Why Trump s World Cup Intervention Backfired Feat Joon Lee

I mean, something that bugged me a lot about some of the reaction to this red card Trump thing is how the sports of it all kind of seem to scramble people's brains. I really do believe if you are calling Donald Trump corrupt for pushing meme coins or getting a new Air Force One from Qatar, it's like part and parcel of the same thing, right? But you had people like Hakeem Jeffries being like, We have to speak with one voice here. It was kind of a trap for Democrats in many ways, because if you're pooh-poohing the situation, as a politician especially, it's like, do you not want the United States to win? That's a bad political spot to be in. This is the political corruption. This is the exact type of political corruption that is not just changing the United States, but changing the world right now. We went to war without it going to Congress. This is the exact type of thing that's happening. I had a lot of friends who are, I would say, not Trump's biggest fans text me yesterday being like, This is the first time he's ever done some corruption that has made me feel good. June, you're a sports reporter. I know you've been keeping close tabs on the American team in this year's FIFA World Cup. How are you feeling ahead of the Belgium-US match this week? I was feeling excited because this team was looking much better than I thought that they were going to be. What changed the vibe, I think, around the team, though, over the course of the last 24 hours leading up to the World Cup, was everything that happened with Philip Allegan and his red card being suspended, and it coming out that the president, Donald Trump, was involved in calling Johnny Patino and FIFA and pushing them to potentially just review it and see what happens. Spoiler alert, Team USA just lost 4-1 to Belgium, and it was a brutal beatdown. At one point, Belgium scored a goal because the American goalie just wasn't there. There were reasons he wasn't there, but he wasn't there. It just went right in. It was a mess in a lot of different ways. I think the team looked really stiff coming out, in large part because this was the biggest set of eyeballs they've had on this team. I mean, a lot of Americans who don't watch sports were watching the game last night because the U.S. was in the Round of 16. And the Round of 16 is where the U.S. historically is kicked out. Yes, has always been kicked out. It's true, but if the U.S. played their best game, it was not implausible that the U.S. had a chance to win last night, even without Philip Allegan, in my opinion. I mean, it was not their best game. It was definitely not. The final goal that Belgium scored, it was just like a bonus show-off goal in the final moments of the game. I was like, what? You didn't even need to do that. And there was a level of taunting there, too, where the Belgium team did the Trump dance after the goal. And I think that kind of speaks to the entire cloud that was hanging over this event yesterday, where the U.S. had been, within the country at least, a feel-good story because they had exceeded expectations. And then suddenly, when Donald Trump gets involved and is getting a red card for the star-striker Phil Allegan suspended, the entire world is suddenly like, wait, this doesn't happen. It hasn't happened in a tournament like the World Cup since 1963, I believe, in 1964, where a player gets a red card during a game in the World Cup and is able to play that next game. It hasn't happened in a really, really long time. So exceptional. Yeah. I mean, it really just seemed to me this loss was brutal for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons was that Donald Trump had done everything he could to tip the scales in the U.S.'s favor. So then to lose, I don't know, there's both an element of comeuppance and an element of like, really, but you still lost? And I think that it made the event a geopolitical event, even more so than a sporting event. The White House and Trump had been relatively kind of hands-off with the entire tournament since it started up until everything that happened with Allegan and FIFA. Yeah, one writer at The Ringer put it like this, the vibes were immaculate, suddenly they sucked. Yes. And it just, people who were excited about the team, despite all of the politics and the situation heading into the World Cup, it just put a big damper on it. I think you could sense the tension that the team felt in the first 10 minutes. They just came out so slow and sluggish and were just not present on the field. And this kind of stuff always affects players. Can I ask you a question that my family thought I should not ask? Given what happened here, did the U.S. team deserve this brutal loss? I would say from a karma standpoint, maybe, as a country. I feel like that's just the state of where the U.S. is right now. Part of what has made this team so fun to root for is that this team was actually a very idealistic idea of what America could be. The star player who's emerged is Philip Allegan, who was a birthright citizen, was born in the U.S., in part because his parents were on vacation, his mom wasn't allowed back on the flight back to the U.K. And at the same time, he became the symbol for this corruption coming out of the White