The Geopolitics of Soccer

This year’s FIFA World Cup will be the largest in the competition’s history, with 48 teams playing 104 matches in 16 cities across three countries. But it also comes amid a particularly fraught geopolitical backdrop. Not only is a host country at war with one of the participating nations, but the three host nations have spent the last year sparring over immigration, trade, and even national sovereignty. What does this tournament tell us about the state of the world? With controversies over immigration and ticketing, will the United States manage to host a successful World Cup? FP’s Ravi Agrawal put these questions to Mehreen Khan, a former sports journalist and now the economics editor of The Times. Watch the interview at ForeignPolicy.com: https://foreignpolicy.com/live/mehree... 0:00 Intro 1:50 What’s new about this world cup 3:30 A hegemon’s world cup 5:09 The history of autocratic hosts 9:15 Immigration 14:29 Iran’s attendance 16:55 ICE presence 18:30 Qualifying countries 22:08 FIFA and Gianni Infantino 26:18 U.S. soft power 30:28 Mexico and Canada 32:14 Sportswashing On the go? Listen to FP Live as a podcast at https://link.chtbl.com/foreignpolicyl... or wherever you get your podcasts. FP Live is Foreign Policy's forum for live journalism that brings leading foreign-policy experts and thinkers together to analyze the world's biggest events. Visit http://foreignpolicy.com/live for the full conversation and more live journalism from Foreign Policy. Subscribe to Foreign Policy's Youtube Channel:    / @foreign-policy   Visit http://foreignpolicy.com/ to read the latest global news and analysis from FP. Follow Foreign Policy: X -   / foreignpolicy   Instagram -   / foreignpolicymag   Facebook -   / foreign.policy.magazine   LinkedIn -   / foreign-policy-magazine   TikTok -   / foreignpolicymagazine