among other things, that Bosnia is not a country of “centuries of ancient ethnic hatred.” In the football history of Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia, clubs were often much more than sports associations. Clubs were often carriers of social and local identities, everyday community and engagement in society and the idea that people could unite regardless of their religion or ethnic group. Two examples are the football clubs Željezničar (Railway Workers) in Sarajevo, which was founded by railway workers, and Velež in Mostar, which was founded as a workers' association and the club had a more Yugoslav identity before the war.
Socialist sports projects and football policies were not free from various problems and the Yugoslav state was more or less authoritarian at different times. However, Bosnian football history shows that there are examples and legacies regarding ideas about creating identities beyond religion and nationality. When Bosnia plays the World Cup, the country does not become less complicated but it gets a chance to emerge as something else, namely a society with shared experiences and stories.
Why the upcoming World Cup is important for the world
For North America, the World Cup will be a reminder that even the strongest state in the world cannot organize such an event without more global cooperation. Not even Trump can ignore the globalist game and all the interests that, for better or worse, are behind it. For Bosnia, it will be an opportunity to remind more people, both themselves and others, that football can carry stories of solidarity, working-class culture and community across borders that politics often deepens.
The 2026 World Cup will of course also be about excessive national pride, corrupt money, drama and commercial interests, but beneath the surface it is also about the world we actually already live in. A world where people, despite conflicts, still create common rituals, common institutions and common stories on a global level.
And perhaps that is precisely why football continues to matter so much because it shows that politics can also be about coordination, meetings and the possibility of imagining a more global community that is also required to deal with global problems and challenges.
Yes, sport has an important role in peaceful interaction between people and human development.
It is unfortunate when politics and economics use sports as propaganda or business interests exploit events for economic interests.
So aptly phrased!