By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College
In 1934, host country leader and Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini hijacked the FIFA games, using every trick in the book to win the games over democratic Czechoslovakia. Nearly 100 years later, democracies largely used fair means to not only put a first rate FIFA tournament, but to also dominate the sport. And it matters in politics, not just in sports.
LaGrange College undergraduates Katie Cunningham, Akajah Burton and Jonathan Wible and I looked at how each type of government’s team performed in the 2026 games. We also looked at which regimes are hosting the games, past and present. And we look at performances in other tournaments to see whether there is a relationship between democracy and doing well in football.
Mr. Wible found that 30 percent of those who made it to the tournament. They won four games, tied in eight, and lost nine. Only four of the ten even won a single game, with one winning two. Ms. Burton found that eight of the teams were partly free. They won 14 games, tied in four, and lost 13 of them, better than their unfree counterparts. And my data shows that the 30 free states won 65 games, tied in 24, and lost 45 of them.
The real dominance came in the playoffs. Of the top 32 who made it to the knockout round, only 3 were unfree. Six were partly free, but only one made it to the quarterfinals. The other 23 qualifiers were free. So were seven of those in the quarterfinals, and all four semifinalists.
In another undergraduate research project for The Conversation, I tracked the FIFA finalists and winners over time. “When it comes to finalists, in the first 32 years, there were six authoritarian countries represented in the final games, four anocracies and a mere four democracies. But since 1966 – the first World Cup meeting between two democracies, with England prevailing over West Germany – there have been only two authoritarian winners: Brazil in 1970 and Argentina in 1978 – the last autocratic country to win the tournament.” Even with these early setbacks, free countries have won 67% of all World Cups.
How about the host sites. Ms. Cunningham looked at all cases from 1974 to the present. She found that West Germany, Spain, Italy, USA (1994), France, Japan, South Korea, Germany, South Africa, Brazil, USA (2026) and Canada were coded Free by Freedom House. Argentina (1978), Russia (2018), and Qatar (2022) were Not Free. Mexico (1986) and Mexico (2026) were Partly Free, showing an overwhelming majority of hosts were free, even if you add in the 2030 and 2034 hosts to the mix.
So why does this all matter? Every day, authoritarians are taking to the media and social media, with a host of arguments about how superior their own form of government. With memes that Pravda could only dream of designing, they point out the failures of every democracy, and tout their own accomplishments. With few “hot wars” this new Cold War on a different playing field is often only won through competitions on everything from exam performances to Nobel Prizes to international athletic competitions, from FIFA to the Olympics. And the performance of free states cannot be ignored for those who wonder which is the best system to live under.
Democracies do need work. But the freedom, not political micromanaging by potentates, seems to provide the best outcome on the pitch.
LaGrange College undergraduates.Akjah Burton, Katie Cunningham, and Jonathon Wible have contributed to the above article. Shown in the image below are Akjah Burton, Katie Cunningham, Jonathon Wible and Professor Tures.
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu or on “X” at @johntures2. His first book “Branded” a thriller novel where corporate greed, media manipulation and academic intrigue collide in a deadly game of product placement, has been published by the Huntsville Independent Press (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/product-page/branded). His second novel, “Independent Thought,” about a third-party candidacy that brings America to its knees, is coming out later this summer with HIP (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/).
Aug. 7, 2026