In a carefully choreographed gesture of ecumenical goodwill, Pope Leo XIV this week accepted a signed World Cup ball from the ambassadors of Mexico, the United States and Canada at the Vatican. The pontiff, a known sports enthusiast, praised the gift as a symbol of how nations can maintain unity through a shared event. The ceremony, held at the close of a general audience in St Peter’s Square, was designed to project harmony among the three host nations ahead of the first 48-team, 104-match tournament in football history.

Yet the choreography belies a more fractious reality. Viewed from Mexico City, the tournament’s official leitmotif of unity is difficult to reconcile with the fact that, just a year and a half after the joint bid was awarded, then-President Donald Trump reportedly urged his defence secretary to bomb Mexican drug laboratories with missiles and blame another country. The same administration’s immigration apparatus recently deported a Somali referee, Omar Artan, after an 11-hour interrogation at Miami airport. As Italian commentators note, the World Cup has long been likened to war without gunfire — an aphorism attributed to George Orwell and later twisted by the late Croatian strongman Franjo TuÄman — and this edition, co-hosted by a leader who has treated statecraft as a blood sport, risks amplifying that metaphor.

Away from geopolitics, a different kind of battle is being waged for the attention — and wallets — of fans. Brazilian observers have noted that the tournament’s media coverage, particularly on digital platforms such as YouTube’s Cazé TV, is saturated with advertisements for online betting houses. The bombardment is so relentless that one commentator, glancing at the omnipresent word “futebol”, momentarily misread it as “fubetol” — a dyslexic slip that, on reflection, seemed to capture a deeper truth about a sport increasingly colonised by gambling interests.

Yet the tournament is also generating moments of genuine cultural and spiritual fervour. In Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral, the traditional Niño Dios figure has been dressed in the Tricolor’s white shirt and green shorts ahead of the team’s match against South Korea, drawing families who come to pray for the national side and snap photographs. Meanwhile, from Berlin, a commentator has embraced the expanded format as a welcome injection of joy, celebrating the presence of “exotic beauties” such as Cape Verde, Qatar, Jordan and Curaçao, and arguing that in an era of fragmentation, the so-called minnows are the true giants.

As the tournament unfolds across sixteen cities in three nations, it will test whether football can genuinely serve as a unifying force or merely as a mirror for the world’s contradictions. The expanded field may democratise participation, but the shadows of political cynicism, commercial excess and nativist hostility will be difficult to outrun. For all the papal blessings and patriotic rituals, the 2026 World Cup is shaping up to be as much a referendum on the sport’s soul as a celebration of its global reach.