The 2026 World Cup has not even properly begun, and already the familiar smell is in the air: bureaucracy, humiliation, political cowardice and the quiet contempt of institutions that still expect supporters to clap politely because a ball will eventually be kicked. A nominated referee from Somalia, denied entry to the United States. Uzbekistan, led by Fabio Cannavaro, reportedly subjected to intrusive security checks before a friendly in New York, as if a World Cup-winning captain and his squad had arrived to traffic cocaine rather than play football. Iran forced to prepare for a supposedly global tournament from Mexico, with visas, staff restrictions and entry conditions turning its participation into a diplomatic obstacle course. This is not the World Cup as a celebration of football. This is the World Cup as an airport problem with sponsors.
The Somali referee case is particularly shameful because it is not just political. It is personal. A referee does not reach the World Cup by accident. He does not get there through glamour, marketing or celebrity. He gets there through years of discipline, difficult matches, scrutiny, fitness, judgement and the lonely authority of being resented by both teams whenever convenient. To be nominated for a World Cup is the summit of that profession. For a Somali official, recognised among Africa’s best and selected for the biggest tournament in the sport, it should have been a moment of national pride and personal vindication. Instead, he was reduced to a border problem.
That is the tragedy. A man who had earned his place at football’s highest stage was not protected by the institution that selected him. FIFA should have treated this as a violation of the tournament’s integrity. It should have made clear that accredited participants, officials, teams and staff cannot be handled as disposable inconveniences by a host country. It should have used the power it loves to display when selling rights, packages and presidential access. Instead, when principle was required, FIFA suddenly looked less like a governing body than an event contractor trying not to upset the venue.
This is what FIFA has become: powerful when selling, timid when defending, arrogant toward supporters and strangely obedient in front of political power.
The supporters should draw the conclusion FIFA hopes they will never draw. Maybe the World Cup is no longer sacred. Maybe it is no longer the tournament around which football culture has to arrange itself like worshippers around an altar. Maybe it is simply a bloated, compromised, overpriced spectacle run by people who have mistaken scale for greatness and market access for meaning. If FIFA wants a World Cup where real fans are priced out, where teams are dragged across absurd distances, where players and officials are processed like suspects, and where the host country sets conditions that distort preparation, then perhaps the response should be brutally simple.
Let them have it.
Let FIFA stage its grand tournament for sponsors, luxury guests, political guests, corporate guests, neutral tourists and whichever category of customer still finds joy in paying too much for too little dignity. Let the machine continue inside its own sealed hospitality economy. Football supporters do not owe FIFA their devotion merely because FIFA owns the trademark. If the institution has forgotten the people who give football its force, then those people have every right to stop pretending the institution still deserves reverence.
This is why Euro 2028 suddenly feels much larger than another European Championship. It feels like the counterargument. It feels like the tournament where football can still remember what it is supposed to be.
Perhaps this is naïve. Perhaps I am giving UEFA more benefit of the doubt than any modern football institution deserves. The sensible position, after years of football governance, would be to remain suspicious in advance. But sometimes even cynicism has to recognise the possibility of something better. And for Euro 2028, I want to believe it.
The last European Championship in Germany showed that football can still be a real public festival. Not a managed luxury product. Not a hospitality platform with a tournament attached. A festival for people. Streets full of supporters, cities that felt open rather than militarised, fans travelling from neighbouring countries, public spaces carrying the mood of the tournament without needing to fake it. It worked because Germany is a football country. It worked because Europe remains dense with football cultures that can reach each other without turning attendance into a major expedition. That matters more than FIFA seems capable of understanding.
Football tournaments are not only about stadium capacity and television windows. They are about proximity. They are about whether people can actually go. Europe has an extraordinary concentration of nations where football is not a lifestyle category but the sport itself. From Switzerland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Spain and beyond, travelling to the United Kingdom and Ireland is realistic. A short flight. A weekend. A few days. In some cases, even a train journey through the Channel Tunnel. It does not require surrendering an entire annual holiday, taking out a small loan and preparing for a border experience designed to make enthusiasm feel suspicious.
That accessibility changes everything. It makes the tournament human again. It allows friends to say: let’s go. Not as a once-in-a-lifetime logistical campaign, but as a real football trip. Two or three days. A match if we get tickets. A pub if we do not. A city full of shirts, songs, accents and mild chaos. That is the emotional infrastructure of tournament football. The trip itself. The people. The sense that the tournament belongs partly to those who bothered to show up.
