How Donald Trump became FIFA’s ‘soccer president’ long before World Cup draw

WASHINGTON – On Friday, the eyes of the soccer world turn to the United States capital as nations learn the identity of their group stage opponents for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Many headlines from this draw, however, will likely be dominated by one man: U.S. President Donald Trump.

This, after all, appears to be an event World Cup organizer FIFA has constructed in his image and to his taste.

Alexi Lalas, the former U.S. men’s national team international and Fox Sports soccer analyst, calls Trump the “soccer president” and it is certainly difficult to recall any U.S. president who has taken such a shine to the sport; the most popular on the planet but sometimes fighting for relevance in the imagination of the American public.

FIFA had originally formulated plans for an all-singing and all-dancing draw in Las Vegas, replicating the event that preceded the 1994 World Cup, where there were star turns by Stevie Wonder, James Brown and Robin Williams. Yet as those negotiations with venues in Vegas advanced, FIFA’s most senior executives always kept open the option of the draw taking place in D.C., such was the desire for Trump to play a key role on the day.

Those Vegas plans were officially shelved when the administration suggested the president preferred the event to go somewhere much closer to home. Since his return to power, Trump and his allies have taken over the previously bipartisan board of trustees at the John F. Kennedy Center, the performing arts venue in D.C. As such, FIFA opted for the Kennedy Center.

Andrew Giuliani, son of former New York City mayor and Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, is the director of the White House FIFA World Cup Task Force, which is chaired by Trump. He has previously described Friday’s event as the “MAGA-FIFA World Cup draw,” according to the Associated Press.

This will be most obvious during the draw when FIFA awards its inaugural peace prize to Trump. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who describes himself as a close friend of Trump, wrote on Instagram to say Trump deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which instead went to Venezuelan democracy advocate Maria Corina Machado. According to multiple people familiar with FIFA’s preparations, all of whom will remain anonymous to protect relationships, the plan in recent days and weeks has been to invite Trump to receive his award and give an acceptance speech, which is slated to last a few minutes. FIFA is not expected to stringently enforce a time limit. Both FIFA and the White House declined to comment on the plans.

Trump and Infantino’s close relationship extended to a photo opportunity at a peace summit in Egypt in October. (Yoan Valat / Pool / AFP / Getty Images)

The event will also include several hallmarks of MAGA culture. The Village People, whose 1978 hit song “Y.M.C.A.” has been adopted by Trump as a personal anthem during rallies and campaign events, have been invited to perform at the draw. So too has one of his favorite tenors, Andrea Bocelli, who will open the ceremony. The Trump family were attending Bocelli concerts as far back as 2011 and the Italian sang for Trump in the Oval Office earlier this year.

Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian ice hockey legend, will assist in the draw formalities and was at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., on the night of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Gretzky and his wife, Janet, also attended Trump’s presidential inauguration in January, along with Infantino.

Tom Brady, seven-time Super Bowl champion, is another draw assistant. He is a former golf buddy of Trump’s who served as a judge at Trump’s Miss USA pageant in 2002, while he was also in Trump’s suite during the Club World Cup final this past summer. Brady has previously insisted his closeness to Trump has been “mischaracterized” and stopped short of any political endorsement.

Earlier this year, FIFA took office space at Trump Tower in New York City, despite already having a U.S. office in Miami. “Our success is your success,” Infantino said, while thanking the president’s son Eric and the Trump Organization for their support.

At varying times, Trump has had both the Club World Cup and World Cup trophy in the Oval Office. Infantino even gave Trump a little hold of the World Cup trophy in August, explaining that only the FIFA president and presidents of countries who win the trophy can touch it “because it is for winners only, and you are a winner.”

While wearing a baseball cap that read ‘Trump was right about everything,” the U.S. president said: “Can I keep it?…That’s a beautiful piece of gold.” At the Club World Cup final in July, Trump joined Infantino to present the trophy to Premier League team Chelsea and then stayed in the middle of the players as they lifted their prize.

Trump joined Chelsea on stage for celebrations at the FIFA Club World Cup final (Jean Catuffe / Getty Images)

In the 1970s, Trump caught his first taste of elite soccer. “Many years ago, when I was young, there was a player named Pelé who played for a team called the Cosmos,” Trump told DAZN in July. “I went to see him play, and he was fantastic. So I may sound old-fashioned, but I’d say Pelé was more than excellent.”

Only last month, Trump hosted a modern day superstar when Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portugal forward, visited the White House on the same day Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman returned to D.C. for the first time in seven years. Ronaldo plays for Saudi team Al-Nassr, which is majority owned by Saudi sovereign wealth fund the Public Investment Fund (PIF).

More recently, Trump’s interest in soccer has been more strategic. The World Cup is a sporting event which attracts billions of eyeballs and Trump has always recognized a product which is a ratings hit. More than 20 million Americans now participate in soccer, which is more than the combined participation of flag, tackle, touch and 7-on-7 football.

Like many parents across the U.S., Trump’s awareness of soccer has also been stimulated by his children, most notably 19-year-old Barron, who had a soccer goal in the White House garden during Trump’s first term. He was once photographed on the White House lawn in an Arsenal jersey. When the former Manchester United player Wayne Rooney played for D.C. United in MLS, Rooney met up with a teenage Barron at the White House to offer advice, with Barron then playing in youth teams for Rooney’s club. The former England international then joined Trump on the golf course.

Trump’s interest in major sports has not been limited to soccer. In this term, he has attended the Super Bowl, UFC fights, the Daytona 500, the NCAA Wrestling Championships, the Ryder Cup and the U.S. Open men’s tennis final. Yet FIFA appears uniquely in thrall to the U.S. president, with Infantino taking more trips to the Oval Office than any world leader since January.

