Could a German call for a US World Cup boycott over Trump’s Greenland threat work?

As a well known football fan, and one who at 63, still plays the game, Keir Starmer is among the many Britons eagerly anticipating the football World Cup in America which starts in June. With England and Scotland already having qualified, possibly to be joined by Wales and Northern Ireland, he is far from alone in this country.

Nor is Starmer the only political leader looking forward to the event. Golf fanatic Donald Trump has never expressed much interest in football – until now. As a master self-publicist he was quick to spot the huge opportunity presented to him by the fact that his presidency coincides with the World Cup taking place in America.

He has cultivated a close, some would say unhealthily so, friendship with the head of Fifa Gianni Infantino, ensuring Trump will be centre stage when the tournament kicks off.

So imagine how embarrassing it would be to Trump if some countries pulled out in protest at his threats over Greenland. How much more damaging would such a boycott be if, for example, the nation involved was one of the World Cup giants? That is the notion that has been raised by German politician Jürgen Hardt of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s ruling CDU party.

Noting the close interest Trump had taken in the event, Hardt suggested Germany, four times World Cup winners, could consider boycotting it to pressure the White House regarding its threats to annex Greenland. Such a ploy could be used “as a last resort in order to get Trump to see sense”, said Hardt.

Clearly, the idea of a mass World Cup boycott is far-fetched, yet there is nothing new about such sporting boycotts – or of them being supported by Britain.

There have been five boycotts of Olympic Games, including Hitler’s Berlin in 1936. Widespread global support for the sporting boycott of South Africa from the 1960s to 1990s was seen as a significant factor in the demise of apartheid.

The American government itself led one of the biggest sporting boycotts of all time when it refused to take part in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. The reason? The Soviet Union had illegally invaded another country: Afghanistan.

Margaret Thatcher, then British prime minister, supported the Moscow 1980 boycott, though left it to individual sports and athletes to decide whether to take part.

Yet never mind Keir Starmer’s own love of football: with his poll ratings in the equivalent of the relegation zone, it seems unlikely that he would wish to make additional enemies of millions of British football fans by joining a World Cup boycott.

Would it even work as Herr Hardt seems to think? It is true that it a 2026 World Cup without the 16 European teams due to take part, including England, Germany, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Scotland, is almost unimaginable. The winners would be world champions in name only.

Equally, Trump’s supporters would doubtless argue that if Europe withdrew from the World Cup it would merely add sport to the continent’s increasing economic, cultural, diplomatic and military irrelevance.

Starmer and his fellow European leaders are currently in a desperate search for some means of applying pressure to the US over Greenland. A variety of means, mainly trade reprisals have been proposed.

It will not stop calls for other ways of hitting Trump where it hurts. If the president matches his chilling threats to Denmark and Europe over Greenland with deeds, by the time he attends America’s first match in the competition, against Paraguay on June 12 in Los Angeles, US troops may have taken over Greenland.

Little Denmark could still qualify for the World Cup if they win in the forthcoming play-offs.

Could they, or any other self respecting nation, take part if Trump has raised the Stars and Stripes over Greenland by then?