This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Hosting the World Cup has repeatedly placed the tournament in the middle of its host nation's politics, not beside it. Italy's 1934 tournament was staged under Benito Mussolini's fascist government, which pressed the tournament into service as a demonstration of national strength, and historians still debate whether refereeing decisions in Italy's run to the title were influenced by that pressure. Argentina's 1978 tournament was hosted by a military junta in the midst of the Dirty War, the campaign of forced disappearances and killings the regime carried out against its own citizens, while presenting the tournament abroad as evidence of a stable, modern nation.
FIFA's own governance became the story ahead of the 2018 and 2022 tournaments. A 2015 United States Department of Justice indictment charged more than a dozen FIFA and confederation officials with decades of bribery and kickbacks, including allegations reaching directly into the voting process that awarded Russia the 2018 tournament and Qatar the 2022 tournament. Qatar's hosting brought its own sustained criticism: human rights organizations documented deaths and abusive conditions among the largely South Asian migrant workforce that built the tournament's stadiums, and the tournament itself was moved to November and December, the first time it was not played in its traditional June and July window, to avoid Qatar's summer heat. FIFA and Qatari organizers defended the tournament as a catalyst for labor reforms already underway; rights groups countered that the reforms arrived too late for many of the workers whose deaths had prompted them.
Sources U.S. Department of Justice, FIFA Indictment Press Release with Wilson Center, DOJ Accuses Russia of Corrupting FIFA, Sky HISTORY, 1934 World Cup and Fascist Propaganda, HISTORY, Argentina 1978 World Cup and the Dirty War, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Qatar Migrant Worker Deaths