Gianni Infantino is selling the 2026 World Cup as football’s grandest stage yet, calling it “Simply the greatest event that humanity, that mankind, has ever seen.” On Thursday, that pitch becomes reality in Mexico City, where the opening match will begin the first World Cup to be staged across the United States, Mexico and Canada.
The scale is unprecedented. The tournament will bring 48 teams and 104 matches to three countries, with about 75% of the games in the United States. No World Cup has ever been spread across three nations before, and the first venue to open the tournament, Estadio Azteca, will become the first stadium to host the start of three different World Cups. That is the milestone Fifa wants to define the summer.
It is also why people are searching for Zeteo now. The tournament is no longer a distant promise; it is days away, and the questions around it are immediate. Fans are facing high ticket prices in Mexico City, host cities are preparing for security headaches, and the event’s sheer size has put cost, transport, weather and sustainability under the microscope. Fifa is framing the competition as inclusive and unifying, but its own scale makes it look like the most politicised, expensive and contentious World Cup ever staged.
Mexico has already felt some of that pressure. World Cup player statues in Mexico City have been toppled by protesters, and teachers demanding higher wages have threatened to disrupt matches if their demands are not met. Security is a concern as well, after major cartel violence this year raised the stakes for anyone trying to move large crowds through the capital. The tournament is meant to look celebratory. Instead, it is arriving in a city where the mood is already brittle.
The most delicate problem sits elsewhere, in Tijuana, where the Iran squad has set up camp after Fifa confirmed last month that the team moved its base from Arizona to Mexico. The decision underscored how politics are now shaping a World Cup that was supposed to be about shared spectacle. In February, the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, a ceasefire took effect in early April, and strikes continued after that. Never before has a host country been at war with a participating nation at a World Cup.
Donald Trump complicated that picture further when he said at one stage that it was not “appropriate” for Iran to participate “for their own life and safety.” His special envoy later suggested Iran should be replaced by four-time winners Italy. That did not happen, but the exchange showed how much wider the tournament’s disputes have become than football itself. Infantino may be promising the greatest event mankind has ever seen, yet the opening whistle comes with questions about whether Fifa can keep the games bigger than the politics surrounding them. Thursday’s opener in Mexico City will be the first test.
