NEW YORK – The gold-tinged corridors of Manhattan’s Trump Tower was the perfect send-off for the pageantry of Gianni Infantino’s Roman Empire alongside the US President. In the last throes of World Cup absurdity, two messianic figures declared this “the greatest human, social and cultural event that mankind has witnessed”.
In the mind of Infantino the past seven weeks has carried such megalomaniacal importance that two spheres, the historical and the sporting, have blurred. For Donald Trump, the stakes are entirely political. Before November’s mid-terms, his approval rating is at -22 – a combination of the war in Iran, the delayed release of the Epstein files and confidence in his handling of the economy the lowest it has been in his political career.
But in Maga-land, the World Cup has been a vindication of Republican policy at home and abroad – from the conflict with a competing nation to the intervention over Folarin Balogun’s red card.
Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Republican Party of LA County, was in the SoFi Stadium to watch Iran play New Zealand in front of thousands of fans from the diaspora.
‘It was a Trumpian moment’
“I would bet in that stadium, although there’s obviously hostility between the current regime and the United States foreign policy, I would bet 90 per cent of the Iranian people there are unbelievably supportive of President Trump,” she tells The i Paper.
“In Los Angeles, the nickname is Tehran-geles – T-E-H-R-A-N-G-E-L-E-S. There’s real relief that there is an American president who understands the plight of the Persian people who have been subjugated by this theocracy that’s in charge.”
Before the Iranian team arrived, Trump asked whether it was “appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety”. The squad faced travel restrictions and heightened security measures throughout, Iran coach Amir Ghalenoei complaining they had been treated “unfairly”.
Likewise, the Belgian FA said it was “astonished” by the suspension of USA striker Balogun’s red card to allow him to play in their last-16 tie, following an extraordinary intervention from Trump.
Thousands of Iranian diaspora fans in LA (Photo: Getty)“I think it was funny that he got the red card rescinded for one of our star players”, Ian McMath of the New York Young Republican Club tells The i Paper. “A lot of Americans are learning the rules of the game as it happens, so I didn’t know that there could be an arbitration committee about that.
“A lot of people had funny memes about that, people were sharing jokes online. Do you think it was an outrage, or do you think it was a display of Trump standing up for our team and saying, ‘hey, let’s review this, I think it’s not fair’? I think that people see that as an example of his leadership. It was very Trumpian; it was in character to try to get the best deal for our team.”
Fifty-one percent of Americans polled believed it was wrong of Trump to influence the decision – and that was not the only clash between the US administration and the World Cup’s established norms.
Andrew Giuliani, the White House’s World Cup task force executive director, backed Argentinia players holding up a banner declaring “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” (The Falklands are Argentinian) after beating England. Giuliani described it as an example of the “first amendment right” to free speech, despite the stunt violating Fifa laws against political statements.
‘They made it sound like he was the fourth Reich’
Giuliani also defended Trump over the Balogun affair, wrongly claiming the referee who issued the red card had been investigated for match-fixing in 2014. Raphael Claus in fact only gave testimony to a trial and was not accused of wrongdoing. Guiliani insisted that still made him “akin to that investigation”.
Underlying tensions between the co-hosts – the US, Mexico and Canada – were kept at bay despite violence south of the border earlier this year and Trump’s vows to turn Canada into a “51st US state”. Instead the first major controversy erupted when Somalian referee Omar Artan was barred from entering the USA.
“People tried to maintain the political implications, because that’s the lens political people see everything through,” Hoge says. “Of course, you wouldn’t let someone who’s on a terror watch list in… People keep trying to make it very political.”
Trump and Infantino’s alliance defined this World Cup (Photo: Getty)There is no evidence Omar was on a terror list and he has been selected by Uefa to officiate August’s Super Cup.
“If there is a political lesson [from the World Cup],” Hoge believes it was to be found in the Norwegian Viking row: “We don’t have to get offended by anyone celebrating their nationality, because it brings joy to people”.
Trump was almost entirely absent from the games themselves, barring a late cameo at the final in which he briefly refused to move out of the picture while Spain lifted the trophy. Perhaps unsurprising, given he was first shown how a red card worked in the Oval Office by Infantino in 2018. The tournament has nevertheless done what it was designed to do, for the millions of international eyes on the US.
“When I lived in Beijing, I’d read the international press, the Guardian, the BBC, I’d read the New York Times, Washington Post – the international media filter people get their information through about America is overwhelmingly negative,” McMath says.
“I myself was, in a way, deceived about what America was like. Trump’s first term, the international media made it sound like he was basically the fourth Reich. The news makes their living off outrage.
“They have an agenda, green energy agenda, a no borders, international, universal human rights agenda which I think has been detrimental to the character of countries that people want to go to because of mass migration. And they painted America as a racist, dangerous place. I’m glad through people just coming here to enjoy the sport, that they’re breaking through that barrier and experiencing America firsthand.”
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Daniel Storey: Nine absurd ways this World Cup changed football forever Kevin Garside: England players have made a mockery of Tuchel’s insultsTo Americans getting to grips with football for the first time, it was a wake-up call, Hoge admits, to discover there would be no “fairytale ending” of a US trophy lift.
“I’ve never seen soccer surpassing American football or basketball or baseball or hockey,” adds McMath. “But hey, I could be wrong. The rest of the world should hope and pray that America does not become that interested in soccer.
“And if we do, then the rest of the world can just say goodbye to ever winning, ever again.”
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