'This is One Thing, I'm David Rind, and the 2026 World Cup is coming to America with a Trump-sized asterisk.

Some football fans might be thinking twice about coming to the United States, and I have to pinch myself because I wouldn't have said something like that just two or three years ago. We've got a lot of new countries' playings and some of them are wonderful stories. Curacao, the island nation, have just qualified. They're a country of about 150,000 people. I mean, genuine minnows. Same with Cape Verde. Absolutely tiny, tiny,

Yeah, I have to admit, I don't even know where that is. It's off the coast of Africa. Don Riddell is an anchoring correspondent for CNN World Sport, and when he's not helping me find my way around a map, he's spending a lot of his time thinking about next summer's World Cup.

I'm very partial to Scotland. I was born in Edinburgh. I know I don't have the accent anymore but I consider myself to be Scottish. I was very, very excited the other week when they qualified with a win against Denmark. They're back in the World Cup for the first time in

28 years. If you haven't heard, the World Cup is coming to America. They'll be playing matches across the US as well as Mexico and Canada. This is soccer's biggest event, bar none. Only happens every four years. And President Donald Trump has been talking about this a lot in his second term.

In a way, it's like Johnny said it better, it's having many Super Bowls for a short period of time. Because each one of these games essentially is a Super Bowl. Some of them are bigger than Super Bowl, actually.

'Now Trump has a long history of showing up at sporting events, but this time, he's inserted himself directly into the tournament planning. He's also threatened to take games away from democratic-led cities and states if they don't cooperate with his policies. It all has some asking, is this really about pageantry and eyeballs for Trump or something else? And how do international soccer fans feel about coming to the US amid Trump's immigration crackdown? Well, starting Friday, the excitement around the 2026 World Cup is going to really ramp up because Don says we're going to learn the matchups.

Well, the draw, David, is where it all begins. And that will be the moment from which the teams and the fans can really plot their summer next year. And it is the moment where all the excitement is going to really kick into gear. I mean, to reset what the World Cup is, in terms of a global audience, it is biggest sports event in the world. And next year, it's going to be bigger. And... Perhaps better, but it will certainly be bigger than ever before, one, because it's going to be played across three countries, three huge countries, that's never happened. And FIFA, which is football's world governing body, has also expanded it from 32 teams to 48. So we're going to have 104 games next year. It is going to be absolutely massive. And this is going be a different draw or a different kind of draw to the one we've seen before. And that's. Because there's going to be more teams, it's going be more complicated. But it's also going to held at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. And previous draws have been held basically in convention centers, but this time it's gonna be at the Kennedy Center in DC, which has been very much in the news this year with Donald Trump's second term now underway.

Yeah, I was gonna say he's really worked this term to kind of revamp the Kennedy Center's programming, kind of overhaul its board to be in his image, which he says is less woke. Certainly some of the artists who have performed there would take exception to that, but why does Trump want the draw to be at the Kennedy center?

There is no doubt that Donald Trump has very much imposed himself on the World Cup and all proceedings to do with it.

Good afternoon, I'm delighted to welcome FIFA president Gianni Infantino, one of the greatest men of sport.

He's become very, very close with the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino.

Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Infantino accompanied Donald Trump to Egypt when the peace plan in Gaza was being laid out.

Yeah, I thought that was kind of strange.

Well, and Infantino was one of the figures on the world stage lobbying for Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And when that didn't work out, literally just two or three weeks later, FIFA announced that they would be creating their own peace prize, which they will be awarding. And the expectation is very much that Donald Trump will be winning that peace prize.

I want to thank you all and welcome to the first meeting of the White House FIFA Task Force.

Trump is also involved in a FIFA task force, which is looking at how this tournament is going to be run and organized within the United States. Essentially, it's to sort out the logistics and make sure everything is safe and secure.

Going to be so safe, and if we have to, because obviously you have a mayor that is not very competent.

But Trump has used these meetings to really start imposing his political will on some of these host cities. So there's going to be 11 cities in the United States hosting these games everywhere from Seattle to down to Miami. And it has been noteworthy that games that are going to be hosted in cities or states with mayors or governors who he doesn't like or he would argue are opposed. To his policies.

Could those games move to cities that do work with you? We could. We could take them away. I love the people of Boston. I know the games are sold out. But your mayor is not good. They're worse than her.

He's using the World Cup to try and intimidate them and he is and has been saying several times that he could get those games moved to other cities, safer cities.

'So if we think there's a problem in Seattle where you have a very, very liberal-slash-communist mayor, I would say, you know, it's certainly beyond just liberal. I watched her over the weekend, wow, that's another beauty we got there. But if we there's going to be a problem, we'll — Johnny, can I say we will move — I don't think you're going to have this problem, but we're going to move the event to someplace where it's going to be appreciated and safe.

So he's threatening cities who aren't maybe putting up with his tough on crime stance or his deportation push and basically saying, oh, we can take away the soccer games. How would that even work? Doesn't FIFA put on this tournament?

Well, right. So the contracts are between the cities and FIFA, and they don't have anything to do with the U.S. Government. But in theory, FIFA could decide or agree with the president that these aren't safe venues or these aren't save cities. And in theory they could move the games. But I mean, I cannot even begin to imagine how that would happen, especially with the clock now ticking. I I mean, once the draw has been completed... And everybody's making their plans and fans are making their travel plans. I don't know how at that point you could move the games.

Next year we will have between six and seven million tickets sold for the matches. We'll have between five and ten million people coming to America from all over the world to enjoy the World Cup.

