Remember when we learned in 2018 that the United States would host the 2026 World Cup along with Mexico and Canada? Back then, it seemed like an amazing opportunity to be part of an inherently multicultural sporting event that draws the largest crowds possible.
Yeah, that feeling is gone now. Now, the World Cup is just another vehicle to curry favor with President Donald Trump by celebrating Donald Trump, and it’s so gross. Friday’s World Cup Draw, where country names are drawn out of pots to create matchups, kicked off not with soccer, but with obsequiously praising Trump, including presenting him with the ugliest trophy ever.
This state of affairs was likely inevitable because the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, is basically Trump if Trump ran a sports governing body. Infantino loves dictators, money, and making decisions in secret so there’s no accountability, using his position to hand out money to ensure loyalty.
Infantino slapped his name on the Club World Cup trophy in not one, but two places. His name appeared in the Panama Papers. At the World Cup Draw, he even sounded like Trump: ”This will be the greatest FIFA World Cup ever. It is much more than a sporting event, it is simply the greatest event that humanity will ever see.”
It was also inevitable that Infantino would shape the World Cup around Trump, so he invented the FIFA Peace Prize on the fly to present to Trump during the draw. According to Trump, he has ended eleventy wars, a claim that does not hold up under scrutiny, but that little detail wasn’t going to stop Infantino from giving Trump a consolation prize since he can’t nab a Nobel Peace Prize.
Would you want that thing in your house?
This is where the comically ugly trophy comes in. It’s so ugly that even The New York Times called it ugly. You can go see for yourself—or not, if you feel like this thing might haunt your dreams.
The trophy is a bunch of weird, elongated, witchy hands reaching up from the base of the trophy to grab a globe, with Trump’s name appearing below. Frankly, it looks a lot like Infantino wanted to convey to Trump that he owns the whole world.
Infantino literally bowed when he presented it to Trump and also gave him a gold medal, and then let Trump give a little speech praising himself: “This is truly one of the great honors of my life. Beyond awards, we saved millions and millions of lives. The fact that we could do that, so many different wars that were able to end in some cases right before they started, it was great to get them done. I want to thank my family, my great first lady Melania. Thank you very much. You are going to have an event the likes of which the world has never seen. The world is a safer place now, the United States a year ago was not doing too well and it’s the hottest place anywhere right now.”
Well, if by “hottest,” you mean “most hellish,” then sure.
Infantino said that the award was “on behalf of football-loving people around the world,” which is probably a surprise to most football-loving people around the world and also a surprise to the rest of FIFA. The 37-member council wasn’t involved in creating the award, the 211-member FIFA Congress didn’t vote to create the award, nor did they vote on who would win.
Related | Trump finally gets his ‘peace prize’
And as far as the rest of the world, football-loving and otherwise? Well, Trump is currently bragging about bombing random boats in the Caribbean, being totally down with murdering shipwrecked survivors, ruthlessly attacking immigrants, and deporting people to brutal prisons.
Even the World Cup itself is not exactly a peaceful thing under Trump. During the Club World Cup earlier this year, a smaller lead-in to the 2026 World Cup, Customs and Border Patrol said they would “act as security” in Miami and told the local news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel would also be there, and any non-citizens needed to have their papers on them.
Vice President JD Vance also made sure to tell people from other countries who come to watch the Cup to make sure to get the f*ck out when things were done: “Of course everyone is welcome to come and see this wonderful event. We want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the games,” Vance said. “But when the time is up we want them to go home, otherwise they will have to talk to [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem.”
Nothing says peace and football-loving like threatening to deport soccer fans, right? FIFA and Infantino should be up in arms about a host country behaving this way, but corrupt people love corrupt people, and Infantino and Trump are a match made in hell.
