We all know racism has endless stamina, but when it comes to soccer, and as the 2026 World Cup is proving, ignorance pauses for nothing.
The ugliness began before the tournament started when Tr**p, who ruins everything he touches, threatened to deploy ICE agents to World Cup games held in the United States.
The administration then directed its hatred of non-white people to Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast and Senegal and added these countries to his racist travel ban list, which prevented their fans from traveling to the U.S. to support their teams. That left teams like Haiti, which, despite qualifying for only its second World Cup in history, devoid of the support it deserved and earned.
Then, after foolishly getting the country embroiled in a war nobody wanted or needed with Iran, the orange one played games with the Iranian team by refusing to let them stay in the country, so they had to move their training site from Tucson to Mexico. Even more humiliatingly, he made them fly back to Mexico after playing World Cup games in the U.S.
He also harassed and embarrassed the Iranian team by delaying visas for some players and coaches. Their striker, Aymen Hussein, was held and questioned for several hours once arriving at O’Hare Airport in Chicago.
Even the team’s photographer was denied entry to the U.S.
Once the games started, racism took a back seat to the spectacle of the tournament and the pride exuded by fans attending and watching across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
But racism was defeated; instead, it simmered and waited for the right time to erupt, which was this past week.
After the Netherlands lost to Morocco on penalty kicks, Justin Kluivert, Quinten Timber and Crysencio Summerville were all targeted with racist abuse on line, after which the Dutch Football Association (KNVB) filed a complaint with the public prosecutor.
“Unfortunately, it is never possible to be complete and to detect and arrest every racist reaction, but the KNVB wants to send a very clear signal,” the association said in a statement. “There are limits, and there are consequences for those who violate those limits.”
The pushback against the digital cowards was echoed by Prime Minister Rob Jetten, who called the hatred “completely unacceptable.”
“One moment they are ‘our boys’, and we don’t see their colour when they are wearing an orange shirt. Then when someone misses a penalty, vitriol pours out from every corner,” said Jetten.
German defender Jonathan Tah was also targeted with racist abuse after he missed the final penalty kick in the team’s game against Paraguay, which, ironically, became embroiled in a major case of racism as well after the team lost its game against France and Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla called French star Kylian Mbappé a “colonized Cameroonian” among other vile things.
The Paraguayan government blasted Amarilla’s vile remarks.
“For me, the senator’s posts aren’t just bad, they’re terrible and they don’t represent what most Paraguayans think. We must show racism the red card,” said Senate leader Basilio Nunez.
Then another South American country, Argentina, joined the racism party after fans of the team were caught on video reportedly hurling racist taunts at popular YouTuber IShowSpeed.
And it’s not just the overt racism that has plagued this World Cup, as microagressions and coded language has also seeped into the drama.
After his team’s late comeback against Senegal, Belgium coach Rudi Garcia described Senegal as one of “those teams” that “tend to lose their tactical structure towards the end of the match,” which immediately elicited a response from fans who said Garcia’s comments were racially coded language based in historical racial stereotypes that have casted, as reported by Reuters, “Black players and African teams as naturally powerful and instinctive, yet tactically naive, emotionally fragile or unable to withstand pressure.”
“(It) is deeply racist in terms of the reproduction of racialized stereotypes about those teams, those teams, those African teams who lack the ability to control a game, to control themselves, and that comes from that colonial framework of the kind of animalistic tendencies that are projected onto Black people and onto Black populations,” said Ben Carrington, a professor of journalism and sociology at USC who researches the intersection of race and sport, in the Reuters article.
While racism in soccer is nothing new, the 2026 World Cup has exposed the rise of racism.
According to the Guardian, FIFA’s social media protection service reported that it had seen a 33% increase in racist posts compared to the 2022 Qatar World Cup. That was as of July 1st, so things might be even worse after the recent racist incidents witnessed over the last few days.
As we head into the World Cup quarterfinals, France, England, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Morocco and Argentina are still battling to win the tournament.
And unfortunately for Black players and fans, racism’s stamina doesn’t appear to be lessening in any way.
