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 press archive 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 ironic 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, wrestling, and martial arts. Strength sports, like Putin's favorites. These days, however, the United States, along with Mexico and Canada –two countries, by the way, threatened by Trump's power–, are welcoming the World Cup, the most important event in footballing agendas. Sportingly, the tournament is at the start of the knockout stages and everything is yet to be decided. Politically, the tournament has already made history.

In an unprecedented event, a product of the geopolitical surrealism we are currently in, the Iranian team played soccer in United States stadiums while Washington and Tehran were bombing each other in the Gulf. The height of delirium was on June 27: at the exact moment Iranian footballers were competing in Seattle against Egypt, Iran had attacked a ship in Hormuz, and the United States was responding with bombs on the southern part of the Persian country.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 prudently 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.

What would have happened if fate had crossed the paths of the American and Iranian teams on a football field? Probably nothing. If in wars the reality in the offices is completely alien to what the soldiers experience, imagine the distance between the Oval Office or the ayatollahs' bunker and the locker rooms where footballers prepare.

Capricious newspaper libraries

For international journalists, World Cup weeks are strange. 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 embracing Putin. The Ukrainian team narrowly missed qualification and could not play any matches on Russian territory during those days. Putin's non-participation in the World Cup – now punished by FIFA – was a national mourning.

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 tell me what a soldier did in his downtime, away from the front. It was 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 how he had become accustomed to calculating his own death. At one point during the walk, he stopped me at a spot, by the Dnipro River. He said something like this: "Look, right here was the fanzone of Spain during the European Championship. All this was a celebration. Many Spaniards came to Kyiv. Ukraine hosted the European Championship that Spain won in 2012. Matches were played in stadiums that are now located in cities occupied by Russian troops. Matches were played in stadiums that are now used for military purposes.

Thursday the same Ukrainian soldier - who before the war was a lawyer and traveled around Europe following Dynamo Kyiv - sent me a photo on WhatsApp: a television broadcasting a World Cup match somewhere on the Kharkiv front. "If I can, I try not to miss any game".

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

–And that it was not classified. Our selection is at a low ebb. Our country is at a low ebb.

The conversation stopped and resumed a few hours later. She sent me another photo: a completely destroyed building. It was the Uzbek restaurant in Kyiv where we had lunch on the day of our walk, last summer. Thursday in the early morning it was bombed. On Instagram, the restaurant announced that they were broadcasting World Cup matches these days.