So the Americans have done it again. With the World Cup looming, they have contrived to alienate half the planet with visa restrictions that would make a Victorian-era customs officer blush. Fans from nations with even a whiff of political instability are being subjected to interrogations worthy of the Spanish Inquisition, while the United Kingdom quietly offers a saner, more civilised alternative. It is a classic case of the New World showing its inexperience with global events, and the Old World stepping in to remind everyone how it is done.
Let us be clear: the United States has never truly understood the World Cup. To them, it is a sideshow, a curiosity. To us, it is a pilgrimage. The notion that you would make it harder for a Brazilian or Argentine fan to enter your country is not merely bureaucratic incompetence. It is a failure of cultural imagination. The Home Office, for all its faults, knows that you do not treat football supporters like potential terrorists. You treat them like customers. Or, if you have any sense of history, like fellow travellers on a great human carnival.
Meanwhile, the UK's bid for future tournaments gains moral ground by the hour. We offer a model where visas are streamlined, where the pub is as important as the stadium, and where the concept of 'freedom of movement' is not a dirty word. It is not perfect. No one will pretend the British state is a paragon of liberal virtue. But compared to the security theatre unfolding across the Atlantic, we look like the Athens of Pericles.
The irony is thick enough to cut with a Union Jack. The nation that styles itself as the land of the free has become a fortress of petty rules and suspicion. And the nation that gave the world the Magna Carta and the Industrial Revolution once again finds itself as the arbiter of common sense. If the World Cup is to survive as a truly global festival, it may need to abandon the American experiment entirely. Let us host it. We know how to treat guests.
