WASHINGTON DC — In the build-up to Friday’s World Cup draw here, one feeling pervades that has repeated on me often over the last two years: it’s easy to forget that there are two other countries hosting this tournament.
Canada and Mexico are only hosting 26 matches in 21 days, after all. Barely even worth thinking about.
This is the USA’s parade and this is Donald Trump’s show because football has allowed it to be so. The draw will take place 140 miles from the nearest host city and 1.01 miles from the White House. That symbolism punches you square in the jaw.
Still, at least we will learn which countries will play who and (after some more Fifa deliberation) where and when. Sometimes in all this politicking fog it’s easy to forget that it’s football at all. Sport as an afterthought to geopolitical self-gratification – nice catchphrase, but probably too long for a scarf.
This should trouble us all. In August, Fifa president Gianni Infantino insisted that next summer will be a glorious melting pot of different peoples treated well, speaking out against “misconception” and reinforcing that “everyone will be welcome”.
Three days before the draw in Washington, President Trump said in this city that Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country”, so it’s probably worth crossing them off the welcome spreadsheet.
Haiti and Iran have both qualified for this tournament and the two countries remain on Trump’s banned list. “Welcome to all (terms and conditions may apply).”
Increasingly, what you are told and what you hear from both sides of this World Cup hype parade are two disparate concepts. One suspects Infantino would prefer Trump to turn down the most explicit of the unapologetic bigotry, but we’re in too deep now.
The World Cup has been dogged by the controversies of host power and their strongarm leaders before, of course. In Russia, where Vladimir Putin promoted a non-isolationist, non-aggressive image of a country that subsequently invaded its neighbour.
In Qatar, where a state supercharged its attempt to diversify from oil and gas and distract from its questionable human rights record. In Argentina in 1978, where General Videla used the tournament as a high-end propaganda mission.
This feels different. Then the impression was that the nation was hosting the biggest tournament in sport for self-interest. Now, it’s as if Fifa and its World Cup are hosting Trump.
The strongarm leader doesn’t get their way by wallflowering. The key is to apply the brakes and contain their ambition. Fifa, whose own statutes state that it should be politically neutral, often has to toe that line carefully when co-organising vast events. In Washington and beyond, its president has allowed Trump to ride roughshod.
It’s the little things, like hosting the draw at a venue where Trump is the chair or inviting the Village People to do a set, whose hit so happens to be the soundtrack of Trump’s campaign trail in 2024. Andrea Bocelli will be there too; it’s certainly time to say goodbye to something.
It’s the medium things, like Fifa moving an office into Trump Tower in New York City and one president praising another for their warm relationship. And Trump threatening to move World Cup matches from “trouble” (read: Democrat) cities and no public pushback from the game’s governing body appearing.
And it’s the massive, line-in-the-sand, “we will never forget this” things. Fifa suspends nations from competitive matches if there is proven governmental interference, such is its commitment to keeping political opinion and sport separate.
Have a guess who said this: “We should all support what he [Trump] is doing because I think it’s looking good.” Clue: their surname rhymes with Icanttakeanymoreofthisfantino.
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On Friday, Fifa will award its inaugural Peace Prize, an idea reportedly so close to the Fifa president’s heart that nobody else within the organisation knew much about it.
Trump will surely win it and be lauded, having publicly courted the Nobel Peace Prize and failed. Sometimes you really do have to take a step back to appreciate how far we have walked into dystopia. Repeat after me: this is definitely all about football, right?
Sport, power and governance have always walked along the same side of the same street because they are intrinsically intertwined. Giant sporting events attract global audiences and populist powerbrokers are attracted to global audiences, ergo giant sporting events become vehicles for proof of power to be promulgated. Nobody is naive here; the World Cup isn’t a sports day.
But if this all feels bigger, more blatant and less palatable than before, it’s not just because of the cumulative impact of the last two World Cups. When all else settled, football was supposed to shine through and rise above.
In Trump’s backyard and political playground this week, there comes further proof of what we always feared: the greatest show on earth has the US president as its headliner.
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