House and this tinkering behind-the-scenes dealings, which is a reality of how a lot of the world works at the highest levels of power. Okay, for non-soccer fans in the house, I wonder if we can go back. I want to explain to my listeners how hard the U.S. worked to have a better World Cup than this. In 2024, the U.S. brought on a new head coach, this guy Mauricio Pochettino. Can you just tell me why? What was he supposed to do, and why did so many people put their faith in him? I would argue that the U.S. actually did have a better World Cup than they have in the past. The results don't necessarily show it, but Pochettino is this fascinating figure because he is Argentinian, he is a guy who has coached at the highest levels of the sport. He coached Messi. Yes, he's coached Messi, he's coached at the biggest clubs in the world, he's the type of guy when a major club needs a new manager, he's almost always in the conversation because of his reputation and his track record in the past. So the reason why that happened, he came over to the United States, is because the U.S. donors were basically like, we're hosting the World Cup and we need to perform better than we have in the past. And we got to get it together. Yeah, we need to get it together, because in 2018, the U.S. men's team did not qualify for the World Cup, they lost and flamed out in a really embarrassing match in Trinidad and Tobago. It was kind of the turning point where they got the team to a point and they were able to build a roster and a foundation where there's this idea of one American savior, I think, that has permeated through the state of men's soccer, where they're looking for- Or like, any sport. Yes. I love the idea of a hero, like it's all about LeBron or whatever, like any sport has this in the United States. Yes. There's this American idea, I think, around saviors and it transcends obviously sports too, like you see this in tech with Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, when Facebook started, you know, the presidents. There is this idea of the savior, I think, is inherent in American culture. Soccer is the worst possible sport to apply that logic because it is such an ultimate team game. And even like I think Americans saw last night, even if you do have your star striker in, if you can't get the striker to the ball, what good does that actually do? Yeah. It is 11 people on a field. It's an enormous field. You need everyone to contribute. And what has happened in the United States on the men's side over the course of the last four years, but especially the last two years, is they've learned to play like a team and build up the depth and Pochettino has come in and changed the culture where- He made everyone audition for a part, basically, right? He had like 70 players compete against each other, no matter seniority. So there was this culture within the U.S. men's soccer team. It's a lot of guys who have gone overseas or have kind of been in this position of being almost guaranteed a spot for basically their entire lives dating back to their childhood. This has been framed as the golden generation for U.S. men's soccer, dating back to when Christian Pulisic, the face of the team in many ways, has been 16, 17, 18 years old when he broke out in Borussia Dortmund in the German league, was kind of viewed as this American savior for the team. As a result, there was a lot of guys who felt as if their spots were guaranteed and they kind of got lazy and complacent. And Pochettino came in and said, none of your spots are guaranteed. You have to play for them. You have to fight for them. And you could see that cultural shift change in the way that this team played in this tournament. There is much more cohesion within the men's team than there has been in the past. And there was a lot of growing pain when Pochettino came in. A lot of the players initially didn't like what was happening because they had a level of security and were able to be complacent in a way that they hadn't been in the past. Well, ironically, the result of all of this field testing was that a real star did emerge from all of this in Flo Baligan, who was a player who could have chosen to play for a number of different teams. He could have played for Nigeria, which is where his family's from. He could have played for the UK because that's, I believe, where he was raised. But by accident, he was born in the United States and so he was recruited to play for the US team. And Flo Baligan is really where the story of where things began to go south starts, right? This is the game before this last game with Bosnia-Herzegovina. Can you just explain what happened here? He got a red card from the ref. For people who don't know what that means or why this was controversial, can you just explain as someone who is clearly watching the game? Yeah, so Flo Baligan is the team's best striker. He scored the most goals for this team throughout the course of this tournament. And on a play where he was trying to get the ball back, he stepped on the foot ankle of another player. It looked to be accidental contact in the moment, but the referee looked at it on VAR, which is their instant replay system that they use to help figure out these penalty calls and determined it was a red card. The red card is