Morocco is touting its low gun circulation as one of the reasons why it should be allowed to host the 2026 World Cup, ahead of its U.S. rival.
In bidding documents released by FIFA on Monday, the North African state emphasized its security track record in comparison to the North American bid, which would divide the hosting between the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
“[Morocco] will offer an ideal security environment for celebrating the best of football,” the executive summary read. “Exceptionally low murder rates (3/100,000), benefiting from very low gun circulation, are reflected in a United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime study ranking Morocco among the best-performing nations in the world.”
The United States, by comparison, has a murder rate in 5.3/100,000, with 73 percent of murders committed with a firearm.
The North American executive summary makes no mention of the countries’ murder rates or gun ownership levels — although it does say that the “three countries have long histories of staging safe, peaceful celebrations of international sport.” Instead, it focuses on the specifics of how security plans will protect the stadiums in question.
This isn’t the first time that the dominant North American World Cup bid has faced pushback from Morocco. In February, ESPN reported that the country had widespread support for its bid from Africa, South America, and much of Asia. In January, Sunil Gulati, former head of the U.S. Soccer Federation, said that worldwide negative perceptions of the Trump administration could devastate the North American bid.
“This will be a tough battle,” he said. “There’s only certain things we can control. We can’t control what happens with the 38th parallel in Korea. We can’t control what happens with embassies in Tel Aviv. We can’t control what happens with climate change accords. We do the best we can.”
Those negative perceptions have been further highlighted by a spate of mass shootings over the last year, prompting exasperation abroad for the United States’ chronic inability to address the problem of gun control. After a mass shooting in Las Vegas last September, which left 57 people dead, media outlets in countries ranging from New Zealand to the U.K. to India and Qatar all published pieces highlighting their incredulity at the U.S. response, which was largely to do nothing.
Over the weekend, many of those same countries showed solidarity with student activists calling for increased gun control at a massive March For Our Lives rally in Washington D.C., following a shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead. Across the globe, protesters rallied in support of those teens, with demonstrations taking place as far away as Ghana and South Korea.
The North American World Cup bid is not necessarily destined to fail: considering that the United States hosted a World Cup previously in 1994, and North America has the infrastructure, space, and stadiums to be able to effectively manage 48 teams and their legions of fans, there’s still a chance North America’s bid could come out on top. But the official U.S. stance on gun control, coupled with the increasing unpopularity of the Trump administration abroad, threatens to upend that bid regardless.
“None of the proposed Host Cities has seen a major incident in the past five years,” Morocco’s summary argues — a reality with which the United States simply cannot compete.