Jared Kushner (right) was heavily involved in the joint bid to land the 2026 World Cup. (Giorgio Viera / AFP / Getty Images)

Trump can also claim some responsibility for bringing the World Cup to the United States because he was the president when the U.S., Canada and Mexico jointly won their bid to host the 2026 tournament ahead of Morocco in 2018. Since beginning his second term, he has often repeated this claim in speeches. Certainly, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, became a key contact in the White House for the bid and helped secure key votes. According to reporting by Vanity Fair, Kushner “directly asked” Prince Mohammed for his nation’s support as early as the summer of 2017 during a visit to the country.

Most people might have presumed he would either be re-elected in 2020 for a second consecutive term, or exit presidential politics, rather than returning for a second term in 2025. But Trump is in charge for the World Cup and perhaps Infantino was one of the few people who mitigated for this potential and nurtured the relationship.

After three visits to the White House during Trump’s first term, as well as golfing trips and a lunch at Davos, the pair remained in touch even during Trump’s period in the relative political wilderness. Then, when Trump was under scrutiny in his first term — such as the week the U.S. Senate introduced ground rules for Trump’s impeachment trial — Infantino described Trump as a “competitor…who says what many think.”

After Trump won last November’s election, Infantino visited him at Mar-a-Lago during the presidential transition. He invited Trump’s daughter Ivanka and grandson Theo to make the ceremonial first pick of the FIFA Club World Cup draw last December.

Infantino’s relationship with Trump has, at times, irritated his own colleagues in soccer. In May, Infantino arrived hours late for FIFA’s congress in Paraguay after he prioritized a visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia with Trump. UEFA, the European confederation, accused Infantino of pursuing “private political interests” which “does the game no service”. Infantino subsequently apologised for being late: “I decided to spend the last two days in the Middle East, knowing the 2034 World Cup will be in Saudi Arabia and the 2022 World Cup was in Qatar. The 2025 Club World Cup and 2026 World Cup will be in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Some important World Cup discussions took place and I needed to be there to represent football and all of you. We had an issue with our flight, which made this delay happen — apologies, sorry, and I am looking forward to spending time with you here.” Infantino also joined Trump at a summit in Egypt in October as Trump and world leaders signed a declaration aimed at bringing peace to Gaza.

This all begs the question: why?

The men’s World Cup, which drives the vast proportion of FIFA revenues, still required White House assistance on multiple issues, most notably a $625million funding commitment on security which Trump signed off following intensive lobbying by the World Cup host cities. FIFA has also secured a concession because the White House signed off the FIFA Pass, which will allow ticket holders for the World Cup an expedited visa appointment. This is particularly important because wait times for visa appointments remain around a year in several nations who have qualified for the tournament. Trump continues to threaten host cities with relocating games if he does not deem them sufficiently “safe”.

Canada head coach Jesse Marsch has criticized Trump’s 51st state rhetoric. (Catherine Ivill / AMA / Getty Images)

Infantino’s position has been made more delicate by relations between Trump, Canada and Mexico, with trade wars and hostile rhetoric bubbling up in his second term. Jesse Marsch, the American coach of Canada’s national team, described Trump’s comments calling for Canada to be the 51st U.S. state “unsettling and frankly insulting.”

This week, Marsch told The Athletic: “Trump is a polarizing figure and he’s very outward about everything he does. I’m respectful of the presidency and I’m respectful of the draw more than anything. This is a big moment for every team that’s made it to the World Cup. I’m really hopeful just to have a very clean, uneventful draw where everybody can appreciate the experience of what the World Cup is going to be.”

The Canadians, whose Prime Minister, Mark Carney, will attend the draw, are being diplomatic ahead of the draw. In an interview with The Athletic, sports minister Adam van Koeverden said he was not prepared to speak about “hypotheticals” of what the draw might be like, when asked how he would feel about a MAGA-themed draw. Asked if the U.S. president deserves a FIFA Peace Prize, he said: ‘That’s not up to me…it is not my place to say.”

Others are expressing concerns. On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch organized a news conference which included speakers from many of the U.S.’s leading civil society organizations. Jamal Watkins, a vice-President of the NAACP, an American civil rights organization founded in 1909, described the relationship between Infantino and Trump as “too close for comfort.”

He said: “What we’re finding is that when Infantino aligns with Donald Trump, then you’re sending a signal not only to the United States, but to the world, that all the practices and policies coming out of this administration are OK or justified.”

Jamal Watkins, a NAACP vice president, raised concerns about the Trump-Infantino relationship. (Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images)

Jamil Dakwar, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Peace Prize is an “insult to the intelligence” of soccer fans. He questioned the transparency of the award, because FIFA has published no selection criteria. The Athletic this week reported that the FIFA Council and vice presidents had no consultation or awareness of the prize prior to it circulating in a FIFA press release in November. Dakwar said FIFA is at risk of becoming a public relations tool to “normalize an increasingly authoritarian U.S. government.”

FIFA appears to have fewer concerns. One senior FIFA official, speaking anonymously as he was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter, said on Thursday that the Peace Prize “can be bigger than the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“Look at football’s reach around the world,” they continued. “And look at the impact it makes to people’s lives. Why shouldn’t we recognize those that want to help bring peace to a divided world?”

When approached about plans for Trump to speak at the draw, White House spokesman David Ingle told The Athletic: “The United States of America has never been more respected or successful than it is now under President Trump’s historic leadership. America is the hottest country in the world right now, which makes us the perfect country to host one of the greatest sporting events in history – the FIFA World Cup 2026.”