The United Kingdom and Ireland are not perfect hosts because no host is perfect. Brexit has added friction. Entry formalities are not what they once were. There will be administration, prices, transport irritations and the usual bureaucratic theatre that follows every major event. But that is not the point. The point is that I expect to feel welcome there. And for a tournament, that is not a decorative detail. It is the basic duty of a host.
A host country is not merely a place with stadiums. A host country has an obligation to receive the people who come with the tournament: players, referees, staff, journalists and supporters. It has to make them feel that they are part of the event, not tolerated exceptions to a security policy. It has to understand that football is not just played on the pitch. It is carried through airports, train stations, pubs, squares and city centres, through conversations between people who will never meet again and will still remember the same afternoon years later. A great tournament makes all of that possible. A bad one makes all of that difficult and then asks the football to compensate.
Euro 2028 has the chance to get this right.
The United Kingdom and Ireland are football places in the deepest sense. Football there is not an imported entertainment product, a lifestyle accessory or a market-entry strategy. It is part of the air: in the stadiums, in the pubs, in the trains, in the old arguments, in the songs and in the unreasonable seriousness with which ordinary people discuss a left-back. These islands do not need a promotional film to explain why football matters. They already know.
That is why the phrase “football is coming home” actually fits this time, not as English smugness, but as cultural relief. The tournament will be played in countries where football is lived, argued over, inherited and occasionally cursed at with admirable fluency. It will be close enough for Europeans to reach without turning support into a major expedition, and familiar enough to feel like a football trip rather than a controlled commercial experiment.
And if UEFA keeps its promise on ticketing, Euro 2028 could become something genuinely magnificent. Affordable categories matter. No dynamic pricing matters. The idea that ordinary supporters should be present not as atmospheric decoration but as the centre of the tournament matters. Perhaps the final ticket portal will still find a way to disappoint everyone. But the direction matters. After the last European Championship in Germany showed how powerful a real public football festival can still be, I am willing to be naïve for once.
Because tournaments are not only judged by finals and trophies. They are judged by whether people want to be there. They are judged by whether supporters can travel with their friends, stand in a city square, find a pub, sing with people they have never met, miss a train, recover badly and still call it one of the best weeks of their life. That is football culture. That is why people go. Not for a stakeholder experience. Not for a premium activation. Not for the privilege of being monetised before entering a stadium.
Personally, this is the tournament I now want. Not as an abstract observer, not as someone politely monitoring the health of the game from a distance, but as a fan. I want to go there with my friends. We are already talking about it. We are already imagining the trip, the games, the pubs, the streets, the nervous ticket windows, the hope of getting into a stadium and the knowledge that even without a ticket, the place itself will feel alive. I want a tournament where being there matters before kickoff. I want football to feel like something you join, not something you are allowed to consume after clearing a security and pricing regime designed by people who have never loved it.
That is the contrast. FIFA gives us a World Cup that already feels tired before it begins. Euro 2028 offers the possibility of a tournament that feels awake.
The great football nations should be embarrassed by their own silence. National associations, broadcasters, former players and pundits have been far too willing to accept FIFA’s managed decline of the World Cup as if nothing can be done. They complain mildly, move on quickly and then return to selling the product. This cowardice has consequences. When supporters are priced out, when fans from certain countries are treated as risks, when teams face unequal conditions and when a top referee is abandoned after earning his place, the silence of football’s establishment becomes part of the machinery.
Perhaps the pressure now has to come from the stands. Supporters do not owe FIFA their atmosphere, their savings, their holidays, their songs or their sentimental loyalty to what the World Cup used to mean. If FIFA wants a tournament for officials, sponsors, event tourists and corporate guests, then perhaps it should be allowed to enjoy exactly that: a beautiful product with the soul carefully removed.
The uncomfortable thought is that the World Cup may no longer be the tournament that matters most in the hearts of football people. It may still have the name, the trophy, the television numbers and the institutional arrogance that comes with owning the calendar. But prestige is not the same as love. Reverence cannot be invoiced. If the tournament continues to treat real supporters as a problem to be monetised, processed or kept at a distance, then its value will eventually become ceremonial rather than emotional.
That is why my hope is already travelling elsewhere: to the islands, to the pubs, to the stadiums, to the songs, to the friends I want beside me, and to a tournament that, if UEFA keeps its word, could become the greatest football festival of our generation.
The World Cup may still have the name.
Euro 2028 may have the soul.
For once: my positive five cents.
//Alex
alexreusch 