Every four years, 48 of the world’s best soccer teams represent their countries in the most prestigious tournament in the world: The FIFA World Cup. Qualifying for the World Cup is an extraordinary achievement in itself; national teams have been competing in qualifiers since March of 2023. For the best soccer players in the world, winning the World Cup is the ultimate prize. But for some nations, the road to victory has been paved by the hardships of U.S. foreign aid cuts. Today, I wanted to share an article by A4AL volunteers Quinn Milner and Nathan Hirschfield.

This year, several countries made history by qualifying for the first time in decades. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is competing for the first time since 1974, when they were still known as Zaire. Similarly, Haiti has sat on the sidelines for 52 years. In fact, Haiti is the first country in the tournament’s history to qualify without playing a single qualifying match on home soil. Alongside these notable qualifications, Jordan is competing in the World Cup for the first time in all of tournament history. These underdogs arrive on the World Cup stage at a crucial moment—as American foreign aid disappears from their countries.

What makes the qualification of these three teams so special is the insurmountable odds that they faced during the qualification process. Haiti, Jordan, and the DRC do not have the domestic resources to develop and recruit their talent the way their European World Cup counterparts do. Instead of focusing on the excitement of a historic qualification match, many people in these countries have to focus on tackling domestic unrest and health crises in the absence of USAID.

In January 2025, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was abruptly shut down by the Trump Administration. Millions of people across the world lost access to vital humanitarian aid resources—including healthcare, food, and education—that the United States has provided since 1961. Based on a study published by The Lancet, 14 million people are projected to die by 2030 as a result of the gutting USAID. The newest World Cup participants are no stranger to this: Jordan, Haiti, and the DRC all used to receive USAID assistance before its dissolution. Today, the DRC is facing one of the worst Ebola outbreaks on record, with a modern strain that has no known cure or vaccine. Haiti faces extreme poverty, political instability, and widespread gang violence that has displaced millions. In Jordan, the dissolution of USAID was harmful to their off-budget development projects, along with providing healthcare, education, and other aid to their most vulnerable communities.

Jordan’s 2024 Asian Cup final appearance began to establish their status as a capable soccer country, and this same group of players looks to do just as well at their first ever World Cup. However, they must do so while their country faces the consequences of losing over a billion dollars in annual American support. Halted USAID funding supported 60 technical assistance programs and projects that focused on things such as economic development, health, education, social services, water, and governance. The loss of these programs has left vulnerable populations in Jordan, such as refugees and children, without safety services they had relied on for decades.

Haiti became the first team in the history of the World Cup to qualify without ever having played at home, all because of unstable conditions in the country. According to the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, armed gangs control around 90% of Port-au-Prince. Between April and June of 2025, this resulted in the death of at least 1,520 civilians, , with 609 civilians injured in gang violence. The loss of USAID has worsened this political instability, causing Haiti to lose around $90 million of government funding and experience a significant rise in organized crime. The consequences of this instability extend to the tournament itself—air travel from Haiti to the United States is now banned due to unsafe conditions and criminal activity. This year, the Haitian national team will take the field without supporters from their own country in the stands. For a team competing in a tournament hosted on American soil, it is a bitter irony that the policies of the host nation have made it impossible for Haitian fans to be there to witness it.

Finally, the DRC’s return to the World Cup after 52 years is sure to be one of the most remarkable stories of the entire tournament. But, for fans and players back home, the celebration has been overshadowed by the Ebola crisis. The DRC is currently experiencing one of its worst outbreaks on record, with the current Bundibugyo strain lacking both a treatment plan and a vaccine. As a result, the traveling national team has had to take precautionary isolation measures ahead of the tournament, something no other participating team has to do. While this is unfortunate for the competitive nature of the World Cup, it underlies a more salient problem—the lack of global health research.. Officials have stated that Ebola will not be a threat to the World Cup because it “spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected patient, such as blood or urine.” This statement, however, ignores that soccer is a contact-heavy sport, and players will inevitably make contact with one another’s blood and sweat. Fans could also be affected, since packed, hot stadiums and shared public restrooms create the risk of transmission through bodily fluids at an even larger scale. Historically, USAID funded critical health infrastructure, including outbreak response and disease surveillance programs. Without that support, the DRC’s ability to respond to this outbreak has been compromised, leaving the players representing their nation on the world stage to do so knowing that the people back home are fighting a disease their government is unable to handle alone.

While the American industry is projected to rake in billions of dollars hosting the World Cup, competing nations are at a disadvantage. Jordan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Haiti will compete despite facing significant hardship as a consequence of U.S. aid cuts, revealing the unequal realities that exist behind the beloved tournament.