President Donald Trump threatened to move World Cup matches out of one city that isn’t slated to host any games next summer.
In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly warned that the 11 cities/stadiums that are slated to accommodate 2026 World Cup matches could lose the right to host if they are deemed too “dangerous.” FIFA Vice President Victor Montagliani swiftly pushed back on the 79-year-old’s bold declaration, insisting that he doesn’t have the authority to make such a decision.
Regardless, Trump doubled down on his plan to relocate matches out of unsafe locations while speaking to reporters on Tuesday. “The answer is yes,” he began. “If somebody is doing a bad job, and if I feel there’s unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni [Infantino], the head of FIFA who’s phenomenal, and I would say, ‘Let’s move it to another location.’
“And he would do that. He wouldn’t love to do it, but he’d do it, very easily he’d do it. And this is the right time to do it.”
To hammer home his point, Trump singled out Boston as a host city that could lose its matches. In reality, however, all seven contests from the World Cup in Massachusetts will take place at Gillette Stadium, which is located in Foxborough.
“If I thought Boston was doing something that was going to cause safety conditions for the World Cup, I could say the same thing for the Olympics, because we have events that are in different locations for the Olympics,” Trump continued. “It’s based in L.A. If I thought L.A. was not going to be prepared properly, I would move it to another location if I had to. On that one, I’d probably have to get a different kind of a permission, but we would do that.”
This is hardly the first time that Trump has voiced his desire to relocate World Cup matches or Olympic events from dangerous cities. Last month, the POTUS pointed the finger at Democratic-led cities including Seattle and San Francisco, which he argued are “Run by radical left lunatics who don’t know what they’re doing.”
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“If any city we think is going to be even a little bit dangerous for the World Cup, or for the [2028] Olympics … but for the World Cup in particular, because they’re playing in so many cities, we won’t allow it,” Trump said at the time. “We’ll move it around a little bit. But I hope that’s not going to happen.”
Though Trump has developed a close working relationship with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Montagliani asserted that he still isn’t authorised to move matches. “It’s FIFA’s tournament, FIFA’s jurisdiction, FIFA makes those decisions,” he said during Leaders Week London at the Allianz Stadium.
According to Montagliani, soccer is “bigger” than the political divides prevalent across the United States. “That’s the beauty of our game, is that it is bigger than any individual and bigger than any country,” he said.