A Footballing Farce: The World Cup Draw in DC Reveals Our Pitiable Leader to be a Manipulated and Mocked Fool

On December 6, 2025 at nine o'clock in the morning on the West Coast and noon-time on the eastern seaboard, a gathering of sports celebrities, movie stars, politicians and dignitaries of varying degrees of moral character assembled in the sonambulent and darkened velvet blue-hued hall of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. to pick names out of a bowl to set the 32 field 2026 World Cup teams into various lettered round-robin groups.

The World Cup Draw is just another odd public spectacle befitting our absurd times. If a spectacular and lavish gala "could have been an email," surely it is the grandiose announcement. An ostentatious gathering that amounted to announcing the 4-team pairings of countries that will face one another in venues across North America in seven months time. The ceremony even has a certain strange prematurity. As some group members await the outcomes of play-in game that have yet to take place. Thus the US will face Australia, Paraguay, and To Be Determined, in a relatively easy if incompetent group that will be no threat to lift the trophy when the tournament concludes five-weeks later in MetLife Stadium in New Jersey with teams from Europe and/or South America.

In keeping with the stilted and awkward nature of a game played everywhere in the world, the event was held to maximally garner attention from a large majority of the world. Hence, Fox assembled its glittering sports broadcasting team on a mundane morning weekday to toast one another as though it was New Year's Eve moments before midnight. The effect was a dreamy, hallucinatory quality. As though the audience were on the cruise ship in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element.

I wish this were the oddest and most bizarre aspect of the World Cup Draw, but this being an experience revolving around our suffocating, decomposing president, it devolved into yet another absolutely ludicrous and embarrassing travesty.

I.

To understand the theatre of the absurd that transpired at Kennedy Center, one must first appreciate the nature of the opaque and organization responsible for administering world football. FIFA, a French acronym for football's world governing body, is an organization composed of the officials who oversee the most popular game in the entire world. From cathedrals in European capitals to dusty fields in tiny nations, international football is the most widespread and celebrated game played on the planet.

For decades, FIFA has been housed in a sleek glass and steal building in Zurich, Switzerland, nestled among the tony international banks known for their intense secrecy and willingness to do business without asking pesky questions. Its president now is Gianni Infantino, a toady caretaker. His bald Lex-Luthorian head marks him as a comic book villain. But Infantino manages to present as a fairly benign and nebbish figure. A sort of European version of Jeff Bezos if you squint your eyes.

Infantino's rise to the presidency took place in tandem with Donald Trump's ascension to the heights of political power. He came into office in February 2016, a month after the American charlatan stormed to into office declaring American Carnage. Infantino replaced the organization's longtime leader Sepp Blatter. He had been running the organization for seventeen years, since President Clinton was fending off allegations involving the Lewinsky scandal. Blatter, a ducking-and-weaving Swiss operator almost preternaturally understood the nature of FIFA and the politicking required to survive at the top.

Blatter's origin story as the most powerful broker in FIFA involved a bit of plucky determination decades earlier. In the 1960s, FIFA was essentially broke. The World Cup was a significant sporting spectacle. Yet it was simply not the commercial juggernaut it has become today. The transformational pivot that would set in motion a whole new trajectory happened in July 10, 1962. On that day the Telstar 1 satellite, which resembled a colorful version of the Death Star, launched into orbit. Telstar 1 permitted transatlantic broadcasts including soccer. The introduction of television broadcasting was so crucial to the game that Adidas developed a special 32-panel black and white ball, inspired by the satellite, that would be easier for viewers to see on their televisions. The iconic design is so ubiquitous at this point that the "Telstar ball" is simply viewed today as a "soccer ball."

By the 1970s, the game's marquee event was growing in popularity but its finances were still relatively precarious. Blatter, then a youthful Technical Director, saw an opportunity to establish a partnership with Coca-Cola for the tenth World Cup, contested in West Germany in 1974. The young and ambitious Blatter prevailed upon João Havelange, then FIFA president, to introduce the corporate money spigot. This was a win-win proposition. Coca-Cola's marketing deal injected desperately needed money into the organization. It also provided a template that FIFA would use to expand partnerships with other global conglomerates just as color TV was spreading far and wide across the globe.

II.

Decades on, Blatter had become the consummate operator. A wrinkly old man thinning hair and a cutesy French accent, Blatter seemed like the global game's eccentric uncle. But he understood something critical about being FIFA president. FiFA operates in some ways like a "Global Senate". Every nation gets one vote for decisions such as winning the presidency or in selecting the new world cup venue. This means that Surname and the United States both have one vote. Same for Bangladesh and Germany. You can spend significant time winning over Spain, or you can cut a sweetheart deal with the few officials who control Guyanan soccer.

