FIFA Played a False Nine on Trump

A president who accepts a pacifier on a ribbon shows how easily he can be manipulated.

By Carron J. Phillips

Donald Trump finally received his “prize.” The emperor was gifted new clothes.

Neither gift was real.

The governing body of the world’s biggest sport bent the knee to America’s smallest man. In this somewhat hilarious yet troubling comedy of errors, who was the bigger fool: Those who sold the dream, or the person who bought it?

It’s a “beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said to Trump when he presented him with an award that didn’t exist until last week—the new FIFA Peace Prize. If you care to look, social media is filled with pictures and videos of Trump placing the medal around his own neck, like a child hoisting an imaginary trophy.

“This is truly one of the great honors of my life,” Trump said, adding that “most important, I just want to thank everybody. The world is a safer place now.”

The point of the World Cup Draw is to announce which groups the qualified national teams will be in — similar to March Madness bracket reveal. Following a failed campaign in which Trump openly declared he should win the Nobel Peace Prize, FIFA decided the moment was perfect to grease his palm, given that 78 World Cup matches will take place in the United States next year.

It worked like a charm, as awarding Trump wound up being easy, like taking candy from a baby.

“When you look at what has happened to football in the United States, it’s again soccer in the United States, we seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of conflict with another thing called football,” he said. “But when you think about it, shouldn’t it really be called, I mean, this is football, there’s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for that,” he added. “It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it. This is really football.”

FIFA dealt with Trump like a kid who gives his baby brother an unconnected video game controller to avoid a tantrum. The medal was a pacifier on a ribbon. Given the shenanigans, FIFA might as well keep things going and award Riley Gaines a gold medal for swimming.

“You say it’s a parody. I say it’s a template,” sports commentator Bomani Jones explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper recently on air. “Trump isn’t difficult. To figure out how to make him feel good isn’t hard to do.”

“The World Cup is going to be here in 2026. He has said some wild things about being willing to take events out of different cities,” Jones continued. “We also have an immigration force that is ransacking people left and right. FIFA needs the World Cup to go smoothly. They can only hope that being nice to this guy will make it easier for them.”

FIFA isn’t the first organization to “play ball” with a pseudo-dictator to do what’s necessary to get the job done. However, the absurdity of this moment, along with the man involved, makes the situation incredibly outrageous. A man who tried to bully an elected official into finding votes for him in an election he lost was enthusiastically thrilled about receiving a participation trophy while serving as the leader of the political party that has railed against the idea of giving out unearned trinkets for years.

There’s also the issue that Trump is driven by his ego, as the destructive consequences of his decisions seem rarely to be accounted for. This is evident in his removal of MLK Day and Juneteenth from the list of holidays on which Americans can enjoy national parks for free, while adding his own birthday. It also appears likely that the Supreme Court will continue to do his bidding, as the court is expected to expand presidential control and power.

In soccer, or football, I should say, a false nine is a tactic that deceives opponents by forcing them to make a decision that usually creates an opportune advantage for the team with the ball. “To win in Madrid, we need to have possession, be protagonists. If we want to win, we have to be far superior to them,” former FC Barcelona Manager Pep Guardiola said to Lionel Messi in 2009 when he explained why he decided to use the strategy.

When Trump reiterated that he would move World Cup Games from cities with Democratic leadership a few months ago, FIFA knew exactly how to respond—and presenting an easy mark with a made-up award was the perfect game plan.

Carron J. Phillips is an award-winning journalist who writes on race, culture, social issues, politics, and sports. He hails from Saginaw, Michigan, and is a graduate of Morehouse College and Syracuse University.

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