Football buddies: The FIFA World Cup 2026 will be co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, the leaders of which – (from left) Mark Carney, Claudia Sheinbaum, and Trump – were at the World Cup draw in December.
CALLS to boycott the FIFA World Cup 2026 in June, co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, over US President Donald Trump’s renewed rhetoric on a Greenland takeover may sound principled, but they are strategically hollow.
The French government’s refusal to entertain such a boycott is not cowardice or complacency. It is realism. An executive committee member of Ger-many’s football federation was among those who recently suggested a serious discussion about boycotting the world’s most festive tournament.
Boycotts make moral sense only when they can plausibly alter behaviour. In this case, it will not. A World Cup boycott would impose real costs on players, fans and sporting institutions while exerting virtually no pressure on United States foreign policy.
The signal would be loud, but the leverage would be nil. To understand why, we must separate symbolism from statecraft. Sport is a powerful theatre for values, identity and emotion. It is not, however, a reliable lever for coercing the behaviour of a major power, especially one hosting the world’s largest sporting event alongside partners.
The US administration does not calibrate territorial postures or tariff threats based on the attendance of football teams. It responds to interests, power balances and domestic politics. A World Cup boycott does not move those dials.
France’s position, reported widely, reflects this hard truth. Paris has made clear that sport should not be weaponised as a substitute for diplomacy.
This is not the first time Europe has faced the temptation to moralise through sport when confronted with an assertive US; nor is it the first time such gestures have promised more than they deliver.
History is instructive. The Olympic boycotts of 1980 and 1984 are often cited as examples of sport influencing geopolitics but in reality, neither boycott altered the strategic behaviour of the targeted states: The Soviet Union did not leave Afghanistan because of the Moscow Games boycott; the US did not revise its Cold War posture because of the Los Angeles Games retaliation. What endured were the scars to athletes’ careers and the politicisation of sport without commensurate diplomatic gain.
The World Cup is even less susceptible to such pressure. It is not owned by a single state, nor does it confer political legitimacy on a host government in the way a summit or treaty might. It is a commercial and cultural juggernaut involving broadcasters, sponsors, federations and billions of viewers. Even a partial boycott would fracture Europe more than it would inconvenience Washington.
The World Cup tournament will not redraw borders or reverse tariffs. — Photos: Reuters
More importantly, a boycott misunderstands the nature of US foreign policy under Trump. His worldview is transactional, unilateral and largely immune to reputational shaming from allies.
If anything, a boycott would be reframed domestically as evidence of European petulance or free riding, and thereby strengthening, not weakening, the narrative that allies are unreliable and need to be pressured harder.
This is why such gestures often backfire. Instead of compelling restraint, they harden positions. Instead of building coalitions, they expose divisions. And instead of elevating international law, they reduce it to spectacle.
There is also a category error at play. Greenland is not a football issue. It is a question of sovereignty, security, Arctic strategy and alliance management within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato). These matters are resolved, if at all, through diplomacy, deterrence and negotiation, not through the withdrawal of teams from a tournament. To pretend otherwise is to confuse moral outrage with policy effectiveness.
For mid-sized and large European states alike, the more productive path lies elsewhere: sustained diplomatic pressure, alliance coordination, legal clarity and economic bargaining where it matters. If Europe believes the US rhetoric on Greenland violates norms, then it should respond through Nato councils, bilateral channels with Washington and coordinated messaging with Copenhagen. That is where credibility is built, and where influence can be exercised.
There is also a risk that boycotts normalise the politicisation of sport in ways that will be regretted later. If every geopolitical dispute becomes grounds for withdrawing from global competitions, sport itself becomes hostage to the strongest grievance of the moment.
Smaller states in particular would suffer most, losing platforms where they compete on an equal footing and where soft power is genuinely earned.
France’s refusal to boycott is therefore not indifference. It is a recognition that moral posturing without leverage is indulgent, not principled. Its stand protects athletes from being conscripted into symbolic battles they cannot win and it preserves a space, however imperfect, where international engagement still occurs despite political tensions. None of this excuses reckless rhetoric or coercive diplomacy. It simply insists on choosing the right tools for the right problems.
The World Cup tournaments do not redraw borders. They do not reverse tariff threats. And they do not tame Great Power assertiveness. Boycotting the World Cup this summer would feel virtuous for a news cycle but would achieve nothing thereafter. Intent matters in international relations, but impact matters more. On that measure, a boycott would score an own goal. — The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network
Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean studies and director of the Institute of International and Asean Studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia.