Blatter was able to win election after election because instead of wasting his time with the United States or the European football powers, Blatter made sure to take care of every small nation in the FIFA family. You can guess what the transactions might look like for Blatter to "win over" the football federation leaders in small nations. Make the money spigot flow. You give Blatter a vote, he can make a soccer complex appear in your nation. This infrastructure project might just fortuitously involve connected family and friends. Blatter deployed this shady, handshake style of leadership most especially when awarding the now immensely lucrative world cups.

Something strange happened on December 2, 2010. The FIFA Executive Committee conducted the vote in Zurich to award the next two world cups. Thus, FIFA awarded the Russian Federation the 2018 World Cup and awarded Qatar the 2022 World Cup, twelve years later. While many were skeptical of Russia as a host nation, it was arguably fair-minded to allow the global significant country in Eastern Europe and Asia to host the most celebrated single-tournament. The awkwardness would accelerate after Russia invaded Crimea in February 2014, and then expanded its invasion to Ukraine's Donestsk and Luhansk regions.

But the award of the 2022 World Cup to a tiny nation of Qatar shocked many. Blatter dressed up the explanation by saying it was his charge to expand the game to all continents. This always won him favor in the Global South and particularly in non-white countries that felt overlooked and neglected. Still, the idea of hosting such a massive event in a place that would be somewhat larger than a single metropolitan statistical area in our country, in a brutal scorching summer, seemed the height of audacious corruption. And indeed it proved to be the case.

Federal prosecutors in the United States had been quietly taking note of Blatter's ostentatious behavior. It turned out that the Justice Department was investigating a massive bribery and corruption scandal that would implicate Blatter, America's strange oafish leader Chuck Blazer, and a host of other officials in the hemisphere. Briefly, the idea that Chuck Blazer led the American soccer federation in FIFA was one of the truly strangest realities in world sport. In essence, a local DMV-area soccer dad had worked his way into leadership positions in American soccer with absolutely no relevant experience as a player, official, or administrator.

Blazer hardly looked the part of a high ranking soccer official. A large, significantly overweight bowling ball, with a thick burly beard, reading glasses and scraggily hair, Blazer seemed more fitting for a role player in community theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Perhaps that was the point for Blatter. In Blazer, the FIFA president had a willing partner, who intuitively knew when to be "looking the wrong way." Blazer particularly knew that in the American geographical sub-region of FIFA, the bizarrely named CONCACAF (Confederation of North and Central American and the Caribbean), cutting deals involved shady business with leaders and officials in a variety of the region's postage stamp sized nations. Blazer could deliver the votes to Blatter, and in exchange he could run arm's length corruption schemes for which Blatter could claim plausible deniability.

The 2015 corruption scandal put an end to Blatter's imperious rule. Interestingly it finally reached him and Michel Platini, the famed soccer-star turned Blatter-lieutenant, partly because Chuck Blazer agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud, racketeering, corruption, tax evasion and money laundering in 2013. Blazer was a the key to unlocking the puzzle of how FIFA's corrupt schemes worked. The arrest was the stuff of Hollywood movies, as police descended on officials gathered at a luxurious five-star hotel for FIFA's meetings. By the end of the prosecution, Blatter was chased from office.

This being our timeline, Blatter and Platini, old fools by this point, won an final appeal and had their corruption charges dismissed in March 2025. The long and torturous unaccountability of criminals seems to be a theme this year. Why should disgraced FIFA officials miss out?

III.

Fast-forward to this week. The World Cup Draw for this summer's tournament featured Blatter's successor Infantino. The smooth-headed, slick executive beamed on stage more than happy to accommodate our corrupt and disgraceful President. It's somewhat useful to think of Infantino as a sort of suave version of the gangly Adam Silver, the current commissioner of the National Basketball Asssociation. Like Silver, Infantino spent his formative years in service to the previous commissioner. Both have shown a strong willingness to shelve moral qualms in pursuit of commercial expansion. Silver has to negotiate a more difficult high-wire act, as he presides over a league predominantly made up of start Black athletes, many of whom are at odds with President Trump. Infantino on the other hand seems to have comfortably taken over the sordid reigns from Blatter with aplomb.

Over the past several months, many Americans have taken to social media to decry the presidents hostile and overtly illegal behavior toward immigrants. The public opposed to Trump has beseeched Infantino to move the World Cup out of the United States. Trump has hauled Infantino into his office to obtain obsequious praise from the FIFA boss, who has been glad to play his part. Infantino has often deflected the odd remarks Trump has made, whether threatening American cities or rambling aimlessly about a topic having nothing to do with sport, with a deft touch of saying nothing in particular even while speaking clearly.

For Infantino, the World Cup Draw provided the perfect crass spectacle of shame and embarrassment to a beaming executive incapable of feeling it. Thus, Infantino took the stage and addressed President Trump in a box, awarding him the first ever FIFA Peace Prize. This prize seemed to spring forth overnight in response to our president's bizarre and unrelenting effort to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His campaign for it this past Spring was so intense and focused that many wondered if Trump was aware that he might die at any moment and he needed to get this prize so that it could wave it in President Barack Obama's face. President Trump failed to prevail upon the Norweigian Nobel Committee that the had in fact stopped a number of wars, the count which grew nearly by the day. In the end, they awarded it to Maria Corina-Machedo, the opposition figure in Venezuela standing against dictator Nicolas Maduro. Trump then got her to assure him that she wished he had won the prize. A very strange situation for the American public.

