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When Belgium beat the US at the recent World Cup, the Belgian players celebrated by mockingly imitating Donald Trump’s dad dancing. It was a pointed rebuke to the US president — who had boasted about persuading Fifa, the world football authority, to lift the suspension of America’s star striker so that he could play against Belgium.
European football is now doing another victory dance. Uefa, the continent’s football federation, has just forced Fifa’s boss, Gianni Infantino, to withdraw a plan to sell a stake in world football to private investors.
On the surface, the dispute was simply about the governance of the world’s most popular sport. But the geopolitical subtext is unmissable.
The lead investor in the proposed privatisation was a member of the extended Trump clan — Josh Kushner, the brother of presidential son-in-law Jared. Infantino has spent years sucking up to Trump. He invented a Fifa peace prize to give to the US president. Fifa opened an office in Trump Tower in New York and Infantino attended the launch of Trump’s Board of Peace.
The recent World Cup, staged largely in the US, provoked much European grumbling about the Americanisation of the game — with the addition of “hydration breaks”, allowing for the sale of TV ads, as well as an extended half-time show that made the World Cup final feel like the Super Bowl.
All this simmering resentment burst into the open when Infantino’s sell-off scheme was leaked. The fact that it had been cooked up in private with Kushner — without an open bidding process — contributed to the backlash.
In 2015, the US had led the fight against corruption in football. Several Fifa officials were arrested after an investigation led by the US Department of Justice and the FBI. But now Trump’s extended family was being accused of cooking up a shady deal that would undermine the game.
The second Trump administration has been a pretty humiliating experience for Europe. The European Commission signed a trade deal that meekly accepted US tariffs, without retaliation. Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary-general, grinned amiably as Trump belittled and threatened European members of the alliance.
But in the battle over the future of football, Europeans finally found an issue in which they could stand united, rally global support — and win. Uefa’s announcement that European teams would boycott the next World Cup, unless the Infantino scheme was withdrawn, was backed up by the Asian football federation and the North and Central American federation.
Within a few days, Infantino withdrew his proposal. His future as president of Fifa is now in doubt.
Why were the Europeans so effective over football — when they were so ineffective over trade and security? Because football is one area of human activity where Europe is dominant. The richest clubs in the world are based there. Five of the last six World Cups were won by European teams.
As the author Edward Fishman has pointed out, international political power increasingly revolves around the control of economic “chokepoints”. China fought back against Trump’s tariffs by exploiting its dominance of rare earths and critical minerals. Europe’s “rare earths” turned out to be footballers like Kylian Mbappé, Jude Bellingham and Lamine Yamal.
The fact that Trump was not directly involved in Fifa’s plans made it much easier for European politicians to enter the fray. Calling for Infantino’s resignation is much easier than picking a direct fight with Trump.
The whole affair has also confirmed the reverse Midas touch of the Kushner clan in Europe. Charles Kushner, the father of Josh and Jared, is currently serving as Trump’s ambassador to France. But his relations with the Macron government are so bad that he was banned from meeting French ministers earlier this year. Meanwhile Jared’s efforts to develop a luxury resort on an island nature reserve in Albania have provoked mass protests.
Albania’s “flamingo revolution” has shaken the government of Edi Rama. But the Albanian prime minister should have anticipated trouble. Jared Kushner has already had to shelve plans to build a Trump Tower on the site of the former Yugoslav defence ministry in Serbia. After organised crime prosecutors opened an investigation into aspects of the Belgrade project, Kushner’s investment firm pulled out, noting piously that — “meaningful projects should unite not divide.”
Infantino has also justified the withdrawal of his plans on the grounds that it had unexpectedly “created divisions”. But while the Infantino scheme did indeed divide the global “football family” — it united Europe.
Unfortunately for Europe, being a chokepoint for world football is rather less useful than controlling the world’s supply of semiconductors or oil. Football, as Jürgen Klopp, the manager of the German football team, likes to observe, is just the “most important of the unimportant things”. Dominating “unimportant things” is something of a European specialism. I would also back the Europeans to win a global cheese war.
The old continent’s victory over Fifa and the Americanisation of football will provide only fleeting satisfaction — unless the Europeans can develop power over a few important things.
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