Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States who has for several years championed the idea of a World Cup with the two countries as joint hosts, hailed the event as a chance for repair.

“A unique opportunity to create people to people connections & heal some of the wounds in the narrative of ‘us vs them’ being propelled by Potus,” he said on Twitter.

The tournament won’t come to North America for another eight years, so even if Mr. Trump were re-elected for a second term, he would be long gone from the White House by the time of the opening kickoff. But planning for the event has already begun.

It’s a herculean undertaking that will require fine-tuned diplomacy between the host nations, and lots of cooperation between organizers and myriad federal, state and local agencies in all three host countries.

But it is also expected to be a largely private-sector endeavor, and as long as politicians keep their politics out of the way, experts say, things should go smoothly.

Mexico and Canada will each hold just 10 of the 80 matches, compared with 60 in the United States, which also will be the site of the quarterfinals, semifinals and final.

The only other time FIFA awarded a World Cup to more than one country was in 2002, when Japan and South Korea were hosts of the tournament. But keeping the peace between those contentious neighbors proved so difficult that FIFA vowed never to do it again, Jeffrey Webb, a former executive committee member, told The New York Times in 2015.