President Trump would not let a setback like not receiving an award stop him from giving himself one anyway. So he took the stage and held a box with a medal in it. The first annual Peace Prize. Normally, a prize recipient would hold the box gently and take a photo. Trump, like a petulant child on Christmas Eve, opened it and put the medal around his own neck, creating a sad and humiliating photo opportunity if he were capable of such feelings.

Infantino then presented Trump with a diabolical trophy to mark the prize. It loosely resembled a knock off of the small but heavy gold statute that is awarded to the winnder of the quadrennial event. Here was President Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, holding aloft a participation trophy for the 2026 World Cup. Seeing this trophy on television, I laughed. It was a golden image of the Earth held up by rotting and dessicated hands. The effect was widely mocked. The trophy was objectively ugly. But the hands appeared like zombies from Hell trying to drag the Earth down. Others noted that it appeared like the Earth was a head being placed mounfully in the hands below, overcome by grief.

Given Trump demanded this Peace Prize at the same time as he and his administration celebrated extrajudicial murder of men in international waters, some commentators added the deformed hands were a fair representation of the drowning men whose boats were blown up. I like to think the designer was well aware of these alternate interpretations and was getting a spectacular troll over on both FIFA and Trump, both of whom were too corrupt and shameless to appreciate the ridicule beforehand.

IV.

By the end of the overlong ceremony, the disgraced hockey legend Wayne Gretsky a Maple MAGA pal of our president, had brutally mispronounced the nation of Curaçao, while Heidi Klum and Kevin Hart practically screamed at the audience trying to hype them up for the drab event. The cavalcade of A-list celebrities from Shaq to Tom Brady did what they could to create buzz. But they all dulled their shine by giving our vulgar would-be dictator the celebratory party he so thirstily covets.

The spectacle concluded as it should, with President Donald Trump dancing in his box to his now-theme-song YMCA by a splinter band claiming the heritage of the original Village People. A vision of the presidency so bizarre and puzzling that it reminds us once more how far into farce this man has plunged our country. As commentator Adam Mockler said on CNN, above all the singing and dancing was deeply embarrassing for our country. Here were officials from around the world engaging in a transparent, obvious, and pathetic coddling of a demented man, as though they were visiting him in a memory care home. Behavior that would have been seen as completely humiliating and patronizing of the most powerful leader on Earth a decade ago us viewed as gloat-worthy by his White House handlers. So he enjoyed his participation trophy, a dance party, over-the-top ass-kissing by a room of officials and celebrities, driving home the point that America's standing in the world has devolved into a pitiable state.

None of this forced enthusiasm can hide the fact that the World Cup held in America will represent a dour affair. Already people who love and cherish the game have taken to social media to indicate that they will not pay attention next summer. We shall see. The World Cup has a way of working its football magic on the hardest hearts. It's difficult not to gather with friends and take in the game on its own terms. But if Kristi Noem, or whomever might succeed her if she is ousted, follows through on the threats to deploy ICE agents to stadia around the country, then the event really will collapse into scandal and public disgrace. The very fans who would have packed venues will hardly risk a kidnapping to watch a couple of hours of kickball.

I remain skeptical, both of the Trump administration's threats and our own belief that we can maintain suffocating boycotts. FIFA is the sort of carnival of corruption that was built in a lab to celebrate a scoundrel like Donald Trump and pull us in with an innate love of international sport. The ironic aspect of the FIFA Peace Prize is that in the abstract football can be a tool of peace, harmony and cultural understanding. There would be, in fact, many worthy recipients of such a prize if FIFA bothered to take itself seriously. Instead of celebrating the every day heroes who use sport as a form of peace, the FIFA leadership has fêted the oligarchs, dictators and exploiters, from the junta that prosecuted Argentina's Dirty War, to Vladimir Putin, to the corrupt ruling family of Qatar. Trump is kin to all of these rogues and would be at home sitting with any of them in a box like a HomeGoods Mussolini.

It's up to us, the moral and decent people of the world, to decide how history will remember the 2026 World Cup. Yet, we are presently free to interpret the "Peace Prize" trophy that sits on the Resolute Desk as a searing joke gift that indicts him for his crimes against humanity. There in fake gold our world is perched on a finger tip edge, about to be being dragged down into an underworld lair. Truly, in this light, it is a physical trophy he most certainly deserves.

Oh and Donald Trump just announced that he will drop a criminal case into a Fox executive from Argentina investigating corruption in securing the broadcast rights for the World Cup. Guess that's the way the ball bounces.