Credit: Dangerous Minds / Public Domain

The World Cup, as anyone who’s paid any attention to the current shit show occurring in America at the time of writing will be well aware of, is a spectacular source of soft power. It’s the reason that football in general is being infiltrated by billionaires and nation-states.

Owning a football club, even one of the big boys like Manchester United or Real Madrid, isn’t something you purely do for the money. These vast corporations often operate at a loss, profit-wise, but they give these ghouls something they could never achieve on their own, likeability. Remember when Newcastle United were bought by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, and you had died-in-the-wool Geordies dancing down Gallowgate in black and white striped thobes and ghutras?

Each and every one of those fans was probably scandalised by the death and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi government. In that moment, though, it’s not that it didn’t matter, but the idea that their club, something that they believed in and loved since childhood, could suddenly become something to be proud of again… That’s an intoxicating prospect, and around the world, elites know this intimately.

Think back to the last FIFA World Cup in Qatar, and the allegations of slave labour surrounding the construction of the stadiums that allegedly resulted in the deaths of hundreds. However, the first thing we think of is the final between France and Argentina, arguably the single greatest international football match of the 21st century and one of the best of all time.

This is far from a modern phenomenon, too. When King Carol II of Romania took the throne in 1930, he made it his personal mission to get Romania into the World Cup. This was despite the fact that the next tournament was beginning in 35 days, and the last international football match Romania played had been eight years previously. Yet nothing would stand in his way.

At the time, you didn’t have to qualify for the World Cup; you just had to apply, so King Carol got to work rebuilding the Romanian national team, even down to picking the squad himself rather than relying on the nation’s coach, Costel Radulescu, which led to the first of a few snags. Romania’s core of best players all worked for the same English oil company, which wouldn’t give them time off to attend the tournament in Uruguay and promised to fire them if they attended the tournament.

King Carol decided to one-up this, phoning the head of the company and promising them that if they didn’t sign off on their paid leave, he would personally fold the company. They relented, and King Carol had the national team of his choosing… After securing his lineup and giving personal amnesty to all other players suspended for football-related offences, he handed in his application three days before the deadline, and it was approved. The Romanians went to the 1930 World Cup and did an admirable job given the circumstances.

This led to a surge of popularity in Romania for football and for King Carol himself. A popularity that he would then spend the rest of the decade systematically destroying. Because Carol was, y’know, King. There were several more important things he needed to be doing for his country than sorting out their World Cup application, but he only cared about two things. His popularity and getting his way. While the World Cup gambit worked, he never stopped focusing on those two things above all, and within years, King Carol was a reviled figure within Romania.

One whose headstrong desire to get his own way spiralled into dictatorship in 1938, when he suspended the national constitution in favour of enforcing his personal rule of the country with a propaganda-maintained cult of personality. A cult that was enforced by a “security” force that would kidnap, hurt or outright kill those who spoke out against him. If this reminds you of any one person in 2026, I’ve got terrible news for you. There are loads more powerful people using exactly this method to oppress people than just him.

And all of them, like King Carol II, know that they can use the World Cup to their advantage. The more things change, the more they stay the same.