How 3 letters from Trump might help
MOSCOW — When the officials leading the U.S. bid to host the 2026 World Cup — a joint effort with Mexico and Canada — hit the campaign trail in earnest this year, they quickly encountered uncomfortable questions from soccer associations around the world concerned about President Trump’s travel restrictions on people from many countries.
Would visas be granted, some federations asked, to all teams and their fans if their countries qualified?
With a rival bid from Morocco mounting a surprisingly strong challenge, the concerns could not be ignored. But if the North American bid is victorious Wednesday, when soccer officials around the world will vote to award the 2026 World Cup, the U.S. soccer leadership will thank one person for helping them convince the world that Trump’s policies would not be a factor: Trump himself.
Since March, Trump has provided U.S. soccer officials with three letters addressed to Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. Each letter, part of an extensive but largely unseen U.S. government effort to support the bid, contained increasingly specific guarantees that foreign teams, officials and even fans will face no restrictions on entering the U.S. for World Cup matches in 2026 if their countries qualify for the tournament. In effect, the letters assured officials voting on the event that Trump’s hard-line stance on visas would not apply to the World Cup.
What has eased the minds of some voters, U.S. Soccer President Carlos Cordeiro said, is the mere existence of his letters.
“You know, in this environment, he says that, in writing — it’s pretty powerful,” Cordeiro said.
To produce the letters from Trump, the White House began an interagency review to craft the language in them, according to a person familiar with the bid. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and his team also kept in touch with Canada and Mexico.
The U.S. government at times has played an even more active role: The National Security Council has been in touch with other countries whose votes could help put the United States over the top, the person familiar with the bid said, and Kushner leveraged his relationship with the Saudi royal family to get Riyadh to publicly announce its support for the North American effort.
Ultimately, if the football federations follow FIFA’s guidance, the 2026 World Cup should be awarded to the North American bid.
Success for Morocco relies on the electorate to follow the trend of recent hosting decisions and vote for a risky bid facing doubts about the ability to pull off the vast reconstruction project required to stage soccer’s showpiece.
The 16 stadiums proposed by the joint United States-Canada-Mexico bid — including Levi’s Stadium — already exist and need only minor upgrades over eight years.
All 14 Moroccan venues must be built or renovated as part of the $16 billion investment in infrastructure the African nation says is required.
FIFA’s inspection reports highlighted three “high-risk” elements to Morocco’s bid: stadiums, hotels and transport.
When Infantino last week urged the more than 200 voting federations to “look at the report,” it seemed a clear signal of the governing body’s preference for security and stability offered in North America.
A consequence of concerns expressed about the 2010 contest that resulted in hosting rights awarded to Russia for 2018 and to Qatar for 2022 was a more rigorous bidding process that required candidates to produce human rights strategies.
Morocco’s bid was singled out for “unexplored risks” in evaluations of those strategies that were produced by the BSR organization for FIFA.
In the evaluation, BSR said the Moroccan bid documents “lack consideration of topics highlighted as potential human rights risks in key international documents covering mega sporting events.”
BSR expressed apprehension about “discrimination against LGBTQ,” a reference to the Moroccan law that criminalizes homosexuality.
Qatar’s World Cup preparations have been dogged by concerns about working conditions on stadiums, which could make voting members nervous, considering a Moroccan victory would require years of extensive building work on stadium or training facilities.
An “assessment of risks associated with working conditions is insufficiently developed,” BSR said, “and does not provide detailed information on risks associated specifically with health and safety, working hours, wage, and the prevalence of informal economy in the country.”
Morocco’s bid proposes completing a 93,000-capacity Grand Stade de Casablanca one year before the World Cup begins. Several of its 14 venues would meet the World Cup minimum 40,000-capacity, then be reduced to 25,000 after the tournament. In a pitch to voters in Moscow this week justifying the vast infrastructure required, Morocco tourism minister Lamia Boutaleb talked of needing to create jobs in her country “to reach the next level.”
The joint bid from North America offers a choice from 23 stadiums, including three each in Canada and Mexico, which are each scheduled to host 10 games. The United States would stage 60 games, and the 87,000-capacity MetLife Stadium near New York is proposed for the final.
Though FIFA voters rarely reveal their intentions in advance, the North Americans appear to have enough momentum to carry the 104 votes that would guarantee a firstballot victory.
With FIFA rules denying the candidate countries a vote, and Kosovo expected to be absent, 206 of FIFA’s 211 member federations should take part. Previously, FIFA’s elected board members chose World Cup hosts in private.