BARNEY MTHOMBOTHI | A World Cup of politics and pressure

Like a general launching his troops into battle, President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday urged the national soccer team to bring the Fifa World Cup home. Unless meant as a joke — which wasn’t clear — that’s crying for the moon. It’s a pipe dream. Pie in the sky.

We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. South Africa would indeed have done very well to make it out of the group stage. That’s not being negative or casting a spell on our team. It’s being realistic. South Africa is the lowest ranked among its competitors — Mexico, Czechia and South Korea. All we can hope for is that they put their best foot forward. They should do their best.

Don’t pile too much pressure on them by raising unrealistic expectations. We shouldn’t even bemoan the fact that it’s the first time we’ve qualified in 20 years. Scotland are gyrating with joy for making it for the first time in 28 years. Some big names will be missing from the tournament — Cameroon, Nigeria, European teams such as Denmark, Poland and four-time world champions Italy.

But, of course, this is a different World Cup than anything that has gone on before. It’s a tournament of firsts. The number of teams has increased from 32 to 48, with a record 104 matches. It’s also the first time the tournament is held in three different countries – Mexico, the US and Canada. It’s always been hosted by a single country, except the 2002 World Cup which was held in Japan and South Korea. The host countries aren’t seeing eye-to-eye currently.

A tournament as large as the Fifa World Cup will always be hostage to the cross-currents of global politics. The 2026 tournament in particular is caught up in an international whirlwind.

A tournament as big as the Fifa World Cup will always be hostage to the cross-currents of world politics. The 2026 iteration in particular is caught up in something of a whirlwind. When the “United 2026” bid was selected in Moscow in June 2018, little did the Fifa hierarchy know that a leader as capricious as Donald Trump would be back in the White House, or that he would have manufactured unnecessary conflicts with his neighbours.

The awkward dance between the three countries will therefore provide a sideshow to the tournament, with the US geographically and figuratively between the two.

Trump had hardly returned to office when he introduced sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports to the US, hitting sectors such as steel and aluminium. Canada retaliated with tariffs of its own, much to the chagrin of the US president. It’s an unusual standoff between two neighbours who have an almost identical world view, are politically and culturally similar, and speak the same language, with almost a similar accent.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has emerged as by far the most vocal, eloquent and fearless critic of Trumpism and proponent of a new world order that seeks to bypass or minimise the hegemonic influence of the US.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January this year, Carney referred to what he called “the rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality where large powers submit to no limit, and no constraints”. He called for intermediate powers like Canada to form a new order built on values such as respect for human rights, sustainable development and territorial integrity — the sort of principles that collide head-on with the Trump doctrine which seems to believe that might is right.

Trump has had his sights set on Mexico since he glided down that escalator in 2015 when announcing his presidential campaign, referring to Mexican immigrants as rapists, murderers and drug traffickers. It was the central pillar of his campaign to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep them out.

But Trump’s beef with Mexico is not only that it’s allegedly sending “its bad people” to the US, but that it’s not doing enough to stop migrants from other Latin American countries crossing Mexico on their way to the US. Mexico has therefore not escaped the obligatory tariffs, and entry into the US is heavily restricted.

It was perhaps an attempt to calm the waters or mollify Trump that Fifa president, the odious Gianni Infantino, decided to award him its so-called peace prize in December last year. Apparently, the idea to give Trump the award came from the White House itself, everything from the colour, the design and size of the trophy. They wanted it to be as big as the world cup. Fifa was only too happy to oblige. And so, a grovelling Infantino handed his inaugural peace prize to a man who at the time was directing military strikes in seven countries around the world. It was not exactly the Nobel Peace Prize that Trump has been yearning for, but you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

The gift, however, doesn’t seem to have been able to induce Trump to play ball, so to speak. Fifa has always insisted that host countries allow players and officials unfettered movement during the tournament. But the US, as an extension of its war with Iran, has refused to grant visas to senior officials, citing their alleged links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and for the Iranian team to be based in the US, where they will play all their group matches. They will therefore be based in Mexico, and will fly in and out on the day of their scheduled fixtures. Fifa seems powerless to do anything about it.

The standoff between South Africa and the US is so fierce it’s almost as if it’s between countries in military conflict. Government officials, I guess, will be keeping a beady eye on the team’s every movement during its stay in the US.

It’s a sporting event, but it could also be a political minefield. Which is perhaps why the small matter of announcing the South African team to the World Cup became a high-profile event, with the president of the country in attendance. It was a political statement.