Trump’s World Cup could tip us into pining for the days of sportswashing petrostates

It’s ironic that Italy haven’t qualified for the Fifa World Cup given that the tournament has such a strong whiff of the last days of Rome. Yes, the quadrennial theatre of bad dreams is approaching us once again, and the suspension of disbelief required to watch this circus without feeling queasy has, if anything, only increased since 2022.

It’s all too plausible that, come June, some people will feel nostalgic for the days when Fifa chose to stage its flagship events in sportswashing petrostates with dubious human-rights records, not in the kind of regime led by a man who gives war updates to a group of children while flanked by the Easter bunny.

This week Donald Trump threatened death upon a “whole civilisation”, which only recently might have seemed like a historic low point for the United States. For its president, it was just Tuesday.

The Italian press branded its soccer team’s failure to make three consecutive World Cups “la terza apocalisse”, or the third apocalypse, which was unfortunate wording for non-Italian fans still in valiant “don’t mention the apocalypse” mode. Reality is thumped in people’s faces often enough that they understandably seek escapism and relief wherever they can. The signs are that they will have to work hard to obtain it from Fifa’s imminent spectacle of greed, power and politics.

Enter John Morton, writer of the mockumentary series Twenty Twelve, W1A and, now, Twenty Twenty Six, in which the long-suffering but high-earning Ian Fletcher, played by Hugh Bonneville, follows his stints as head of deliverance for the London Olympics and head of values at the BBC to take up a new and equally fictional role as director of integrity for an organisation that happens to be staging a major sporting event in the US, Canada and Mexico.

In Twenty Twenty Six, which began on BBC Two this week, “Fifa” is bleeped out in David Tennant’s droll, nonsensical voiceover, though you can still hear the “F”, as if it’s a swear word. “Cup” is also redacted to similar effect.

Wisely, however, the show isn’t really about Fifa, just like W1A wasn’t really about the BBC. The term “beyond satire” is dispatched far too easily, but a body that bestows its newly created peace prize on a man who swiftly attacks Venezuela and boasts about “knocking the crap” out of Iran is obviously self-mocking.

“There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go” could conceivably be a line from some Morton-conceived scene of shambolic fawning, but it’s not. It’s what Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, said after he handed Trump his honour.

In this encounter with Ian Fletcher, he’s a fish out of British water, having flown in to the Miami-based Strategic Operations Group for various troubleshooting activities because, “in a divided world, sport means more to us than it has ever meant” (another crisp-dry voiceover line) and because the last director of integrity has left.

He immediately enters a familiar world of workplace indignities and torturous group decision-making by people who are not universally idiotic but have some flaw or ridiculous element to their character that prevents sensible action.

[ Whither the World Cup?Opens in new window ]

The most corporate is Eric van Dupuytrens (Alexis Michalik), the slippery “conduit” between Miami and F**a’s Zurich headquarters, who bears the careerist hallmarks of W1A’s Anna “No, I don’t want that” Rampton (Sarah Parish) and the smooth, responsibility-negating tendencies of Simon “brilliant” Harwood (Jason Watkins), another executive from Morton’s much-loved former show.

A F**a satellite office in Florida doesn’t yield the same fertile ground for comedy as New Broadcasting House, but who can be surprised? It’s tough to find rooms of whooping, allegiance-pledging Americans funny, not because it’s a crass stereotype or a low blow but because the real-life context is already so unsubtle.

Reports suggest that some US host cities’ fan zones – where ticketless supporters will end up if they make it past airport immigration queues – will be home to “Freedom Trucks”, or “patriotic mobile museums”, as the New York Times dubbed them, to mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, aka America 250.

The World Cup remains an unstoppable train that much of the international media wants to jump on, from the reliably sport-adjacent Netflix – courtesy of its visualised-podcast deal with Gary Lineker’s The Rest Is Football – to whoever it was in the music industry who persuaded the organisers to stage a Super Bowl-style “half-time show” during the final.

[ Ken Early: Infantino unlikely to reflect on World Cup host US attacking participant IranOpens in new window ]

It’s impossible to say what state the world will be in by June 11th, the date of the opening fixture in Mexico City, never mind on July 19th, when the tournament wraps up in New Jersey, but it seems likely that the news won’t be the only fixture on broadcasting schedules leaving people feeling numb this summer.

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