Trump has no idea about football, but his World Cup has already made history

There is a magnificent football quote from Jean-Paul Sartre that condenses the essence of the Trumpist manual: “In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposing team”. Donald Trump has based his political career on an identical premise: in the United States, everything is complicated by the presence of opponents.

In the imaginary of Trumpist polarization —the most recent archives can be consulted on Truth Social—, everything is the fault of others: Democrats, immigrants, "weak" leaders in Europe, cheap cars from Beijing, and, again, immigrants. But for four months now, Sartre's phrase can have another, more mischievous reading: it is a good summary of the course of the most important military intervention of Trump's presidential life, the failed war in Iran. Trump, like Vladimir Putin in his day, imagined a lightning-fast, simple operation, which has ended up becoming entrenched and complicated because on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz there was, precisely, the presence of an opposing team that was underestimated. Trump's complications in Iran will go beyond the battlefield.

Trump has no idea about football. His sport is golf. And then comes American football, boxing, professional wrestling, and martial arts. Strength sports, like Putin's favorites. These days, however, the United States, along with Mexico and Canada —two countries, incidentally, threatened by Trump's force— are hosting the World Cup, the most important event on the footballing calendar. Sportingly, the tournament is at the beginning of the knockout stages and everything is yet to be decided. Politically, the tournament has already made history.

In an unprecedented event, the product of the geopolitical surrealism in which we are immersed, the Iranian team played football in stadiums in the United States, while Washington and Tehran were bombing each other in the Gulf. The height of delirium was on June 27: at the exact moment when Iranian footballers were competing in Seattle against Egypt, Iran had attacked a ship in Hormuz, the United States responded with bombs on southern Persia, and the ayatollahs responded with more bombs against American targets in Bahrain. The referee blew the final whistle, Egyptians and Iranians drew 1-1, and the result sent the Tehran team home. “A moment may come when we can no longer act sensibly and we are forced to complete militarily the task we began with great success. If this happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will cease to exist!”, Trump roared the next day.

For international journalists, World Cup weeks are strange. A France vs Senegal, like the one played in the group stage, is a treat. So is a Spain vs United States (a Pedro Sánchez vs Trump?) as can be played soon. Or an England vs Argentina, a quite probable semi-final. What would have happened if chance had crossed the paths of the American and Iranian teams on a football field? Probably, nothing. If in wars, reality in offices is completely alien to what soldiers experience, imagine the distance between the Oval Office or the ayatollahs' bunker and the locker rooms where the footballers prepare.

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Newspapers are also tempting. The last World Cup, that of 2022, the one Messi won, was held in Qatar. The Doha monarchy then used football to launder its image in the eyes of the world and sell itself as a guarantor of progress and stability. Today, a World Cup could not have been held in Doha. Qatar - now a negotiation center to end the war - has been one of the Gulf countries furiously punished by Iranian missiles and drones. The previous World Cup, that of 2018, was held in Russia. From those days, there are abundant photos of European leaders hugging Putin, now punished by FIFA.

Last summer, in the midst of the Russian war in Ukraine, I was walking through Kyiv with a Ukrainian soldier. He was on vacation, and we went for a walk so he could explain to me what a soldier did in his downtime, away from the front line. It became clear to me that he couldn't get the war out of his head: he spoke of perfecting drones; of enemy soldiers he killed and saw die from a screen; of the death of comrades; and of how accustomed he was to calculating his own death. At one point during the walk, he made me stop at a spot, by the Dnipro River. He said something like this: "Look, right here there was the fanzone of Spain during the European Championship. All of this was a celebration. Many Spaniards came to Kyiv". Ukraine was the host of the European Championship that Spain won in 2012. Matches were played in stadiums that are now in cities occupied by Russian troops. Matches were played in stadiums that are now used for military purposes.

Thursday, the same Ukrainian soldier sent me a photo on WhatsApp: a television broadcasting a World Cup match somewhere on the front line in Kharkiv. "If I can, I try not to miss any game".

—Who are you with? Ukraine didn't qualify in the end.

— And I'm sure it didn't qualify. Our selection is at a low ebb. Our country is at a low ebb.

The conversation would stop and resume a few hours later. He sent me another photo: a completely destroyed building. It was the Uzbek restaurant in Kyiv where we had lunch on the day of the walk, last summer. On Thursday morning, it was bombed. The soldier sent me a last photo: an image made with artificial intelligence in which Trump was seen playing soccer dressed in a kit dyed in the colors of the Russian flag.