Hello all of you out there, friends and readers, who might wonder what and where FIFA, the world governing body of football/soccer, came from and what it gets up to in the here and now. Here is the direct link to my book “What is FIFA For?”, due out March 31st but available at 25% discount if you get a pre-order in before the end of this week, Friday midnight February 20th 2026! waterstones.com/book/what-is… Just enter “FEB26” at the checkout to redeem the offer to receive 25% off RRP. It’s a short read but I hope you find it interesting and informing! Alan Tomlinson, Author, What is FIFA For?

FIFA WORLD CUP 2026 - GET READY With the men’s football FIFA World Cup around the corner - 11th June to 19th July 2026, that’s an unprecedented five-and-a-half weeks for the tournament being jointly hosted by the US, Mexico and Canada, though massively dominated by the US - books and commentaries will soon be pouring from the press including of course from the insatiable social media. It’s hard to write about FIFA at the moment without mention of the president of the world governing body, Gianni Infantino, and his dependence upon Donald Trump from the early days of the US president’s first term of office. It was in June 2018 that the ‘United Bid’ beat Morocco, by 134 to 65 votes, in FIFA’s contest for the hosting rights for 2026; a tournament in which 48 national teams would eventually be slated to participate. So the upcoming World Cup will be about much more than the football itself. Politics and culture have been to the fore of bids for the biggest global sporting spectacles for decades. The debates on this forthcoming bloated edition of the most prominent sporting spectacle of our time have already begun! And to understand such debates we surely need to know a bit more about FIFA. My own contribution to these debates is a short book, What is FIFA For? It’s due out at the end of March 2026. FOR MORE DETAILS, SEE: bristoluniversitypress.co.uk…