15 July 2026
Politics Swamps the World Cup and It Is Not Going Away
A Guardian essay argues that this tournament has become impossible to separate from the world's biggest political fault lines.
The 2026 World Cup has become a mirror held up to some of the most divisive political currents of our time, according to a lengthy essay in The Guardian. The piece argues that where previous tournaments allowed fans a kind of gentle, manageable brush with identity politics, this edition has been engulfed by it entirely.
The Guardian points to figures like Ousmane Dembele and his wife Rima Edbouche as symbols of multicultural France who have attracted racist and Islamophobic abuse far beyond the usual noise. Kylian Mbappe has been forced to publicly respond to racist attacks from a Paraguayan senator, an extraordinary intrusion of formal politics into sport.
England's majority-Black squad, meanwhile, represents a country the essay describes as living through a particularly dark chapter of anti-immigration and far-right politics. The piece notes the jarring spectacle of a Reform MP cheering on England while simultaneously championing the harshest immigration policies the country has seen in decades.
The essay concludes that the identity mathematics of a World Cup squad and fanbase has become far less playful and far more weighted with genuine consequence. The beautiful game, it suggests, is no longer a place to escape the world. It is a stage where the world insists on playing out.
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