How 3 letters from Trump might help bring the 2026 World Cup to the U.S.
“You know, in this environment, he says that, in writing — it’s pretty powerful."
MOSCOW — When the officials leading the U.S. bid to host the 2026 World Cup — a joint effort with Mexico and Canada — hit the campaign trail in earnest this year, they quickly encountered uncomfortable questions from soccer associations around the world concerned about President Donald Trump’s travel restrictions on people from many countries.
Would visas be granted, some federations asked, to all teams and their fans if their countries qualified?
With a rival bid from Morocco mounting a surprisingly strong challenge, the concerns could not be ignored. But if the North American bid is victorious Wednesday, when soccer officials around the world will vote to award the 2026 World Cup, the U.S. soccer leadership will thank one person for helping them convince the world that Trump’s policies would not be a factor: Trump himself.
Since March, Trump has provided U.S. soccer officials with three letters addressed to Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. Each letter, part of an extensive but largely unseen U.S. government effort to support the bid, contained increasingly specific guarantees that foreign teams, officials and even fans will face no restrictions on entering the U.S. for World Cup matches in 2026 if their countries qualify for the tournament. In effect, the letters assured officials voting on the event that Trump’s hard-line stance on visas would not apply to the World Cup.
What has eased the minds of some voters, U.S. Soccer President Carlos Cordeiro said, is the mere existence of his letters.
“You know, in this environment, he says that, in writing — it’s pretty powerful,” Cordeiro said.
To produce the letters from Trump, the White House began an interagency review to craft the language in them, according to a person familiar with the bid. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and his team also kept in touch with Canada and Mexico.
The U.S. government has at times played an even more active role: the National Security Council has been in touch with other countries whose votes could help put the United States over the top, the person familiar with the bid said, and Kushner leveraged his relationship with the Saudi royal family to get Riyadh to publicly announce its support for the North American effort.
