By the time Donald Trump was in his senior year at New York Military Academy, he had quit playing football and decided to join the varsity soccer team. Most of his teammates were from South or Central America, the children of diplomats and military officers: four Colombians, two Peruvians, and players from Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Venezuela.
The coach wasn’t particularly good, former teammates told me, and the season was not particularly successful. The yearbook recorded three wins and eight losses, as recently reported by The Guardian. Latin music filled the team bus en route to away games, and the players’ pregame chant culminated in a plea for togetherness: “¡Nosotros! ¡Nosotros! Rah, rah, rah!”
“It was like you were in another country,” Alfred Harrison, one of Trump’s teammates, told me. “You didn’t really get the ball unless you spoke Spanish.” Harrison recalls Trump being a decent player, working on the back line as a defender and kicking the occasional long ball over the midfield to start an attack. “He was fairly active on the field,” he said. “That guy had an abundance of testosterone, that’s for sure.”
Trump didn’t seem to play much soccer beyond that year, and it’s unclear whether he watches or cares much about the game today. His son Barron played in Arlington and for the D.C. United Academy team during Trump’s first term as president, but there’s no evidence that Trump embraced being a “soccer dad,” let alone that he ever showed up to watch a game. He reportedly considered buying Rangers FC in Scotland, where his mother is from and where he owns golf courses, and the Colombian team Atlético Nacional, which was once linked with the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, but passed on both. When he was asked last year to identify his favorite player, he named Pelé but recognized that the choice was a bit old-fashioned. (Golf caddies also used to refer to Trump as Pelé for the number of times he kicked the ball on the golf course.) Most of all, Trump seems to love the spectacle around the game, especially the trophies and star players, and he has tried to brand himself as something of a soccer president, hosting both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo on separate visits at the White House.
As the United States prepares to host the World Cup, along with Mexico and Canada, the president is expected to force himself uncomfortably into the center of attention. The tournament comes amid an uncertain and unpopular war, rising gas prices, and predictions that the president’s party will lose badly in the midterm elections. “The worse that things get for Trump in terms of popularity ratings or the war in Iran, the more he’s going to cling to sports,” Jules Boykoff, the author of Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine, told me.
Trump often seems to want little to do with the rest of the world, but he wants everything to do with hosting one of the few events that most of the globe still tunes in to watch. The tournament is meant to mark a celebration of the world and its varied cultures, and it is coinciding with the 250th anniversary of America. Trump seems to see it as a chance for nationalistic pride—and self-promotion.
Last July, FIFA hosted a dress rehearsal of sorts when it held the 2025 Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Trump attended, eager to soak it all in from a luxury box as Chelsea played against Paris Saint-Germain. The fans hated it.
As I sat in the upper rows near the center of the field, I heard the resounding boos whenever Trump’s face came on the big screen. This happened right from the beginning, even during the national anthem, and continued through the end of the match, as Trump strolled onto the field with FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino. But Trump waved and smiled through the shouts. He beamed as he handed out medals to the winners. He lingered awkwardly as Chelsea players celebrated the match that they, not Trump, had just won. “I thought that he was going to exit the stage, but he wanted to stay,” a befuddled team captain, Reece James, told reporters afterward. The midfielder Cole Palmer added: “I was a bit confused, yes.”
Infantino had specially made a trophy for the event and presented it earlier to Trump at the White House, allowing the president to keep that original. FIFA awarded a separate one to the actual winners. Later that summer, Infantino brought the World Cup trophy to the Oval Office, telling Trump that it was the same one that Messi, of Argentina, had lifted in triumph in 2022. Only winners are allowed to touch this trophy, Infantino told the president, adding: “And since you are a winner, of course, you can as well touch it.” Trump asked if he could keep it, saying he wanted to add it to his golden collection, but this one he had to give back.
Infantino has seemed to recognize that the way to Trump’s heart is through gifts. He has presented Trump with a blue FIFA jersey, a white U.S. men’s national team jersey, a golden frame containing a photo of the two of them, a red card and a yellow card that referees use, a soccer ball with an image of the American flag affixed on it, a soccer ball for the Club World Cup, and an oversize match ticket for the World Cup final, a seat in “Row 1 Seat 1.”
