Backpass: Trump’s Impact on American Soccer
The past four years saw a lot of turmoil. The effects reached every corner of American life - including the soccer pitch.
Despite protestations to the contrary, we are in the final weeks of the Donald Trump presidency. Like him or not, there is no denying that the most powerful office in the United States has an impact on the sport of soccer, for good and bad. I thought now would be a good time to reflect on what impact one of the most controversial commanders-in-chief of all-time has had on the domestic version of the beautiful game.
US Soccer
If we were to look back at the most memorable moment regarding both US Soccer and the 45th president of the United States, it would be this:
That exchange took place before the US played home-team France in the quarterfinals of the 2019 World Cup. It was inevitable that the USWNT would spurn a trip to the White House - and virtually inevitable that team leader and outspoken icon Megan Rapinoe would be the one to do it. Rapinoe had famously been kneeling since shortly after Colin Kaepernick began his protest against police violence way back in 2016.
That clip above of Rapinoe scoffing (that is like the perfect epitome of a scoff; in a hundred years, that video should be directly linked to Merriam-Webster’s entry for ‘Scoff’) at a possible White House trip was worldwide news. It made her a villain to some, and hero to others, and put the world on notice as to the degree of swagger the US was carrying into France. Rapinoe was expressing virtual certainty that the USWNT would carry off the trophy; and that they would neither be invited to, nor interested in attending, a trip to the White House. It was savage, boastful, and brilliant.
Trump; a president with a less-than-impressive physique and a record of cozying up to anti-LGBT voices; a president with a record of bravado and bluster which does not often live up to its promise; was being dissed by one of the most athletic women on the planet, and a woman known as an LGBT icon, who was all-but-guaranteeing she’d bring home the World Cup.
Donald Trump’s response to Rapinoe was a tweet in which he said this:
“"I am a big fan of the American Team, and Women’s Soccer, but Megan should WIN first before she TALKS! Finish the job! We haven’t yet........invited Megan or the team, but I am now inviting the TEAM, win or lose. Megan should never disrespect our Country, the White House, or our Flag, especially since so much has been done for her & the team. Be proud of the Flag that you wear. The USA is doing GREAT!”
It was a weird moment, I assume, for US Soccer. On the one hand, all press is good press, and for Donald Trump to get into a pissing match with the USWNT probably improved ratings and visibility for the women’s team. On the other hand, with the country deeply divided by angry partisan rhetoric, taking one of the few relatively neutral symbols our country had at the time - a successful national team - and pulling it into the partisan sphere of yuckiness was likely a bummer for Carlos Cordeiro and his friends. There might have been a moment that soccer could have won over some Red State Americans who would want to have yet another reason to feel proud to don the stars and stripes - and as quick as you can say “I’m not going to the fuckin’ White House”, it was gone.
That said, one could reasonably make the argument that those folks were never going to come over to Women’s soccer in the first place. The worst place on the internet is the comments section to an ESPN tweet about the WNBA or NWSL. That’s where the worst, most misogynist, most lunkheaded knuckle-dragging schmucknozzle-y snot-eating lowlifes hang out, with their ‘wOmEn ShOuLd StAy iN tHe KiTcHeN’ idiocy. One of the *other* worse places on the internet is the comments section to an ESPN tweet about soccer, where it is invariably called some iteration of a Commie game for pansies. Excuse me - ‘a CoMmIe GaMe FoR pAnSiEs’. Those folks are in the Trump-osphere, and they ain’t coming over to women’s soccer, no matter what.
And perhaps Rapinoe actually made *more* fans with her INGTTFWH comment - winning over the non-sportsy-wine-and-cheese-reads-the-New-Yorker-cover-to-cover crowd that would otherwise have been totally oblivious to the existence of the Women’s World Cup. With 16.8 million viewers, the Women’s World Cup Final drew some of the highest TV ratings of any non-football sports event in 2019. The FIFA final event caught more domestic eyeballs than the Daytona 500, the Kentucky Derby, the Masters, or game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals that year.
Trump also kinda accepted the reality in the end - it would look worse for him not to congratulate the Women’s team for winning than it would to just suck it up and say it. So he did.

I’ll add, though, that it’s pretty common for world leaders to go to the World Cup when their team is in it. Trump did not attend any matches in France; nor did VP Mike Pence. Barack Obama couldn’t make it the last time the US competed in 2015; but at least he sent Joe Biden.
Aside from the 2019 WWC, we know that Trump isn’t oblivious to soccer, but he mostly acted like it. His son Barron is known to play the game; and is apparently a fierce fan of Arsenal Football club. Still, Trump seems largely indifferent to the sport, and very few events of the past four years have changed that or indicated any shift in feelings.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino and US Soccer Carlos Cordeiro dropped by the Oval Office in 2018 to give Mr. Trump a US Soccer kit and discuss the 2026 World Cup, but that event seemed to have little to no significance to either party.
In four years in office, none of the reigning MLS champs stopped by to show off their hardware to the President. It wasn’t really a factor for the 2017 MLS Cup Champs, Toronto FC, but the 2018 and 2019 champ, Atlanta United and Seattle Sounders, implied fairly clearly that they were not interested, and no trip was scheduled. And I have a feeling the 2020 champs would very much prefer an invite from Joe Biden than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And in his entire twitter history, Trump has never tweeted about MLS. I think it entirely possible he’s unaware that it exists.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the USMNT. That’s intentional. Trump’s never mentioned them either. He’s never commented on the US Men’s Team on twitter, nor has he taken in a match in his lifetime, to my knowledge.
