With the 2026 FIFA World Cup set to begin in June, host countries, Mexico, Canada, and the United States, are paving the way for visitors from all over the world to witness the most popular sport in the world being played at the most popular sporting event on the planet this upcoming summer.
However, several top European officials in the football world and in politics are casting doubt on whether major football nations and the players who represent them will show up for the contest, making this event one of the most highly politicized sporting events in recent memory.
Vice President Oke Göttlich of the DFB, or German Football Association, has challenged other European officials associated with the sport to consider a “boycott” of this summer’s competition in response to recent developments in the foreign affairs space, notably surrounding recent events highlighting the U.S. president’s interest in perhaps acquiring the Danish-controlled territory of Greenland in the North Atlantic Sea.
Göttlich, who remains reluctant to commit to whether the German national team will participate in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, said to local German news outlet, Hamburger Morgenpost, “I really wonder when the time will be to think and talk about this [a boycott] concretely,” adding, “For me, that time has definitely come.”
Göttlich also compared Trump’s potential move on Greenland and whether European nations should opt to launch an official protest of U.S. foreign policy to the boycotts of the 1980 Olympic Games in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Göttlich argues that the “potential threat is greater now than it was then.”
German politician Jürgen Hardt of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s ruling CDU party is also calling on European colleagues to consider the matter, floating the idea of a World Cup boycott as a means to pressure the Trump administration to walk away from its interest in Greenland.
A boycott could be viewed “as a last resort in order to get Trump to see sense”, proposed Hardt.
However, the Germans, who plunged the world into two world wars in an attempt to quench their hunger for world domination, may be alone in their attempts to mount a serious protest of the U.S.-hosted 2026 World Cup.
The English, the French, and the Danes, who have retained control of the Greenlandic territory since the 18th century, although “aware of the current sensitive situation,” have not expressed a desire to boycott the sporting event.
The English, who have not won the competition since 1966, are eager to reclaim their position in world football domination after a disappointing exit in 2022 in Qatar. Denmark, which has not yet qualified for the FIFA World Cup, is determined to cement its place and to punch their ticket for North America.
