Saturday marks 100 days from what should be the start of Iran’s World Cup, a Group G fixture against New Zealand in Inglewood, near Los Angeles. As the United States bombs Iran – and Iran bombs a range of countries, including three that have also qualified – it seems all but impossible that they can take part in the tournament.
Were Iran to pull out or be expelled, they would become the first qualified nation since India and France in 1950 not to take up their place. Neither withdrawal in 1950 was political (in truth, saying there were two withdrawals is a technicality; those were chaotic years for qualification). India pulled out not, as has often been claimed, because they were banned from playing barefoot, but because they couldn’t afford the trip.
With Scotland declining to take up the berth they were entitled to having finished second in the British Home Championship and Turkey scratching after being offered qualification when Austria pulled out, France were one of three sides invited to make up the numbers. Portugal and Ireland said no, France accepted, but then gave up when they realised how much travel would be involved once they had got to Brazil. In that sense, the comparisons between the 2026 tournament and 1950 are superficial; the tournaments it really resembles are 1938 and, even more so, 1974.
Jules Rimet was the greatest president Fifa has ever had, in terms both of moral stature and diplomatic skill. Perhaps his greatest achievement, though, was to ensure at a Fifa congress held in Berlin during the 1936 Olympic Games that France rather than Hitler’s Germany would host in 1938. In France, where he was the president of the football federation, Rimet could ensure it would not become a propaganda vehicle for right-wing populism. The geopolitical situation may have been extremely turbulent, but France in 1938 was probably the host that projected itself least.
Not that the approaching war could be ignored. Only 15 teams, rather than the planned 16, took part in the finals because Austria had been subsumed into Germany after the Anschluss. Spain’s application to take part in the qualifiers was rejected because of the civil war. Japan pulled out after its invasion of China. There were anti-fascist protests at games, while Italy responded to the clash of kits against France in the quarter-final by provocatively wearing black shirts.
Italy’s defence of their title was regarded as another propaganda coup for the fascist regime, although at least this time the players were prepared when Benito Mussolini asked what reward they thought appropriate. In 1934, the sycophantic full-back Eraldo Monzeglio had said he desired nothing more than a signed photograph of Il Duce; this time the players asked for a lifetime rail pass, although Mussolini threw in a signed photograph as well.
It would be absurd to say politics did not intervene again for another 36 years. All World Cups are political; anything so many people care about cannot avoid being so. But 1974 was the next time when the World Cup felt like it was caught in the storm, buffeted on all sides by huge forces over which it had little control.
The West German chancellor, Willy Brandt, had pursued a policy of rapprochement with the East but, six weeks before the tournament began, one of his senior advisers, Günter Guillaume, was revealed as a Stasi spy, adding to the sensitivity around West Germany’s group fixture against East Germany. The Yom Kippur war in October 1973 had led both the Soviets and the US to increase aid to their regional allies, heightening cold war tensions. At the same time, Arab members of Opec led by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia had imposed an embargo on western powers who had supported Israel. By the time it was lifted the following March, oil prices had quadrupled and the long period of postwar prosperity in the west was over. Economic decline heightened political tensions. After the terror attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, West Germany was on high alert for the World Cup.
The USSR, meanwhile, had in effect been disqualified after refusing to play the second leg of a qualifying playoff against Chile because it was to be hosted in the Estadio Nacional in Santiago, where supporters of the democratically elected Marxist leader Salvador Allende had been detained, tortured and murdered after Augusto Pinochet’s coup two months earlier.
The tournament may now be chiefly remembered for the Netherlands and total football, but another facet of the anti-establishment spirit from which it grew was an increasing self-assertiveness among players when it came to being paid what they felt they were due. When West Germany’s threatened a strike on the eve of the tournament, their manager, Helmut Schön, was so outraged at what he saw as an abnegation of patriotic responsibility that he had a breakdown and could consume only mashed food.
On the eve of the tournament, Stanley Rous had been replaced as Fifa president by João Havelange, who presented himself, implausibly but effectively, as the anti-colonial candidate. Everything was changing, the old certainties had gone, the economy was in decline, Brandt was beset by scandals, terrorism was a major threat, the cold war was at its height and the 1974 World Cup was played out amid insecurity and paranoia.
Much of that feels familiar. Once again the US is embroiled in a conflict in the Middle East. Society again feels at an inflection point as frustration mounts against traditional parties. There may not be any direct equivalent of Baader-Meinhof or Black September, but cartel violence in Mexico is a major concern and the threat of Iranian-sponsored terrorism in the US cannot be dismissed.
The difference is that this time the most disruptive element is the leader of the primary host, with whom the Fifa president has an unusually close political relationship. Not only are at least four other qualified nations directly involved in the conflict, but the US has threatened the territorial integrity of another potential qualifier in openly coveting Greenland.
World Cups have come through crises before, but it’s hard to see how it emerges from this summer unscathed.
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