the worst, right? Yes, it is the worst possible thing. They were playing with 10 players instead of 11 for the rest of the game, which is already obviously a huge kick in the nuts, basically. And then on top of that, if you get a red card, you're suspended for the next game. And so there was this panic after the game, even though the USC might actually played pretty well with 10 guys and without Flo Baligan, their offense was still very good in that match for the rest of the match. It's the star player. He's the guy who scored the most goals. People started freaking out. Flo Baligan himself had a very stoic reaction, right? He shook the hand of the ref after? Yes. And even though most people who follow soccer did not believe that it was a red card, it's a red card. And the rules of the World Cup typically mean that you can't appeal. And it is what it is. Even if the call was wrong, it's just kind of the way the dice rolls in sports. Sometimes stuff just doesn't go your way. Sometimes the dice just doesn't roll your way. And that's part of, I think, the beauty of it, because it's human. Ultimately, we're not robots. And the fact that these games have human mistakes leads to some of the best stories, I think, in sports history. The red card happens. Everyone's assuming that we're just not going to see this player in the next game. And then when do things change? So everyone assumes Flo Baligan is not going to be playing in the next game. And from there, there's a level of resignation, I think. From there, what's happening behind the scenes is Donald Trump is calling up FIFA President Johnny Eventino. And at first, this is like a rumor, right? People are like, maybe this is happening. Yeah, it's a joke. Classic Trumpism. It starts out as a joke, and then it's actually real. Exactly. People thought it might be a joke. It was just something that you would kid about on Twitter or whatever. In the back of your mind, it's like, maybe this could happen, because Eventino has created a FIFA Peace Prize just to make Trump happy. He's showed up at the White House a lot of times and been very flattering to Trump during the process of all that. So it's well, they have a relationship. And FIFA, historically, is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world. It is not implausible that this could happen, but I don't think anyone believed that it actually would. Well, it's against FIFA's rules, explicitly, right? It is, yes. It is explicitly against FIFA's rules that they have any appeal of a red card. The situation is that Trump calls up Eventino and appeals to him to review the situation. He never says, reverse it all together, make sure Balligan plays. I'm just saying stuff. I'm just making suggestions. Let's just say stuff and see what happens. This is the politics of how all of this works. Johnny Eventino and the FIFA committee, they go into the rulebook and they pull out this obscure rule that you can suspend a red card. So Balligan still has to serve that red card at some point in the future, but they're able to suspend it. It's like a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's a very obscure thing in the rulebook that has never been used, basically. Johnny Eventino says he did not play a role in this decision. Is that credible at all? No. I think there's no credibility to any of it. I think there's this idea when people think about how corruption happens in a cartoonish, movie-style way that's like, hey, can you commit the crime for me? And then the other person's like, yeah, I'll go commit that crime for you. But in actuality, in how power works in these high rooms, it's a lot of suggestions and it's a lot of threats of power that go unspoken that shape and inform these conversations. And for someone like Johnny Eventino, the United States is not just the host country, but is the largest sports market in the entire world that soccer wants to continue to break into. And the U.S. is going to have a better chance of winning this game and therefore help FIFA make more money, not just this year, but for centuries in the future if Flo Balligan plays this game. So it's a financial decision. Yeah. I mean, something that bugged me a lot about some of the reaction to this red card Trump thing is how the sports of it all kind of seem to scramble people's brains, because there is an argument that the ref made a bad call here. But I really do believe if you are calling Donald Trump corrupt for pushing meme coins or getting a new Air Force One from Qatar, calling Johnny Infantino, it's like part and parcel of the same thing. But you had people like Hakeem Jeffries being like, Balligan's free. And I was like, guy, we have to speak with one voice here. It was kind of a trap for Democrats in many ways, because if you're poo-pooing the situation, as a politician especially, it's like, do you not want the United States to win? That's a bad political spot to be in. It's bad luck. Yeah. So you kind of have to celebrate at the same time, this is the exact type of political corruption that is not just changing the United States, but changing the world right now. We went to war without it going to Congress. This is the exact type of thing that's happening. I had a lot of friends who are, I would say, not Trump's biggest fans text me yesterday