By Vahid Razavi — Author of The Age of Nepotism and Ethics in Tech and Lack Thereof, Founder of EthicsInTech.com and NoEthicsInBigTech.com Producer of the Forever Peace Now Documentary
I have loved the beautiful game since I was a kid in Iran, long before I climbed the Berkeley hills to watch football of the American kind for free among the eucalyptus trees. Football — real football, the one played with feet — has always had one sacred promise: twenty-two players, one ball, one referee, and the same rules for everyone. The son of a king and the son of a street vendor get the same yellow card for the same tackle. That promise is why billions of us watch. It is the last democracy many people on this planet ever get to see.
This summer, on American soil, that promise was sold for a phone call and a halftime show.
So let me make a simple, sober proposal, as a lifelong fan and as the author of a book literally titled The Age of Nepotism: any country whose government cannot hold enough respect for the rules of the international games should be barred — permanently — from hosting international games. Not fined. Not warned. Barred. Forever is a long time, and that’s the point. You don’t get to borrow the world’s cathedral and rearrange the pews for your cousin’s wedding.
Exhibit A: The Red Card That Took a Phone Call
On July 1st, US striker Folarin Balogun was shown a red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Under the laws of the game, that means a suspension. Every fan on Earth knows this. Every eight-year-old in a Sunday league knows this.
Then the President of the United States picked up the phone, called his good friend Gianni Infantino — the same Infantino who handed him a freshly invented “FIFA Peace Prize” at the Kennedy Center in December — and suddenly, hours before the Belgium match, the ban was “suspended.” Belgium’s federation was given a few hours in the middle of the night to file an appeal without the documents needed to file it. Even Sepp Blatter — Sepp Blatter! a man who knows a thing or two about FIFA scandals — reminded the world that “red cards are not overturned by political phone calls.” When the disgraced former president of FIFA is the voice of institutional integrity in the room, you have redefined rock bottom.
Here is why this matters beyond one match: the overturning of a referee’s decision under political pressure is the exact opposite of democratic values. Democracy is not elections. Democracy is the boring, beautiful machinery underneath: independent bodies, written rules, evidence, and decisions that don’t change because a powerful man is unhappy. When a head of state can un-send-off a player, he is teaching two hundred countries watching that rules are for people without friends in high places. That is not sport. That is nepotism with a scoreboard — and I wrote the book on that.
Exhibit B: Whose Anthem Is This Anyway?
This Sunday’s final is Argentina versus Spain. Neither of them, last I checked my atlas, is the United States. And yet the ceremony will feature the US national anthem, performed by Jennifer Hudson, before a final the US is not playing in — while the anthems of Canada and Mexico, the two other host nations who carried a third of this tournament, are nowhere on the program.
Think about that. Three countries hosted this World Cup. One gets its anthem sung at the final. The other two get to watch from the cheap seats of their own party. In football tradition — a tradition older than FIFA’s current leadership and hopefully longer-lived — only the anthems of the two competing nations are played. Full stop. The anthem addition isn’t patriotism; it’s a territorial marking. It tells Canada and Mexico exactly what kind of “co-hosts” they were: cosigners on a loan for a house they’ll never sleep in.
Exhibit C: Law 7 Says 15 Minutes. Hollywood Said 30.
The Laws of the Game — written by IFAB, the body that has guarded football’s rules since 1886 — are refreshingly clear. Law 7: the halftime interval must not exceed 15 minutes. It exists for a reason. Players’ muscles cool. Rhythm breaks. Injury risk climbs. The interval is part of the sport, not a commercial slot.
For this final, the break is being stretched toward 25 to 30 minutes so a Super Bowl-style halftime spectacle can be assembled and disassembled — a parade of pop stars and Hollywood celebrity cameos, with a stage rolled over the pitch where, moments earlier, athletes were competing for the highest honor in world sport. The greatest match on Earth, interrupted twice as long as the rules allow, so a country that mostly calls this sport “soccer” can turn it into content.
I have nothing against singers. I have produced comedy nights and concert events for peace for over a decade — music and laughter are how we survive. But there is a difference between a celebration and a hijacking. The Super Bowl is America’s party and America can run it however it likes. The World Cup final belongs to the world, and the world was not consulted. When you change the rules of a game to fit your entertainment industry, you have confused hosting with owning.
The Pattern, Not the Incidents
One overturned red card is a scandal. One anthem is arrogance. One stretched halftime is showbiz. Together, they are a pattern: a host country’s political and commercial power bending the rules of an international institution in real time, in public, without consequence — while the institution’s president smiles for the cameras like a court jester who forgot which one of them wears the crown.
And this is exactly how it works everywhere else, too. The same logic that overturns a red card by phone call is the logic that overrides international law by veto, that shreds treaties, that sells weapons with one hand while accepting peace prizes with the other. If a country will not respect the rules of a game — a game! the lowest-stakes, most joyful covenant humanity has — why would anyone believe it will respect the rules of war, of trade, of human rights? The World Cup was a test with training wheels. It was failed anyway.
The Remedy: A Lifetime Ban for Rule-Breaking Hosts
So here is my proposal, and I offer it to FIFA, the IOC, and every international federation with a spine left to locate:
Write it into the hosting agreements. If a host government politically interferes with officiating or disciplinary decisions, if a host unilaterally alters the laws or format of the game for commercial or political benefit, if a host uses the ceremony of an international competition to elevate itself above the other participating nations — that country is disqualified from hosting any future edition. Permanently. Players don’t suffer; the country can still qualify and compete like everyone else, under the same rules as everyone else. That’s the whole point. It only loses the privilege it proved it cannot handle: holding the whistle.
Fans should demand it. Federations should demand it. Canada and Mexico, freshly humbled at their own tournament, should be first in line to demand it.
A red card, after all, is not a punishment. It is a protection — of everyone else on the pitch. It’s time the hosts learned they can get one too.
May the best team (Spain) win on Sunday. May the referee’s decisions stand. And may nobody’s phone ring.
By Vahid Razavi — ForeverPeaceNow.com | ParentsPlea.com | Author of The Age of Nepotism, Ethics in Tech and Lack Thereof and the forthcoming NO ETHICS IN BIG TECH (releasing Hiroshima Day, August 6, 2026)