Immigration Policy
It would be hard to discuss soccer and national policy without noting the fact that a tremendous number of US soccer fans are Latinx, and that by and large, the policies of the Trump White House have not been viewed favorably by Latinxs in the USA.
Trump’s already questionable relationship with People of Color was put under the microscope when he began his presidential run in 2015. He drew particular ire from folks for this notorious comment: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
A major plank of the Trump platform was, of course, ‘building the wall’. That, coupled with the ‘remain in Mexico’ asylum process, the cancellation of the federal DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, and the controversy surrounding the ‘family separation’ policy for undocumented immigrants, has created a generally unfavorable view of Trump amongst the Latinx and Hispanic community. As an inevitable result, Biden carried the Latinx vote over Trump by a comfortable 66% to 32% margin.
Trump additionally made efforts at restricting visa travel from majority-Muslim countries; made a comment stating that Africa was full of ‘shithole countries’; reduced the number of visas, work permits, and legal immigrants to the US; and openly touted a national policy he repeatedly promoted as ‘America First.’
According to transfermarkt, 55.7% of MLS players are foreign-born.
All that taken together makes for an uncomfortable relationship between the Chief Executive and soccer. Soccer has long been the sport of immigrants in the US. The earliest organizers of American soccer, and the historic winners of the US Open Cup are clubs with names like the ‘Philadelphia Ukrainian Nationals’, ‘St. Louis Shamrocks’, ‘Los Angeles Armenians’, and ‘Greek American AA’. An overtly anti-immigrant president made for an awkward relationship between the national soccer league and the nation’s highest office.
I will say it didn’t have any overt implications for soccer - it’s not like the anti-immigrant bluster kept a major MLS DP from being added to the roster. Zlatan and Blaise Matuidi and Carlos Zelerayan all got their visas.
But if the desire of your average soccer-playing new immigrant to the US was to feel like they ‘belonged’ and that this was ‘their country’, the last four years was almost certainly a rough experience.
BLM
MLS and NWSL athletes were some of the first to go back on the field after the national lockdowns and Covid-containment measures of March, April, and May. Just as the two leagues were plan safety protocols to allow their leagues to play, a new crisis struck the US when a Minneapolis police officer killed a black man named George Floyd. The first sporting event scheduled after Floyd’s death and the subsequent outrage across the country was the NWSL’s Challenge Cup, which kicked off in June. The ‘MLS is Back’ Tournament came shortly after. In both cases, players knelt, wore t-shirts, and expressed very clearly their feelings that, nationwide, blacks experience a different experience with the police than whites do, and it is unacceptable.
Trump’s response, distilled into a single phrase, would be ‘law and order, back the blue’. The president took the side of the police and overwhelmingly shrugged off the concerns of Black Americans, and, parenthetically, Black athletes. Black players make up 23% of Major League Soccer and 7.5% of the NWSL, so the president’s indifference likely stung in a unique and pronounced way.
The strongest rebuke came from none other than Michael Bradley, a white player (and the USMNT captain), who in response to the president’s silence after Floyd’s murder told Canadian press “We have a president who is completely empty. There isn’t a moral bone in his body. There’s no leadership. There’s no leadership from the president, there’s no leadership from the Republican senators who have sat back and been totally complicit in everything he’s done for the last 3½ years.”
Among soccer players in America, it had become fairly clear by June of this year that there were very few supporters of the president, and a more vocal and significant group that felt that he was a specific threat to their own safety.
The Coronavirus Response
Covid-19 had more of an impact on soccer than almost any force in human history to date. Even though most league football was canceled during World War II, the soldiers and civilians could still actually play the game on their own for fun if they wanted to. Not so with Coronavirus. Soccer stood still for more than three months, and when it returned, it was played in bubble tournaments and empty stadiums across the globe. The financial impacts were severe for the big, stable leagues, and devastating for the small and less profitable leagues like MLS, USL, and NWSL. The vast majority of NCAA soccer teams didn’t get to play at all in 2020.
Look, we’ll never know if a Democratic president would have done better with Covid - the lockdown, testing, messaging, distribution of PPE, etc. So it is hard to say definitively that the president’s response could not have been worse. However, judging the relative failure of the United States’ Covid response to the rest of the world, I think I can say with reasonably objective certainty that America, and its top leaders, failed spectacularly.
The US has the highest number of cases, and the highest number of deaths in the world. There are a few countries; Belgium, Spain, Italy, Peru, and the UK; whose per capita death rates are higher, and other countries; China, Russia, much of Africa; where underreporting or governmental obfuscation means the numbers can’t be trusted. But overall, if we divided the world into three pots: ‘handled well’; ‘didn’t handle well’; ‘total clusterfuck’; the US would undeniably fall into the third category. By comparison to the US’ 357,394 deaths, New Zealand has had only 25 deaths. Malaysia has had 513. Norway has lost just 452 citizens. As a result, they get to walk around, lockdown free, playing pickup soccer in the local park or attending a football match as they please.
Life and death are much more important in the grand scheme of things than soccer. But a necessarily related fact is: if you have a high death count, you don’t get to go to soccer games. Some of your players get sick. Some of your games are canceled - even your championship games. The USL had to abandon its championship match due to an outbreak of the illness. Careers are derailed. Money is lost. Lives are upended - including broadcasters and front office staff and concession workers. The impact on soccer is just another microcosm of the impact upon America. And the impact is devastating.
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Trump’s impact on America will reverberate for generations; his effects undeniable. And although his reach into soccer was much less pronounced, it would be hard to say anything otherwise than his impact on the game was, on the whole, not good.