being like, this is the first time he's ever done some corruption that has made me feel good. There's almost this nihilistic reaction to it, which I can actually understand to a certain degree, given how much corruption feels like is so blatantly in your face in the world right now. I think it's also one of Trump's superpowers, is that he understands the symbolic and political importance of sports, because he can get people who don't like him on literally every single political issue that affects our material conditions in life on a day-to-day basis to be like, yeah, par and parcel, this corruption is working for me. Yeah. I mean, my theory about this red card and Trump's reaction to it has been the whole thing is the most FIFA thing ever. And I wonder if you agree with me on that, just because FIFA has had so many allegations of corruption pointed at it. Maybe you can give me a greatest hit. Okay. You're like, settle down. There's a lot of stuff there. I mean, basically, I would say that the current reputation of corruption started when television happened and became central to the growth of sports, when FIFA became basically the rights distributors for the World Cup. So you're saying this started a while ago? This has been going on for, I would say, a half-century. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Because the FIFA World Cup wasn't, we think of it as the biggest event of the world now, but it wasn't that at the beginning. It took about 20 years for the FIFA World Cup to become something that actually mattered on a political level, on a multi-billion dollar business level. And the current kind of transformation and reputation of FIFA, getting to this point, started with the invention of colored television and the distribution of these broadcast rights all around the world, where the FIFA officials are taking bribes from executives and companies to try to get their hands on these broadcast rights. Because for these broadcast executives, if you get the rights to the FIFA World Cup, it can change the trajectory of your television channel at that moment, because of all the advertising money that comes in, all of the kind of residue of being the channel that hosts the FIFA World Cup, the habits that people develop of constantly tuning in. But it does seem like it's worse now. It's not just about TV rights. The relationship between Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino, that's been tight for a while and very much about mutual benefit, right? I would say that the corruption is different. Interesting. How? I would say that the corruption is different. I mean, there might be things happening behind the scenes that we obviously don't know about right now. But I would say that the way that the corruption is different is that it is much more explicitly political now. I think that Infantino is a fascinating political figure because he doesn't govern a country, but he has jurisdiction over the biggest sport in the world and the biggest tournament in the world. And so every single country has a financial incentive to have a relationship with him. They have a financial incentive to have a relationship with him and negotiate with him over broadcast rights or however many things. Infrastructure, getting money from FIFA to build pitches and soccer fields all around the world, he really controls. If we think about how important, if you kind of recognize how important Trump clearly sees sports as, every other country in the world knows how important sports is politically for shaping the country, for sometimes distracting people from whatever atrocities might be going on in their country. And so Infantino holds the keys to the room of distractions in many ways for so many people around the world. So he is an extremely politically important figure in shaping global politics. He's helped, in some ways, the Middle East reshape their reputation by hosting the Qatari government, the Saudi Arabian government. They're all investing all this money into soccer. He has some jurisdiction and power over that. And yet in this World Cup, you saw stuff like the Iranian national team get denied visas to the US, have to kind of decamp to Tijuana to participate. And it just shows the fragility of having so much power in the hands of a few. Because yes, sure, helping Middle Eastern countries, but only in certain circumstances. And when Donald Trump maybe asks you to do it differently, you're fine with that. Yeah. And so there's a bunch of incentives that Infantino has. I was at a conference, this Meridian Sports Diplomacy Conference at the beginning of the year. And Infantino showed up and he kind of talked about the importance of the World Cup as this global connecting event. That is their line, is that the World Cup is this global connector. And it is true in many ways the World Cup is this global connective tissue. It is one of the last monoculture events. So he thinks about it that way. I think the thing that when you see Infantino talk in person, it is very easy to understand how he's able to get on the good sides of all these politicians. He's a very charming guy in person. He has a sense of humor. He's very charismatic. Sounds like you're almost taken in by him. Well, there's a level of like, you're in the moments