Spain lift their second World Cup trophy, confetti cannons fire gold into the MetLife air, and standing right in the middle of it all — refusing to move — is Donald Trump. FIFA President Gianni Infantino physically tried to usher him away. It didn't work.
Trump was booed loudly as he walked onto the field after the final. He waved anyway. When he appeared on the big screen after the national anthem, the crowd was more mixed — which, given the hostility earlier, probably felt like a win to him. He stood next to Spain's squad for the trophy lift, beamed through the gold confetti shower, and looked entirely comfortable in a moment that wasn't his.
The Balogun affair was the real flashpoint
The trophy ceremony was awkward. The Folarin Balogun episode was something else entirely.
After the US forward received a red card in the round-of-32 win over Bosnia — earning an automatic one-game ban that would have ruled him out of the Belgium match — Trump called Infantino directly to discuss the play. FIFA then, surprisingly, suspended the ban on a one-year probationary basis. Trump later said he didn't tell Infantino what to do. "I didn't tell him what to do," he said, adding it would have been a "stain" on the tournament if Balogun had missed the game.
The US lost to Belgium anyway. But the damage to FIFA's credibility as an independent body landed regardless of the scoreline. When a head of state can call the governing body's president and watch a disciplinary ruling shift days later, the optics are impossible to defend — and no post-hoc clarification fixes that.
The Infantino-Trump relationship had been conspicuous long before this tournament. FIFA rented office space in Trump Tower. The World Cup draw was relocated to Washington at Trump's request, held at the Kennedy Centre. At that event, Infantino presented Trump with FIFA's inaugural peace prize — a murky honour that drew immediate derision from human rights organisations who saw it plainly for what it was: institutional flattery dressed up as ceremony.
A tournament that belonged to one man — and it wasn't a footballer
Trump had framed this World Cup as a centrepiece of his second term from the start. The hosting rights were secured during his first term, and he treated the 48-team, 104-match spectacle — the largest in the tournament's history — as something close to a personal project. Cabinet members rotated through matches across the summer. Marco Rubio at the opener. Howard Lutnick at Bosnia. Usha Vance at the Turkey group-stage closer. The administration's presence was constant and deliberate.
His post-match comments were vintage Trump: "I would say Spain played better, really, but they both played well." He called it a "close match." He said he congratulated Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on the victory.
This wasn't the first time he'd done this, either. At the FIFA Club World Cup final at the same stadium, Trump lingered near the trophy as Chelsea's players tried to celebrate their 3-0 win over PSG. Some of them exchanged puzzled looks. He was in the middle of their team photo. The pattern was already established months before the World Cup final confirmed it.
He's already pushing for another one. Trump told reporters he suggested to Infantino that the US be announced as the next host alongside another country — to soften the backlash, he said. "We have to do this again, and we have to do it while I'm around."
FIFA needed the US government. Trump needed the stage. Spain needed to lift a trophy. Only two of those three got exactly what they came for.
