Can Donald Trump finally be the one to sell Americans on soccer?

Yahoo

3 days ago

'Trump is the most pro-soccer president that we have ever had,' former U.S. Men's National Team defender Alexi Lalas recently claimed.
President Trump has rarely looked more out of place — but maybe that was the point.
On July 13, the blue-shirted squad of London's Chelsea Football Club stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the center of MetLife Stadium, still sweaty from the exertions of the Club World Cup final they'd just won.
Moments earlier, FIFA president Gianni Infantino, the driving force behind the new global competition, presented Chelsea captain Reece James with a gigantic golden trophy. Then Infantino scurried off, as dignitaries are supposed to do in these situations.
But Trump lingered. The players seemed perplexed. One of them warned the president they were about to start celebrating for the cameras. The president didn't budge. So James shrugged and hoisted the Blues' new hardware. His teammates roared behind him. Fireworks flashed. Glitter erupted.
And Trump, smiling and clapping, stayed right where he was, and right where he always wants to be — front and center.
The fact that Trump was front and center for a soccer celebration — with a team of foreigners, no less — didn't appear to bother him one bit.
'Donald Trump is the most pro-soccer president that we have ever had,' former U.S. Men's National Team defender (and Trump supporter) Alexi Lalas recently told the Times of London. 'From a cultural, legacy and political perspective, he understands the power of what is coming next summer.'
***
What is coming next summer is the classic, quadrennial World Cup, where billions of global fans watch their national teams compete for soccer's biggest prize.
Given that the U.S. will also host that tournament (alongside Mexico and Canada), some stateside soccer fans are starting to wonder if Lalas is right — and if Trump, of all people, could be the guy to finally sell long-skeptical Americans on the (rest of the) planet's most popular sport.
Needless to say, soccer is not 'America's pastime.' It never has been. That particular honorific belongs, of course, to baseball, which was codified in 1845, professionalized in 1869 and Ken-Burnsified in 1994. It's still the only sport to star in one of his sepia-toned documentaries.
America's favorite sport, on the other hand, is clearly football — the NFL kind. According to Gallup, a full 41% of U.S. adults enjoy watching American football more than any other sport; a mere 5% say the same about soccer. This is nothing new. Gridiron has topped Gallup's surveys since 1972.
Soccer isn't even the most popular sport to play in the U.S. (as much as it might seem like every kid has kicked a ball in a goal at some point). Instead, basketball dominates the category, with a youth participation rate (15%) roughly twice as high as soccer's (7%).
Yet Trump's recent behavior suggests that Lalas is on to something.
So far during his second term, the president has spent more time with Infantino than any official head of state. They traveled together to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and sat together at the Club World Cup final. When Infantino opened a new FIFA office in Manhattan earlier this month, he did it — where else? — at Trump Tower. During his first term, Trump pushed hard to secure the 2026 World Cup; after this summer's Club World Cup final, he pocketed a winner's medal as a memento.
In fact, Trump is so fond of the elaborate Tiffany & Co. Club World Cup trophy unveiled back in April that he plans to keep the original and let Chelsea lug a replica back to England.
"I said, 'When are you going to pick up the trophy?'' the president recalled. '[They said] 'We're never going to pick it up. You can have it forever in the Oval Office. We're making a new one.' And they actually made a new one. So that was quite exciting.'
Trump even joked before the Club World Cup final that he could pass an executive order to align the U.S. with much of the rest of the world and ensure that Americans refer to soccer as 'football' from now on.
'I think I could do that,' he said with a smile during an interview with host broadcaster DAZN.
***
There are other explanations, of course, for Trump's recent focus on soccer.
Money is, as usual, one of them. According to Infantino, the Club World Cup raked in $2.1 billion, and next summer's World Cup stands to make far more. Together, FIFA estimates that the two tournaments will add $40.9 billion to America's GDP while creating nearly 300,000 full-time jobs.
Power is another factor. As the Washington Post recently explained, 'Infantino helms an institution that is something like a secular Vatican (albeit with far more financial firepower). FIFA's footprint is on every continent, its project has the affection of billions of devotees, and the internal workings of soccer's global governing body are mysterious and shrouded in controversy.' No doubt Trump enjoys being courted and catered to by the Pope of world football.
Pageantry and self-promotion undoubtedly play a part as well. Has this particular president ever shied away from spectacle? Has anything gilded ever not caught his eye?
Some have even suggested more nefarious aims. 'Sportswashing' is the practice of using athletics to improve the reputation of any entity — a country, a corporation — that has a negative public image because of human rights concerns or other issues. With that dynamic in mind, Trump's critics claim he is using these massive global soccer tournaments, and their implicit message of openness, to paper over all the ways the U.S. is 'moving radically and quickly to close itself off from the rest of the world' via tariffs, travel bans and mass deportation, as the Ringer's Brian Phillips recently put it.
But there's also some evidence that Trump simply enjoys the sport. In high school, he played for the New York Military Academy's varsity squad. 'He was just the best, a good athlete, a great athlete,' Ted Levine, a former high-school classmate, told Business Insider in 2015. 'Could he play soccer? He could do anything he wanted.' In 2012, Trump considered buying the Scottish club Rangers FC; a few years later, he did the same with the Colombian side Atlético Nacional.
Meanwhile, Trump's youngest son, Barron, 19, is an avowed soccer fan, having played for D.C. United's U12 academy squad and joined his father for White House visits from United's first team and English striker Wayne Rooney.
'He was very knowledgeable about soccer, knew about D.C. United and was interested to know more,' United forward Patrick Mullins said of Barron in 2017. 'Little kid to have a passion for the game and to be knowledgeable and have a conversation with us, it makes me feel good about kids growing up playing the game.'
After the Club World Cup final, the president told Cole Palmer, Chelsea's star attacker, that Barron was his 'biggest fan.' Trump was probably mistaken; Barron actually supports Arsenal, Chelsea's main London rival. But the comment shows how the younger Trump may be influencing his father.
'I have a son who does love this sport,' Trump told Piers Morgan in 2018.
***
Whatever motivations — pure, pecuniary, political or all of the above — Trump's imprimatur has at least the potential to change the trajectory of the 'beautiful game' in America.
Elsewhere, soccer is seen as a populist sport. But in the U.S., the opposite has long been true — especially on the right, among the very people who tend to gravitate toward Trump.
'Liberals … enjoy the experience of soccer precisely because it makes them feel less American,' conservative pundit Michael Medved wrote in 2014. 'They value the beautiful game for the same reason they enjoy singing 'We Are the World,' or stubbornly support the U.N., or automatically assume the artistic superiority of films with subtitles. … Soccer provides a perfect mechanism for transcending old-school nationalism: It's not only a game of global rather than distinctively American appeal, but what's even better is that the mighty United States isn't even particularly good at it.'
It's not hard to imagine Trump embracing this view: that soccer is an essentially foreign pursuit, and that any American who likes it is actually anti-American. But he isn't. Instead, he's implying that there's no tradeoff at all, that there's nothing MAGA about rejecting soccer. Trump's supporters have been known in the past to follow his lead. Maybe they will again.
Solve the daily Crossword