By Ryu Spaeth, a features editor at New York
It was as if Donald Trump had forgotten a World Cup was being played on American soil. With the glaring exception of the administration’s disgraceful treatment of the Iranian team, which was forced to shuttle back and forth to Mexico, the tournament had, as of early July, remained largely unaffected. All the controversies surrounding the World Cup at the outset — the extortionate ticket prices, FIFA’s unseemly relationship with despots and oligarchs, the specter of foreign fans being targeted by immigration officials — were muscled aside like so many defenders standing in the path of Erling Haaland. FIFA was putting on a superspectacle that, with 16 additional teams, had shown the greatest sporting contest on earth could get bigger and better. As Tom Brady posted on X, “Best World Cup ever????”
Trump, however, couldn’t resist putting himself at the center of attention. In a now-infamous intervention, he called FIFA president Gianni Infantino to argue that, in his studied opinion, the U.S. star striker Folarin Balogun had been unfairly red-carded in the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, resulting in Balogun’s automatic suspension from the next one, against Belgium in the crucial Round of 16. A day before that game, FIFA reversed the suspension, to the absolute delight of American fans and the utter horror of almost everyone else. (Infantino denied in a statement that Trump’s call influenced the reversal decision.)
Here perhaps was the kind of nightmare many people had feared: the American president seemingly using his considerable influence with FIFA to rig the match. It was both pathetic (surely Trump has more important things to do) and a little scary. In the end, the U.S. crashed out of the tournament the way it usually does, in comically inept fashion. Balogun barely had an impact on the game; the Americans gave the ball away at every turn and were bullied by Belgians who were faster and stronger and seemingly extra motivated to kick some American butt. Balogun-gate served only to heighten the drama and the catharsis, and one almost suspects that Trump, showman that he is, knew that would happen.
It is tempting to see the American embrace of Trump’s actions as reflecting our fallen state. FIFA is corrupt anyway, the logic goes, so why not play along? This attitude is commonplace among the MAGA faithful, who excuse Trump’s behavior on the basis that politics is already hopelessly compromised, as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer pointed out. But another great theme of Trumpism is that everything is entertainment. And here is where Trump and FIFA are most aligned, jointly overseeing a tournament whose scale is simply too epic, its emotions too high, for any force to knock it off its axis. Trump himself described it best: “Every game is like a Super Bowl.” Despite the corruption, and maybe even because of it, this really may be the best World Cup ever.
FIFA naturally would like us to credit Infantino, who came up with the idea to enlarge the tournament to a bulging 48 teams. Infantino has presided over the games like the authoritarians he is so chummy with, using a private jet to crisscross the North American continent, his unsmiling visage stamped on the World Cup like a dictator on his country’s currency. He wants the World Cup to be wholly associated with his person, and indeed the more you watch him frowning down on the action from the VIP seats, the more you realize that his bald, perfectly smooth head resembles nothing so much as a soccer ball.
But Infantino did not create the conditions for this expanded tournament’s success — namely, that most of the teams are actually good. World Cups used to be lopsided affairs with the talent concentrated in about half a dozen countries. In years past, a 48-nation tournament would have resulted in a surfeit of god-awful soccer. This year, we have been treated to a bonanza: tons of goals, intensely fought matches, unbelievable swings of fortune. The best game so far might have been England against Mexico, a storm-wracked contest played near the clouds at the famed Estadio Azteca, an Olympian 7,220 feet above sea level. Honorable mentions go to Egypt and tiny Cabo Verde (population 530,000) pushing Argentina to the limit in the knockout rounds, forcing the defending champion to score three increasingly frantic goals in each match to put them away.
That the overall level of play has risen to vertiginous heights, that nearly all the players are superhumanly fit and professionalized, and that classic powers struggle to fend off emerging ones is primarily the result of European club soccer becoming ever more popular, which in turn results in ever higher tides of money pouring into the sport. The cup runs over so abundantly that countries like Senegal and Morocco can stock their teams with players of Senegalese and Moroccan ancestry who have spent their entire lives in Europe being trained to be killers by top clubs.
Much has been made of the diasporic nature of this tournament: The traditional giants are packed with the descendants of immigrants and the colonized, while the upstarts feature players who have in a sense reverse-migrated to where their families came from. (Fifty-four players at the World Cup grew up in the hardscrabble suburbs of Paris alone, far more than are playing for the French team.) These global crosscurrents tell a story of violence, conquest, and displacement, but what really makes this world go round, at least when it comes to soccer, is cash. And the cash, spilling down to leagues in South America, Africa, and Asia, often comes from corrupt, politically connected figures: Middle Eastern tyrants, American billionaires, European oligarchs. These are figures who commit human-rights abuses, make all kinds of shady deals with all kinds of shady people, and have a predilection for breaking the rules.
The results for the sport as a whole are there for all to see, especially those who have watched a lot of World Cups and can tell the difference. This World Cup has simply been stunning, a compilation of moments that form a dizzying mosaic. I am thinking of Egypt’s Mohamed Salah taking a penalty so cheeky and deceptive that the goalkeeper appeared to collapse in despair; of Kylian Mbappé skipping across the box so quickly that he seemed to be teleporting; and of Lionel Messi’s astonishing first touch in his goal against Cabo Verde, in which he cradled the ball gently to sleep before firing it into the roof of the net.
Mostly I am thinking of Michael Olise’s bicycle kick in France’s game against Sweden in the Round of 32. The ball popped up high at the top of the box, and in a sudden blur of movement, he was wheeling his boot over his head, his hips torquing miraculously through the air, smashing the ball against the post. It was an outrageous attempt, an angry outburst of volcanic power tempered by effervescent grace.
It’s destined to join the canon of famous World Cup missed chances, such as Pelé’s “most magnificent dummy” in 1970 and Andrea Pirlo’s dark-magic free kick against England in 2014. What I appreciate about such moments is their aesthetic imperfection, their evocation of what might have been — a bit like life itself, which almost always leaves us wanting something more.
As far as soccer goes, though, the World Cup has given us more than enough. And it all rests on a mountain of money, no small amount of which was obtained through unsavory means. We like to think that corruption stops at the edge of the brightly lit field, that the darkness surrounding it is held back by the stadium’s clean, sweeping lines. But even the best goal you witnessed in this tournament is tainted. As Trump has known all along, it turns out corruption is a lot of fun.
