The 2026 World Cup promises to be the planet’s most-watched sporting event. It’s also poised to generate its fair share of controversy.Taking into account the history of corruption in FIFA, the sport’s governing body, it would be hard to blame anyone who decided to ignore this year’s competition.However, some viewers of this summer’s tournament may face an additional dilemma. Political tensions are high in the U.S., where most of the tournament’s matches will be played. The Trump administration is historically unpopular, and its critics are already concerned about sportswashing: when governments use the spectacle of athletic competition to burnish their image and distract the public.As I point out in my 2022 book, “The Ethics of Sports Fandom,” fans who are critical of their country’s behavior sometimes feel ambivalent about rooting for their national sports teams – and may even feel compelled to root against them. After all, it’s one thing to pull for your national team when patriotism feels uncomplicated. It’s quite another when you aren’t feeling very proud to be an American. The Cold War made it easy for many Americans to rally behind the 1980 U.S men’s hockey team in its victory over the Soviet Union in the “Miracle on Ice.” But what do you do when you don’t see your country as the “good guys”?Patriotism doesn’t mean blind loyaltySome fans might double down on their patriotic commitments during the tournament. They’ll use the occasion to champion America in all things, whether it’s the country’s battles in the Middle East or its national team taking on Paraguay at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. Sports have a way of fueling nationalistic passions, and I fully expect plenty of people who don’t care much about soccer to channel their patriotic sentiments into the tournament.However, rooting for your country’s national soccer team doesn’t mean that you endorse everything your country does, any more than wanting a friend to get a promotion at work requires you to support all of their behavior. As the philosopher Eamonn Callan has argued, a proper love of country requires citizens to be clear-eyed about its faults. The true patriot highlights problems and works to correct them, independent of how much they want the national team to win their next match.By the same token, I think a deep love of country can coexist with ambivalent feelings about how the national team performs on the field. If patriots can disapprove of their country’s military adventurism – either because they see it as flatly unjust or because it casts their country in an unfavorable light on the international stage – there is nothing fundamentally unpatriotic about not wanting the U.S. to do well in the World Cup. Other fans might invoke the mantra that it’s important to simply keep politics out of sports – that the games should be a refuge from the controversies that plague so many other aspects of civic life.But as I argue in my book, fully separating politics and sports is almost impossible. It requires fans to view athletes as nothing more than bodies who exist to perform on the field. It means team executives and owners do little more than sign paychecks. And it ignores the reality that sports are woven into the social, economic and political life of communities.Outcomes don’t change a thingFor fans who choose to watch, then, my suggestion is to view the action on the field as you would any other sporting event. Root for whomever you want to win, for more or less any reason that moves you. Because for all the political significance attached to the World Cup, the winner or loser of any given contest has essentially no broader political significance. The problems that existed before the tournament will still demand attention when it is over, no matter who happens to win. Success or failure on the pitch isn’t likely to bring about meaningful political change. After all, whether a government has the right legislative agenda or approach to foreign policy is totally divorced from its national soccer team’s ability to score goals.Viewed in this way, rooting for your country’s national soccer team doesn’t imply blind loyalty to your country or ignorance of its flaws. It simply means that you want the athletes who represent your country to win the game they are playing on that particular day.Athletes have long been able to navigate this ambivalence. You’ll regularly hear them trying to separate a love of their country and its people from support of problematic regimes. When Iranian soccer player Mehdi Taremi refused to celebrate a goal in a January 2026 Greek Super League match, he embraced precisely such a position. Thousands of people had been killed during protests of the Iranian regime, and the moment called for a different reaction.“There are problems between the people and the government,” he said.
