US faces criticism and protest over its approach to immigration enforcement<\/a>, travel bans, climate change and foreign policy positions relating to Venezuela, Greenland and Israel.<\/p>\n![\"Calls]()
Calls for a boycott have been made by figures like Sepp Blatter and Mark Pieth, citing US domestic issues. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n
The killings last month of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota have also been central to many discussions of a boycott.<\/p>\n
According to Otago University sports scholar Dr Sebastian Potgieter, a boycott is possible \u2013 but not probable.<\/p>\n
Potgieter, whose research focuses on history and social justice in and through sport, said countries dependent on the US for things like trade and services were unlikely to boycott.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were calls for the 2022 Qatar World Cup to be boycotted due to a litany of reasons \u2013 human rights violations of stadium construction labourers; state laws against homosexuality; concerns over bidding bribery; flagrant uses of sport to \u2018wash\u2019 the country\u2019s image \u2013 yet for the most part, the only significant boycott to take place was that some networks refused to screen matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cQatar carries vastly less global power than the US and in the era of things like Trump\u2019s import tariffs, it\u2019s hard to see any significant boycott taking place, such as teams relinquishing their participation.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Potgieter said countries who do send their teams need to weigh up whether they can risk being interpreted as condoning US actions.<\/p>\n
![\"NZ]()
NZ Football suggested they were not considering a boycott and had \u201cabsolute faith\u201d in Fifa. Photo \/ Photosport <\/p>\n
Many World Cups in just the past two decades have faced some form of controversy.<\/p>\n
For example, Potgieter said, South Africa in 2010 undertook forced removals of residents to make way for stadium construction and Brazil in 2014 saw large-scale protests at public funds being spent on stadiums rather than healthcare, education and infrastructure.<\/p>\n
But you\u2019d have to go all the way back to the 1980 Moscow Olympics to find the most recent large-scale boycott of a major sporting event, he said. NZ officially supported the 1980 US-led boycott, which protested the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Potgieter said if there was a 2026 World Cup boycott, it would be shaped by the type of boycott pursued.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most effective boycotts are those which combine cultural boycott \u2013 such as withdrawing from the World Cup \u2013 with economic or trade sanctions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Chris]()
Chris Wood of New Zealand All Whites. Photo \/ Photosport <\/p>\n
\u201cThe most likely form of boycott to take place is by individual objectors \u2013 people who would have travelled to or watched the tournament but decide against it.<\/p>\n
\u201cUndoubtedly, recent stories of US border security and detentions will sway some people to rather attend matches played in Mexico or Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to The Flying Kiwis supporters group founder Matt Fejos, that statement rings true.<\/p>\n
Of The Flying Kiwis\u2019 supporters heading overseas for the World Cup, 240 will be attending the All Whites\u2019 Los Angeles (LA) game, compared to 390 attending their Vancouver games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot more demand and interest to go to Vancouver than LA,\u201d Fejos told RNZ.<\/p>\n
Fejos is also heading over to support the All Whites at the World Cup. He believed a boycott of the tournament would be ineffective.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very difficult conundrum.<\/p>\n
\u201cA boycott is only effective if there aren\u2019t other people willing to pay lots of money to fill those seats, so I don\u2019t see it as, kind of, a possible or probable situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people that care a lot about football, and they have travelled a lot… to support the All Whites so they are far less likely to decide to make a stand and not go, for example, because it means so much to them and they have been planning it for years and years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fejos said NZ supporters were more aware of their safety and that the World Cup would be harder to get to than in the past.<\/p>\n
Potgieter also pointed to the concept of sportswashing.<\/p>\n
Sportswashing is defined as the practice of an organisation, government or country supporting or organising a sports event to improve its reputation.<\/p>\n
Potgieter said mega sporting events \u2013 like Fifa World Cups \u2013 were renowned as a tool for sportswashing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese big tournaments emphasise unity and bringing the world together, and there is a lot of that rhetoric particularly around Fifa as the global game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese tournaments are quite prevalent in creating particularly positive images for nations that might not have the best track record in terms of their political practices.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it was \u201cdifficult\u201d to say whether the US was purposely sportswashing.<\/p>\n
![\"FIFA]()
FIFA President Gianni Infantino hands the Jules Rimet trophy to Donald Trump in the Oval Office on 22 August. Photo \/ Getty Images via CNN Newsource<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s doing it purposely is perhaps less important, the effect could be that there is a public washing of the image.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople get quite invested and emotional about these tournaments and that can have the potential to sort of obscure what\u2019s the context or what\u2019s the background against which these tournaments are taking place.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, NZ Football suggested they were not considering a boycott and had \u201cabsolute faith\u201d in Fifa.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter working incredibly closely with Fifa as a co-host of their last international mega event, the Fifa Women\u2019s World Cup 2023, we have seen at close hand the extent they go to deliver a tournament of this scale, and we have absolute faith in their ability to put on a brilliant Fifa World Cup 2026 in Canada, Mexico and the USA which we look forward to being part of.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw approximately 10,000 ticket requests from Kiwis for our games, so we are excited about the prospect of having a sizable New Zealand contingency supporting us in Los Angeles, Vancouver, and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n
NZ Football did not answer further questions.<\/p>\n
Minister for Sport and Recreation Mark Mitchell said the decision to participate in international events sat with national sporting organisations, in this case NZ Football.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese organisations are responsible for assessing risks and considering the safety and wellbeing of athletes and other staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
-RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former FIFA World Cup President Sepp Blatter. Photo \/ Photosport \u201cI think Mark Pieth is right to question…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2246,1443,95,8834,14784,10542,77411,36862,46991,6036,5971,111,139,69,17146,213,223,61,16559,6923,377,197],"class_list":{"0":"post-300912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-2246","9":"tag-about","10":"tag-and","11":"tag-big","12":"tag-boycotts","13":"tag-cup","14":"tag-curran","15":"tag-fifa","16":"tag-jessie","17":"tag-know","18":"tag-need","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-questions","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-the","25":"tag-to","26":"tag-tournament","27":"tag-what","28":"tag-world","29":"tag-you"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}