As with most things associated with Trump, his participation in FIFA’s minor canon came with a generous helping of slapdash corruption. Trump had already helped himself to the trophy meant for the tournament’s winners, claimed as a piece of bric-a-brac to display in the Oval Office, so Chelsea’s triumphant squad had to be presented with a replica of the original. (The president insisted the winners’ trophy was gifted to him by FIFA.) The kleptomania didn’t end there: Trump was filmed tucking away a championship medal in the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket at the event.
Chelsea midfielder Cole Palmer, who scored two of the team’s three goals for the title win, said later he was “confused” by the lingering Trump. “I knew he was going to be here, but I didn’t know he was going to be on the stand when we lifted the trophy,” Palmer added.
Trump named as the executive director of his new World Cup task force former small-time pro-golfer and short-time Republican candidate for New York governor Andrew Giuliani, 39, son of one-time New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a main defender of Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was rigged. The task forces will be part of Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security.
A decade later, FIFA is back in the building. And with it comes millions of dollars—involving security, sponsorships, sports gear, and memorabilia—that have been and are being negotiated. Trump, whose private companies continue to profit from deals with corporations and nations even as he serves in the White House, is calling the shots in the U.S.
Besides providing a fresh opportunity for profit and kickbacks, the World Cup in the U.S. promises politically to be a jarring mix of global cooperation, talented athletes from around the world, and the Trump administration’s “suited and booted” ICE men poised to pounce on people attending the matches from around the world. It threatens to be a modern-day taste of Hitler’s 1936 Summer Olympics, when Germany hosted the global games while aiming at the same time to highlight Nazi domination.
U.S. prosecutors accused individuals (and collaborators) of FIFA’s exclusive 24-member executive committee of choosing World Cup venues and awarding contracts influenced by hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes. According to the indictments, the head of FIFA’s regional Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, or CONCACAF, Blazer’s boss Jack Warner, raked in $10 million alone for voting for South Africa to be a World Cup venue, a fraction of his total take. Warner, who lives in Trinidad, has denied all the charges and has stayed out of the U.S. since his indictment.
By the time federal agents confronted Blazer outside Trump Tower in November 2011, he had raked in his own multi-million-dollar income, helping himself to at least a 10 percent cut of every deal he made, and an additional untold fortune under the table throughout his 11-year reign as CONCACAF general secretary. He paid no taxes for 20 years, Gaeta noted, a fact leveraged by agents to force his cooperation in their investigation.
Gaeta credited Blazer with nailing down needed information that ultimately resulted in the dramatic arrests by Swiss authorities of FIFA officials outside the Baur au Lac Hotel in Zurich in May 2015. Like the mobster wiseguys Gaeta had worked with, he said Blazer was “practical, getting the most benefit as quickly as possible” working with the FBI to stay out of prison. “At some point he started to take to the work,” Gaeta added.
Trump had nothing to do with FIFA or CONCACAF then, but the crafty, ebullient Blazer—who tipped the scales at 450-plus pounds and needed a motorized mobility chair to get around and a breathing apparatus at night—was friendly with his neighbor and building owner, who lived in Trump Tower’s two-story penthouse. Both were Queens men with a chip on their shoulders about snooty Manhattan society. Trump offered Blazer open invitations to his various beauty pageants, and Blazer took him up on them.
The money to be made and expended in the U.S. World Cup games is unclear. A FIFA accounting mashing together figures for 2023-2026 reported a budget for the 2026 Word Cup of $3.75 billion, though specific expenses weren’t detailed. Listed revenue apparently for all FIFA events included some $4.2 billion in broadcasting rights and $3 billion in hospitality and ticket sales. Cost estimates for Vancouver alone for its World Cup games are already edging close to half-a-billion U.S. dollars.
Nor did the White House provide any figures, including costs like Giuliani’s salary, the number of task force staffers or a budget for them, or how much rent the Trump Organization will be paid for the World Cup offices. Trump’s task force will be responsible for all World Cup “logistics and security,” according to his executive order establishing the group.
FIFA comes out way ahead in stadium agreements, according to one recently obtained by The New York Times. It will take full control of New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, 30 days before the opening World Cup match until seven days after the tournament, according to the deal. The city and stadium, meanwhile, shall “bear all the costs and expenses incurred,” including “providing police escorts” for teams, referees and FIFA head Infantino and his delegation. The city is also expected to “provide medical services and fire protection around matches” and any required FIFA offices free of charge.
But there have been warning signs that next year’s event won’t be quite as successful as touted. The recently-concluded Club World Cup, intended to goose interest in the bigger tournament to come, was far less than the windfall that was hoped for, with discounted and empty seats and complaints about the extreme heat during some of the matches. The World Cup will play out next year during the same hot summer months.
In addition, countless sports fans hail from the 12 countries whose travelers have been banned from entering the U.S. as of June 9 in an executive order signed by Trump. The order includes an exemption for athletes, coaches and support staff, and “immediate relatives” traveling to the Cup or to the 2028 Olympics in the U.S.
Qatar’s aim in hosting the Cup in 2022 was part of its “sportswashing” strategy, a bid to boost the reputation of the regime to become a player on the global scene. It worked as intended, particularly with the leader of the United States. Qatar is now supplying a $400 million “flying palace” to a grateful Donald Trump to use as his Air Force One. (“Why wouldn’t I accept a gift?” he asked in a Fox television interview.) And the president’s family is currently doing business with a Qatari government-owned company to build a luxury golf resort in the country.
“I saved his ass,” Trump later boasted about his defense of the prince amid the outcry over Khashoggi’s killing in an interview with Washington Post author Bob Woodward. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop,” Trump said, Woodward recounted in his book Rage.
Despite such recent developments, Gaeta is convinced the dramatic FIFA busts in Zurich ten years ago and subsequent cases sparked by a powerful FBI investigation sent a strong message to “extremely wealthy international businessmen abusing the system and making the rules for themselves” that they “can’t do everything they want, and there are consequences.”
That’s “still in the back of their minds,” Gaeta said. We shall see.
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