Could this summer’s FIFA World Cup face a boycott over actions by Donald Trump? One top official for a club team in a leading soccer nation is talking about it.
According to The Independent, Oke Göttlich, the president of the German club team St. Pauli and a member of the German football federation executive committee, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper that “the time has come” to “seriously consider and discuss this.”
The reason for the threat is, primarily, Trump’s threat to take over Greenland and the subsequent tariff threat.
Maybe NATO countries and those affected by visa restriction should withdraw too (and the Olympics in 2028)
Top football official says its ‘time to consider’ World Cup boycott over Trump Greenland demandshttps://t.co/RC7aWvD63r
— dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 (@dave43law) January 24, 2026
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“What were the justifications for the boycotts of the Olympic Games in the 1980s?” Göttlich said. “By my reckoning, the potential threat is greater now than it was then. We need to have this discussion.” That was a reference to the United States boycotting the Olympic Games in 1980, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The Eastern Bloc, in retaliation, boycotted the Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984.
So will the boycott happen?
Per the Independent, the effort “is likely to meet resistance to calls for a boycott from federation president Bernd Neuendorf and FIFA president Gianni Infantino.” Infantino, of course, is the official who presented the FIFA Peace Prize to Trump last year.
“Qatar was too political for everyone and now we’re completely apolitical? That’s something that really, really, really bothers me,” Göttlich added, in reference to the 2022 World Cup host, whose successful bid for the tournament was widely seen as controversial and possibly corrupt. Germany also had an infamously poor performance in the tournament.
“As organizations and society, we’re forgetting how to set taboos and boundaries, and how to defend values,” the German official said. “Taboos are an essential part of our stance. Is a taboo crossed when someone threatens? Is a taboo crossed when someone attacks? When people die? I would like to know from Donald Trump when he has reached his taboo, and I would like to know from Bernd Neuendorf and Gianni Infantino.”