The ultimate gift came in December. When Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize that he had so coveted, Infantino created a whole new honor: the FIFA Peace Prize. Infantino gave Trump a custom golden trophy—five disembodied hands holding a globe in the shape of a soccer ball—during the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center, which Trump had already taken over. The presentation also included a gold medal for Trump to “wear everywhere you want to go” and a certificate inside a bound book. Soon after, the president continued his celebration of peace as he invaded Venezuela, threatened to seize Greenland, and started a war with Iran.
Infantino has appeared with Trump more than actual world leaders have, and he has made at least half a dozen visits to the Oval Office. He was there at the inauguration, a few rows behind former presidents, in January 2025. He was front and center with Trump during a UFC fight. When Melania Trump’s movie premiered at the Kennedy Center, Infantino attended. Even when Trump traveled to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to finalize a cease-fire agreement in Gaza, Infantino came along to grin for the photos. When Trump went to speak at the United Nations General Assembly, Infantino posed with him in front of a blue curtain.
Infantino reportedly has a home in South Florida, not far from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, and opened a 75,000-square-foot FIFA office near Miami. FIFA also set up an office in Trump Tower to great fanfare last year, and Eric Trump told Infantino at a related ceremony: “On behalf of myself, on behalf of New York, on behalf of the Trump Organization and everybody that works in this building: We love you.” The lease is for 4,852 square feet on a portion of the tower’s 17th floor, according to data from CompStak, a commercial-real-estate-analytics company. The organization is paying nearly $38,500 a month, the data show, which is about 28 percent higher than other Trump Tower tenants but roughly in line with other rents in the area. The lease agreement ends in October 2032. It is unclear what work is being done there, how many employees are based in the office, or why the lease is so long. (FIFA and the Trump Organization declined to respond to my questions. The White House declined to comment.)
On the face of it, theirs is an odd partnership: Infantino is a European who oversees a tournament designed to bring the world together; Trump has tried to tear down the NATO alliance. But the two men share a thirst for profits and a knowledge of brand marketability. They both want to bolster their own image with the help of the world’s best soccer players, and each has a desire to expand their global reach with glitz and glamour, wealth and power. They have demonstrated that they are both willing to stretch ethical boundaries—and at times have an admiration for autocrats. They are transactional in ways that can elevate countries with questionable records in human rights.
Their ties date back nearly a decade, to Trump’s first term, when he lobbied Infantino to pick the United States, along with Mexico and Canada, to host the World Cup. At the time, Trump wrote several letters pledging to host the tournament in an “open and festive manner” and vowing that “all eligible athletes, officials and fans from all countries around the world would be able to enter the United States without discrimination.” (Fans from Iran, Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal now face travel restrictions.) Trump has remarked that the upside of his nonconsecutive presidential terms is that he can host the World Cup, the semiquincentennial celebration, and the Olympics.
It’s unclear whether Infantino and Trump’s largely transactional partnership will continue when there are no more transactions to conduct. Trump is hoping that the World Cup showcases him as a popular leader of a prosperous country, and Infantino is hoping that the World Cup brings in the more than $9 billion that FIFA has projected. Trump has joked about a third term, which is unconstitutional. Infantino last month announced that he is seeking an unprecedented fourth term as FIFA president. Even though he’s term-limited, Infantino argues that because his first term began after the ouster of his predecessor amid a corruption scandal, he is able to seek a fourth.
At a dinner in Davos in 2020, Infantino introduced Trump with lavish praise and compared him to a top soccer player. “He is a competitor,” Infantino said. “He wants to compete. He wants to win. He wants to show who is the best.” Whether that’s still Trump’s aim is unclear. But more than six decades after huddling with his Spanish-speaking teammates to chant “¡Nosotros! ¡Nosotros! Rah, rah, rah!” he is now hosting a World Cup plagued by problems. And it is unlikely that the United States, or Trump, will be the best.