Pitch invasion: World Cup 2026 mirrored America’s declining world order

The world’s biggest sport now reflects a global system Washington can no longer fully control Based on its historical evolution, huge popularity, and massive budget, it’s fair to say that the game globally known as football – the one in which two teams of 11 players must maneuver a ball into the opposing team’s goal without using their hands – remains the world’s top sport. But despite its universal name and rules, familiar to almost the entire world population, this game has failed to catch on in the US, where even the term ‘football’ means a different kind of game. As for what the rest of the world calls football, in the US it is known as ‘soccer’ – an old British slang abbreviation of ‘Association football’.These linguistic details became highly important when, in order to maintain the pace of expansion and develop new markets, the leaders of the World Football Federation (FIFA) decided to choose the US as the host of the World Cup. This happened twice – in 1994 and 2026.The choice of dates wasn’t incidental. This sporting event, watched on television by almost the entire world, was to become the living embodiment of the unipolar world order that Washington has been building sin...