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President Donald trump On Tuesday, next year’s World Cup matches were threatened to be moved to the suburbs bostonAfter suggesting that parts of the city had been “taken over” by unrest.
Foxborough, Massachusetts, home of the NFL’s New England Patriots and about 30 miles from Boston, is set to stage matches as the US co-hosts the 2026 World Cup with Mexico and Canada. Trump was asked about Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, whom he called “intelligent” but a “radical leftist.”
“We can take them away,” Trump said of the World Cup games. “I like the people of Boston and I know the games are sold out. But your mayor is no good.”
Could Trump take away World Cup games?
Trump previously suggested he might declare cities “not safe” for the 104-game soccer tournament and make changes to the broader hosting plan. fifa Confirmed in 2022. This includes games nfl Stadiums near New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
World Cup hosting venues are not suitable for Trump. Eleven US cities – three in Mexico and two in Canada – are under contract with FIFA, who will face significant logistical and legal issues to make the changes in the eight months before the June 11 kick-off.
“It’s a FIFA tournament, FIFA has jurisdiction, FIFA makes these decisions,” the football body’s vice-president Victor Montagliani told a sports business conference in London earlier this month.
Trump nevertheless said, “If somebody is doing a bad job, and if I think there are unsafe conditions, I will call Gianni – the head of FIFA who is phenomenal – and I will say, ‘Let’s go to another place’ and he will do it.”
The president was referring to FIFA chief Gianni Infantino, who is a close ally. Trump said Infantino “wouldn’t like to do it, but he would do it very easily.”
World Cup in Massachusetts
Of the seven matches to be played at Gillette Stadium in the Boston suburb of Foxborough, five will be group stage matches, one match in the round of 32 and one quarter-final match on July 9, 2026. The news of so many big games came as a surprise to local organizers.
“The later the tournament gets, the more eyes will be on it,” Mike Loynd, head of Boston’s World Cup organizing committee, said when announcing the schedule last year. “For us, it’s just a matter of excitement… For us, it’s a perfect program. I don’t think FIFA could have done a better job.”
According to organizers, the tournament is expected to bring $1.1 billion in local economic impact, create more than 5,000 jobs and generate more than $60 million in tax revenue throughout the region. They also expect more than 2 million spectators to come to New England during the 39 days of the tournament.
robert craft relationship
Gillette Stadium is operated by Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots and Major League Soccer’s New England Revolution.
Kraft served as honorary chairman of the United bid to help bring the World Cup back to the United States. In a 2024 interview on “The Breakfast Club”, he described himself as Trump’s “social friend”, beginning shortly after he purchased the Patriots in the 1990s. He said in that interview that the only donation he gave to Trump was “a strong donation to his inauguration” after his 2016 election.
But Kraft also gifted the president a diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring during his first term in office after the Patriots won the NFL championship to cap the 2016 season. Sitting presidents typically receive gifts from sports teams during celebratory White House visits — a personalized jersey is standard — but Kraft also gave Trump a ring, the team confirmed at the time.
The team said Craft decided to create a ring for Trump after the team’s April 2017 visit so he would have something special to display in his presidential library. But Kraft said in the same 2024 “Breakfast Club” interview that he had not spoken to Trump since the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump targets Boston
Boston and its mayor have been a frequent target of the Trump administration for much of this year.
Trump and his allies have focused their attacks on the city’s so-called sanctuary city police and how much the police should support deportations. In September, the Trump administration sued the city, arguing that its sanctuary city policies are illegal under federal law and that the city’s refusal to cooperate with immigration officials has resulted in the release of dangerous criminals who should be deported.
The Trump administration has already deployed National Guard troops to Washington and Memphis, and efforts to do so in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, have sparked legal battles. Democratic and Republican leaders across Massachusetts have opposed the deployment of the National Guard to Boston, and Wu, who is running unopposed for re-election, frequently cites the city’s historically low crime rates.
Wu dismissed the fact that gun violence fell to the lowest level on record in his first year in office and has continued to decline. The police department said the city saw a historically low number of murders in 2024 with 24 — but so far in 2025 the city has surpassed that number with 27.
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Associated Press writer Kyle Hightower in Foxboro, Mass., contributed to this report.