We are almost a fortnight into the 2026 World Cup and it’s time to ask the question.

Donald Trump - remember him?

Having loomed over the tournament build-up like the Goodyear Blimp, Trump has disappeared from view since the games have kicked off. You presently have a better chance of seeing Trump’s face reflected in his Washington pool than beamed to the crowd at a World Cup stadium. His Truth Social feed has, meanwhile, been a football-free zone, as the only sports flowing through that particular stream of consciousness lately have been MMA and golf. Trump has never claimed to be a man of easily reconcilable interests.

His World Cup vanishing act is likely due to his utter lack of interest in football, a fact deathlessly encapsulated in his comment on stage at the World Cup draw, following the award of his Fifa Peace Prize. “I remember watching Pele, who was fantastic ... I assume one of the greats?”

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This is also only a temporary stay, given we know that Trump will be handing over the trophy to the winners on July 19th. Given his inevitable dominance of that scene, this World Cup will be sent on its way into history with another ostentatious piece of Trump branding.

So while Trump owned the build-up and will likely do the same with its aftermath, his absence from the tournament itself is emblematic of the awesome muffling power of football. He has faded into the background and taken controversy with him.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: there is no issue too fraught, no politician too egregious, and no Fifa official too cynical to stand out while there’s actual football being played.

This is a founding reality of the World Cup, chillingly distilled in the story of Graciela Daleo in 1978. Daleo was once one of Argentina’s disappeared, captured and imprisoned by the ruling military junta in 1978. When Mario Kempes scored and the ticker tape fell at El Monumental, she was bundled into a car by her captors and told at gunpoint to stand through the sunroof and observe the delirium that was general on the streets of Buenos Aires. Years later she recalled the horror of her realisation. “If I had attempted to shout out that I was a desaparcida, nobody would have given a damn.”

Nobody has very much time to care about the sins of the 2026 World Cup at the moment. The world has moved on from the fact that the US have already failed as hosts, and did so from the moment Somalian referee Omar Artan was forbidden from entering the country.

Forgive us for stating the obvious here, but the role of a World Cup host is to simply host all of those eligible for said World Cup. The official treatment of the Iranian team has, meanwhile, been grudging and inadequate, with the team hitherto permitted only to fly in the day before a game and forced to leave immediately after. And the apparently full stadiums occlude the fact fans from some competing nations were unable to either obtain or afford visas to travel.

These same crowds have quelled much of the criticism of Fifa’s vertiginous ticket pricing structure, even though the point of debate on this was not whether it was financially pragmatic but morally correct. Even Fifa’s bloated and uneven 48-team format is now defensible. Fifa are, to mangle some MAGA parlance, doing their best to avoid swamping the drain, so that’s why it is taking 72 group games to flush just 16 teams from the tournament. There have already been more wins by at least a four-goal margin than at both of the previous World Cups combined, and yet these mismatches feel a worthy price to pay to share in the joy of Cuaracao’s first World Cup goal and Cape Verde’s heroic battle to the knockouts.

It’s telling that the only persistently loud criticism of Fifa across the tournament has been the introduction of hydration breaks, given this trespasses on all that is holy by interrupting the actual playing of the football.

We are not saying all of this to scold you for daring to enjoy the World Cup. This is simply how it works and how it has always worked. Football is intoxicating and the World Cup is a freely-available vial of its purest hit.

And yet when you look a little closer, encoded within the football is a reproach to the nastiness it obscures. The welcome extended to visiting fans by host cities, for instance, is exhibiting a much warmer truth about America than those of us scrubbing our social media feeds at airport pre-clearance are being conditioned to understand. The packed and colourful stands may deflect criticism from Fifa but it also reveals America to be an assembly of diasporas, another fact at odds with the brutish, isolationist rhetoric from the White House.

The United States team have meanwhile been a joy, sauntering through their group while playing thrilling football. Their top scorer is Folarin Balogun, who is only eligible to play for the US because he was born in New York before his mother could get on her return flight to London. Balogun, therefore, qualifies to play for the US under the birthright citizenship which Trump is trying to remove from the constitution. For all that World Cup teams can be hijacked by politicians, Balogun’s story is a reminder that they represent their nations and not their States.

This is why we will be forever fixated by this tournament so tainted by money and greed and strongman politics. For whenever the World Cup reaches the point of seeming utterly beyond redemption, the football kicks off and redeems everything. Only the football can rescue football.

There’s a beauty in this. There’s an ugliness in it too.

Source: The Irish Times