And another interesting factor here is going to be the visas that traveling fans will need to get into the United States. And this tournament is happening at a time when the US isn't exactly welcoming to people visiting from overseas, particularly from some parts of the world, so Latin America, Africa. In previous World Cups, it was much more straightforward, less so this time. So for example, if. You need a visa to come to this country at the moment. And I believe the waiting time from Columbia, just for an interview to get a visa is nine and a half months. And so literally just the last week or so, Marco Rubio has said that these interviews will now be expedited and you will now be able to get an interview within five to six weeks. That's what the government is saying.

Now you can get in less than two months. So our advice to everybody is if you have a ticket for any of the games, you need to apply if you haven't done so as soon as possible. Don't wait till the last minute. Your ticket is not a visa. It doesn't guarantee admission to the U.S. It guarantees you an expedited appointment.

But Rubio is making it very clear that a ticket is not the same as a visa. So this is just another complicating factor from fans who are trying to come from quite literally every corner of the world. If they can get a ticket, are they going to be able to get a visa?

When we come back, Don says even those who can get a visa may choose not to come. Stick around. I mean, Don, that's interesting because you mentioned that basically this administration has made it much harder for people to come into this country. They've restricted legal immigration severely this year. For example, they've put on a travel ban on individuals from certain countries, mainly African countries. It's reduced the number of refugees it will accept, most of which will be white South Africans. There's a crackdown on student visas and the increased vetting there. And of course this ongoing push for arrest and deportations of undocumented immigrants that continues to happen in cities across the country. So you contrast all of that with this expedited visa process, which basically seems to be saying to me that if you've got the money to shell out for these soccer games, we can get you to the front of the line while everyone else is just kind of stuck.

Yeah, I guess you could see it that way. And I think you are going to need a lot of money just to be able to get a seat at these games. I was in Qatar four years ago, which was an unusual World Cup in that it was in such a small place. I mean, essentially they held this tournament in a city. So no game was more than a metro or a cab ride away. And there were some people who went to every single game. That is not going to be possible here. If your team makes it all the way to the final, you could well be playing in two different countries. You look at the size of the territory that has to be traversed. It is not gonna be a cheap undertaking. And it does feel as though this is becoming a World Cup tournament for the 1%. If it wasn't ours.

If it wasn't already, I mean. Right.

Right. I mean, but I mean you look at the prices and this is because FIFA aren't very transparent with the pricing structure and how it's all going to work. But I mean some of the reporting that I've seen recently, I mean the cheapest ticket at the moment to get into the USA's first game is $560. That's the cheapest you can get all the way up to $2,700. Cheapest Yeah, it's not a cheap day.

Do we know if there are fans who might be on the fence about coming to the US for an event like this? Like money aside, I imagine there are folks who are looking at what is going on on the streets of American cities. We've certainly heard stories of people from other countries who have been detained and they might say, you know, I love soccer. I love my country's team, but it's just not a safe spot to be in at this point.

Yeah, some football fans might be thinking twice about coming to the United States. And, you know, I have to pinch myself because I wouldn't have said something like that just two or three years ago. But I mean, to give you an example of a case that's played out quite prominently in the UK within the last few weeks.

A British journalist and commentator says his detention by ICE agents this month was an attack on freedoms.

So, Sami Hamdi is a British political journalist. He was visiting the United States for a speaking tour, and he was detained at San Francisco airport and told that his visa had been revoked. And he said he didn't even know it was under review. And he was told, well, it's been revoke because of his advocacy for Palestine.

The U.S. State Department says it won't comment on specific cases, but a Department of Homeland Security official said in a social media post at the time, and I'm quoting now, under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country. End quote.

So obviously he wasn't thrilled about this and he said, well, okay, well I guess I'll just book a ticket and get the next flight home. And they said, no, it doesn't work like that. And before he knew it, he was taken away in a van and he spent two weeks in detention.

When I went to Fresno, they said to me and they threw me in a cell, a five by four cell with 15 inmates in that particular cell sleeping in the cuffs until the morning.

He was very, very ill at some point during that detention and it became a really, really big stink, particularly in the UK when he was eventually released.

This is an attack on American freedoms, not on Sami Hamdi. It's an attack from the rule of law.

He's now gone home and spoken about his experience and he's issued a warning to English football fans coming to the tournament and he said, look, if they can do this to me, they can do this. To anyone.

The point here being is I did not criticize the American government. My visa was revoked because I criticized a foreign government. It is a most bizarre and unusual situation. And when you have the World Cup coming next year, does this mean that if a fan raises a Palestinian flag that they're going to revoke the visa without informing that fan and then detain them 18 days?

The timing of that is really, really interesting, especially with the draw just around the corner, because this is the point at which fans are going to start making their travel plans and figuring out what games they would like to go to and how much time they might spend in the country for the World Cup. And he's saying if I was you, I would think twice about it. So that's just one of the things that fans might be considering. The other thing they might be considering is, am I buying tickets to a game in Boston that might not end up being in Boston? Trump keeps talking about whether or not he is going to move games from cities where the local leaders are opposed to his policies or, as he would put it, where there are safety concerns because he wants the fans safety to be paramount. And so he's muscling those cities. And so that may well serve his own agenda, but if you were gonna spend a small fortune to come and follow your team, would you be as enthusiastic about spending all that money to come in, make your arrangements to travel to a city and book your hotels only to find out that the games aren't gonna be there? I don't think the games will be moved. I think it would be an absolute logistical nightmare for that to happen. But you can see that all of these things compounding might make some fans think if it's going to be worth it.

Well, we'll start to see where some of these games are going to be played, who's playing who, and wishing a good draw for Scotland for you, Don. Thank you.

Thanks, David.

That's it for us today. Look for more on the World Cup draw later this week over at CNN.com and on the CNN app. And we'll be back here on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.