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There are many people out there, even today, who insist that politics has no place in the world of sports. These people are delusional. Politics and sports have intersected as long as there have been sports. Do these people not know, for example, who was responsible for staging Roman gladiatorial games? And why?
These days, the worlds of politics and sports collide even more frequently than in eras past, for at least two reasons. The first is that everything is more political these days. The second is that Donald Trump has a dream of making undocumented immigrants fight exotic animals to the death, so as to satisfy the bloodlust of the MAGA hordes. No, wait, that's not true. Or, at least, we don't have any evidence that it's true. Actually, the second reason is that Trump thinks sports in general are his key to connecting with the masses, and so he's been particularly aggressive about appropriating the world of sports for his own purposes.
There have been a couple of sports-related stories in the past few days worth addressing. To start, next weekend, the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots will travel to Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, to face off in the Super Bowl. In general, an opportunity to get some free face time as part of a broadcast that will reach hundreds of millions of people is something that Trump would not pass up. And yet, he says that he will take a pass this time: "It's just too far away... I would go if, you know, it was a little bit shorter."
This is a pretty flimsy excuse, even by Trump's standards. It's a 5.5-hour flight from D.C. to San Jose. Is that really all that different than the 4-hour flight to Denver, or the 3½ hour flight to Dallas? Especially when you have a bed, a TV, a telephone, and a desk at your disposal? In the interview where Trump said he would not be attending, he made clear what he's REALLY concerned with, declaring that he does not like to miss the game because "I've gotten great hands for the Super Bowl, they like me."
Of course, what would actually happen, given the recent disasters in Minnesota, not to mention the Greenland fiasco, the Venezuela mess, and the state of the economy, is that Trump would be booed lustily. Hundreds of millions of people would see and hear it, and it would also be replayed endlessly on local news, podcasts, post-Super Bowl editions of sports-centered shows, etc. Trump's presence would also give halftime performer Bad Bunny an opportunity (if he wants it) to embarrass the President. This suggests strongly that Trump has an awareness of how unpopular he is at the moment, even if he pretends otherwise. It is also possible, as a secondary explanation, that Trump is avoiding airplane flights because his health is shaky.
The other sports story is the World Cup, and the potential threat that European nations might boycott in response to Trump's economic and military imperialism. We already wrote about this, but we thought we should share some comments from one of our British correspondents, A.B. in Lichfield, England, UK:
Take it from this World Cup fan... the possibility of European nations boycotting the 2026 World Cup as retaliation for tariffs, as suggested on Monday, is almost certainly a non-starter. There's been some idle speculation on this side of the Atlantic, and a bit of political posturing, but it's not a serious proposition.
The history of the World Cup is littered with tournaments taking place in unsavory regimes, and the event taking place regardless. The second tournament in 1934 was in fascist Italy, and Mussolini overtly used the event to promote the 'success' of fascism; that Italy then won was seen to help the fascist cause. The 1942 Cup didn't take place due to the war, but the canceled tournament had previously been awarded to Germany back in 1936, which was perhaps a bit tone deaf under the circumstances. The 1978 tournament was in Argentina, and went ahead with full European participation, despite the 1976 military coup installing a murderous right-wing military government in Buenos Aires (though Dutch superstar Johann Cruyff did take a personal stand and refused to make the trip to represent the Netherlands). While 1982 took place in a newly democratic Spain, the tournament had been awarded to the country in 1966, when it was still under the control of Francisco Franco; no one at the time could have imagined a democratic transformation taking place in the country in time for the 1982 tournament. In 2018, it was in Russia, 4 years after the conflict in Ukraine erupted (with the latter largely limited to the Donbas from 2014 to 2022), and well after it had become clear that Putin's government had taken an increasingly authoritarian turn. The 2022 Cup was in Qatar, which I doubt many would hold up as a beacon of human rights and democracy. And 2034 will be in Saudi Arabia, after some overt manipulation of the host voting process by FIFA head and Friend of Trump Gianni Infantino to ensure the Saudis would end up as hosts.
Through all of that, European teams have continued to show up, prioritizing participation in one of the two (alongside the Summer Olympics) great international sporting calendar set pieces. Individual players have occasionally taken a stand, but not nations or continental confederations. At least not on the basis of politics; what boycotts have taken place have tended to be over logistics. Uruguay and Argentina boycotted 1938 in protest at the tournament taking place in Europe for the second time in a row. Africa boycotted the 1966 World Cup to protest that Africa, Asia and Oceania would all have to compete for a single qualifying spot between them for the 16-team tournament. Israel was routinely boycotted by Arab nations (and North Korea) in tournament qualifying through the early 1970s, which was ultimately solved by moving Israel to the European confederation after they were expelled by the Asian counterpart. With the exception of the refusal to play Israel in qualification, none of these were political boycotts, and the boycott of Israel impacted qualification, not a willingness to play in the host country, no matter how unsavory the latter. It's also perhaps worth remembering that the only European nations to follow the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics were West Germany, Norway, mighty Monaco, and, erm, Albania; and somehow I suspect the Albanian boycott was more inspired by doctrinaire disagreements over Marxism by Enver Hoxha's regime rather than staunch support for the United States. So we have form in ignoring politics when it comes to both the Olympics and the World Cup.
The calculus here would likely change if the United States were to take Greenland by force—and I still can't quite believe that I have to consider the latter as credible scenario—thereby collapsing NATO. Then I can see a boycott. But if it's just a matter of such relatively minor (sarcasm) issues as tariffs, federal law enforcement officers murdering U.S. citizens in cold blood in public in Midwest cities, attempts to manipulate elections to the national legislature, the insanely expensive tickets to see the matches, and other assorted trivialities, then we'll turn up. We've always turned up in the past, after all, no matter how awful the hosts. And you try convincing Scots not to turn up when Scotland has qualified for its first tournament since 1998; good luck with that one.
A British soccer fan surely knows the dynamics here better than we do, so we're glad to have A.B.'s insight. With that said, we will point out something we've pointed out before: The tournament is scheduled to take place in three nations, with Mexico and Canada joining the U.S. It is certainly possible that FIFA could just move the American matches to the other two nations, which would allow them to boycott the U.S. without actually canceling the event. That strikes us as more plausible than a wide boycott, or a complete cancellation. (Z)