We recently heard someone say that “fans are the emotional equity of football.” And emotional equity, they said, is “the most undervalued asset in the sport”. After seventeen years of footy travel, and witnessing the emotional equity fans across the world have poured into the game, it's hard to argue with that. It's also hard recently not to feel like that equity is being strip-mined.

But let's start at the beginning.

If you haven’t been following us for long, or aren’t familiar with our origin story, we’ve been fans and players of the beautiful game our entire lives, but we fell deeply in love with the World Cup in 2010. Not just the tournament itself, but the spectacle surrounding it. The strangers-turned-friends in bars we’ll never find again. The flags-turned-capes, draped over shoulders. The jerseys you had only ever seen before on the backs of foreign legends, but were now recognized by a fellow fan from that place years later (Roger Milla, anyone?). And beyond that beautiful, chaotic spectacle, is an equally if not more beautiful collection and celebration of cultures happening once every four years, in one place, all at once. That's what we fell in love with. Not strictly the games, but the experience of the whole thing. A particular feeling.

Being a footy fan, especially a World Cup-loving fan, goes hand in hand with traveling (if not a little bit of addiction). The more you see of this game and its expression across the world—across different languages, national kits, and fan groups—the more you need to see. Since 2010, we've fed the addiction (and had the privilege) of attending the World Cup in person. And each time, the experience has delivered a version of those original feelings alongside something a little more complicated: the creeping awareness that the machine behind the spectacle isn't exactly as “beautiful” as the game itself. South Africa, Brasil, Russia, Qatar (although maybe not so much our Women’s WC experience ‘down unda’ in 2023), every World Cup seems to come with its disclaimers, its moral asterisks, or its moment of reckoning (Oh, right! Guess we spoke to soon about WWC ‘23). And anyone who’s shared that awareness has probably sat in the bar or pub debating whether continuing to show up makes us complicit, or simply human. I’d argue that it's never a clean answer. The mixed feelings are part of it; they always have been. That's not new, even this year as World Cup 2026 edges near.

What is new is the scale of it all.

We’ve had eight years to absorb the host nation announcement for World Cup 2026. At the beginning, we anticipated it feeling different. North America was to be the stage. The home tournament—the biggest ever— spread across three countries and 16 host cities. There was a romance to it, the idea of experiencing a World Cup on home soil, of sharing this thing we love with people still discovering or forming their own love of it. They told us "the world will be welcome." How incredibly wrong that turned out to be!

We won't dwell on every detail of how it all began to unravel. That's a longer conversation, and frankly, a more depressing one. But a few things are impossible to ignore: Four qualified nations are currently on a US travel ban, with exceptions limited to their athletes and staff, which means supporters from these countries not already in the US or without alternate passports won’t, in fact, be welcome at this World Cup. There’s also a visa bond program in play, affecting at least five qualified nations, that requires a $15,000 refundable deposit—per person! We have yet to hear if there are any exceptions on this that would excuse every athlete, staff member, or fan from having to pay the deposit. Then there’s the more the “offensive” (versus the aforementioned “defensive” ones) tactics the current US administration is deploying.

The tournament’s biggest host country is at war with Iran in a circumstance of ‘firsts’: Iran was not only the first country to qualify for the tournament, but the military strikes against it, we’re pretty sure, mark the first time a host nation has been in active conflict with a participating one. Meanwhile there are the ICE detainments and deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good (plus at least 6 others). On the FIFA side of things some fan fests have been scaled back, nearly pulled for lack of funding (e.g. Foxboro), or cancelled altogether. Several ticket lotteries have produced nothing for thousands of fans, and whether or not they have provided access, the most impactful offering from resale prices seems to be their sticker shock.

But what’s most… “icky” about this edition is something that’s been harder to name. There’s something about the gap between the promise and the reality that has taken some time to grasp and articulate, but it’s becoming more and more clear each day we inch toward kick-off. There’s this sense that an event marketed as a global “embrace” is functioning more like an exclusive VIP event—with a megalomaniac and a Dr. Evil doppelgänger holding “the list,” deciding who's welcome, and at what price.

Unsurprisingly, the call to boycott has been just as loud, if not louder this cycle than any before it. And honestly? It's not without merit. Here's where we land, though — and as I’ve already said, it took us a while to get here.

The World Cup and the World Cup ‘spirit’ are not the same thing (they never have been).

The tournament—the matches and the schedule—belongs to FIFA. They own the broadcast rights, the hospitality packages, and now, the resale platform, with all the charm of its "set-by-seller" pricing. They've built a remarkably effective machine for monetizing the four-year fever that billions of us can’t help but to catch, whether we want to or not. That machine is theirs.

But the spirit? The energy, passion, vibes, and human connection of it all. The spirit has never been theirs, and it never will be.

The spirit is what happens in Rabat when Morocco plays Spain or Portugal and the entire city vibrates. It's a Mexican bar in Tokyo that hangs a flag and packs in a hundred people for a 3am kickoff. It's the Brazilian au pair in Porto watching Neymar (when he’s healthy) on a screen in a square, surrounded by strangers who somehow feel like family. The World Cup spirit happens everywhere. It has always happened everywhere. FIFA didn't build it, they can't bottle it, and for all their power and influence, they cannot kill it.

That distinction matters, because it changes what any ‘boycott’ actually means.

If you want to boycott something, boycott FIFA. Don't buy tickets and put money directly in their pocket. Don't fly to host cities where hotels have been priced to extract maximum value from your excitement. Don't fund the machine.

But don't confuse that with avoiding the World Cup entirely. Don't stop watching. Don't ignore the coverage. And please, don't miss the chance to sit shoulder to shoulder with other fans and feel, even briefly, what this game does to people when it really works. Don’t cut your nose off to spite your face. Most importantly, don’t deprive the collective spirit of what makes it the very thing FIFA can never own, your passion for all that makes the game beautiful off the field. Do something different. This World Cup, that’s exactly what we’re doing.

This summer, we're going to Europe. A new country every few days, watching games in the countries who are playing that day. Marseille when France plays. Munich when Germany plays (our experience doing this during Euro 2024 is all the proof we need to know this is the perfect approach). Following the tournament on a path that traverses the continent at the same time, experiencing the World Cup spirit in the places where the games mean the most to the people watching them. No match tickets. No host city markups. No money in Infantino's pocket. Just the football, and the fans, and the feeling we fell in love with roughly sixteen years ago.

Call it a boycott of World Cup 2026. Call it an alternative approach to the World Cup spirit. Call it romantic, naive, excessive, or even contrarian—call it what you will. But understand this: it's an option. Not just for us as The Footy Travelers, but for you too.

Footy, soccer, fútbol is still the world's game. That’s never changed. What's also never changed, but is perhaps the most undervalued asset in the sport’s fan culture, is the emotional equity (and raw energy) that’s experienced in and among the fans across the world, in their home nations. Believe it or not, regardless of how much FOMO FIFA has instilled in us all, it doesn't exclusively live in and around the stadiums at the tournament they’ve turned into yet another corporate product and sponsorship opportunity. It lives out in the world, in the places and the people that have always been the real point.

Go if you can. Go if you want to. Don't let anyone make you feel guilty for wanting to experience the joy of it. We the fans didn't create the mess, and depriving ourselves of the thing we love doesn't clean it up. But if you can't go, or won't go, or simply refuse to go on principle: know that the World Cup spirit will be anywhere and everywhere you do go this summer. It will find you (but like, not in a creepy way). It always does. It always will.

FIFA can own the World Cup, but they can never own the World Cup spirit.

Follow along this summer as we chase the World Cup spirit across Europe—one country, pub, public square, and beautiful game at a time.