This year in New York, Fifa opened an office in Trump Tower. Good politicking. An easy decision to take in furtherance of diplomacy, it helped keep football on the right side of an irascible US president.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino took his fawning levels up a notch this week when he was pictured with world leaders in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, flanking the leader of the free world.
But despite Infantino’s globetrotting and full-throated support, on Tuesday Donald Trump decided to flex his muscles over where next year’s World Cup in the USA can and can’t be staged.
It took Trump only a few soundbites to draw the event into the middle of the political wars he is waging against some of the cities chosen to host matches, including Boston, San Francisco and Seattle.
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“Boston has a bad mayor, who at least is a reasonable-IQ person. You know, most of them are low IQ,” said Trump of the Democratic mayor Michelle Wu.
“Boston, she’s got four areas that are wrong . . . somebody said would we think about taking the World Cup away from Boston if they don’t straighten it out. And the answer is yes; we have the right to do that with Fifa.”
The man who ended eight wars in eight months seamlessly opened a ninth on another front.
Boston is part of a second wave of White House interference in various World Cup themes that has got soccer fans in the US increasingly queasy.
It came on the back of a statement the US president made last month that Seattle and San Francisco are ”run by radical left lunatics who don’t know what they’re doing".
That in turn followed a raft of visa restrictions announced by the administration for certain countries. In June, a proclamation was issued limiting the entry of people from 19 nations, mostly in Africa and the Middle East.
The travel ban included Iran, one of the countries that has qualified for next year’s tournament. While there is an exception in place for World Cup players, coaches, and their immediate relatives, no exemptions exist for extended family, friends or fans.
The 65,000 capacity Boston Stadium in Foxborough, 35km southwest of the city, is scheduled to host seven matches next summer, five in the group stage, one in the round of 32 and a quarter-final on July 9th.
Beantown is not alone in feeling under siege. Comments have also been made about moving matches from the “troubled” areas in the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle, which are due to host six matches each.
There is division over whether the federal authority exists to move games. Each host city is locked into a contract with Fifa. As Mayor Wu pointed out on Wednesday, they are private business deals.
But the administration could create a very difficult environment by putting pressure on stakeholders to back out of the agreements.
It can also withhold federal funding, as it has done in California in matters unrelated to the World Cup, or threaten to make life miserable for a cohort of fans, as it did for this year’s Fifa Club World Cup.
According to the New York Times, US Customs and Border Protection announced on its Facebook page and other social channels in June that its agents would be “suited and booted ready to provide security for the first round of games”.
It noted that the Fifa Club World Cup, which was won by Chelsea, began at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium. That unsettled potential supporters and posed a bigger question as to whether the Trump administration’s immigration agenda can coexist with a global sporting event like the World Cup.
Alternatively, Infantino is only a phone call away. Wrecking the World Cup schedule to punish Boston might test the bromance, but it is something Trump is prepared to do. He has said as much.
“If someone is doing a bad job and I feel there’s unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni [Infantino], the head of Fifa, who is phenomenal, and say let’s move it to another location,” said Trump this week.
“And he would do that. He wouldn’t love to do it, but he’d do it. Very easily, he’d do it.”
The obsequious relationship has been well observed, no less than in August following one of several meetings between the two in the Oval Office.
Wearing a “Trump Was Right About Everything” cap, the US president was permitted to hold the World Cup trophy. Infantino said Argentina’s 2022 World Cup-winning captain, Lionel Messi, was the last person to touch it.
Yesterday, Reuters reported that senior figures behind the 2026 tournament dismissed concerns that matches which have taken almost a decade of planning could be moved. But they won’t be the people receiving a call from the Commander in chief.
The president of Fifa will. If that happens, the question is whether Infantino has the courage to say “no sir” when asked to take out Boston and disrupt his own World Cup schedule.