like, oh, he's funny and I can understand being in the room. And then you kind of take a step back and you're like, oh, wait, how is this used for his benefit? And ultimately... It sounds like you walked out of your interaction like, what just happened? Exactly. Yeah. There's like a mystical spell almost that he casts. Because there is this sense of idealism with sports, I think, where it can be a global connector for a lot of people. So when you really lean into that and you sense that he... He sounds like a witch. You sense that he does believe it on a certain level, right? He does believe it on a certain level. But at the same time, you see the actions, right? And you see the way that he's going to prioritize richer countries. Because ultimately, his goal for FIFA, which is technically a non-profit, is to make as much money as humanly possible. So is Gianni Infantino the problem? If he was somehow out at FIFA, would that solve things? You've laid out how really FIFA's corruption was kind of baked in from decades ago with broadcast rights. So I just sort of wonder, is he the problem if you remove... Okay. I think it's the incentives that anyone in that position would have. Okay. Because it's just like, it truly is low-key one of the most politically powerful positions. Even if they're not running a government on a daily basis, because they're not running a government, because they're running something that transcends government. It's sports. He has this political power in reshaping the direction of the world because the World Cup is going to bring in a ton of money to the United States. It is going to, in the minds of some people, reshape the reputation of the country in a positive way. Sports watching is a thing, and it does work. You're saying the best we can hope for is a good witch in charge of FIFA. Yes. But it's like, at the same time, sports is only getting bigger. If you have conversations with folks in the VC world and the private sector world, if you talk to people in those worlds, sports is everything. It is one of the, again, one of the last live events. It's gambling. It's live events. It's ticketing. It's merchandising. It's trading cards. It has investments. You're seeing Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank wear a rookie Michael Jordan card, blinged out on a diamond chain necklace. It is becoming a bigger and bigger thing. I see friends in my life, anecdotally, who are much more sports curious now because it's the way to connect with strangers. Whether it's on a gossip level—you see this with Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift—the way that that story was covered transcended sports. I think you saw it with Mike Rabel and Diana Rossini. These obscure sports figures became these Hollywood gossip-like figures because sports is one of the only things that connects everyone still together. We're heading into a world where sports is going to be a connective tissue, not just between people in the United States, but people all around the world, especially in the day and age of the internet. These leagues are actively trying to grow their global presences. You're seeing a lot of private equity money and a lot of venture capital money come to sports for that exact reason. A big question for you. We talked about how hard the U.S. worked to get past this knockout round, where they did not get past it. Given that, was all of the U.S. teams' work for nothing? No. Why? Convince me. Because they have a much better foundation, I think, moving forward. I think they look like a more serious soccer program now. I think you look at the 1994 World Cup with the United States. What's happening now with soccer in America doesn't happen without the 1994 World Cup. If you look at, I believe, Seton Hall or Sacred Heart, I believe it's Seton Hall, has a sports poll. For 100 people the age of 35, the English Premier League is as popular as the NBA and is more popular than Major League Baseball. There's a massive generation gap in soccer. There's more kids who are going to grow up now in a more globally connected world looking at how famous Erling Haaland is, looking at how famous Lamine Yamal is or Kylian Mbappe is. They're way more famous than any American sports superstar short of LeBron James. We should say Haaland is playing for Norway, which is confusing. But he's the guy who looks like a very tall Viking and has a blonde ponytail, if you're following. This is Anecdote 11, which I think is emblematic of how much culture has shifted with the internet. I grew up in Boston. Boston is famously a sports gray city. Growing up, there weren't a lot of people my age who were wearing soccer jerseys to school. Now when I go back home, most of the kids are not wearing Boston sports shirts, but they're wearing Erling Haaland kits and they're wearing Kylian Mbappe kits. It seems not unrelated to me that at the same time we're doing this very nationalist, close our borders thing here in the US. I think it's 100% related. When you look at the way that culture used to work globally in the past, America basically was the gatekeeper and the decider. If America decided something was big, the rest of the world was just like, okay, we're going to flood our TVs and our movie theaters with it. The internet has made it a lot easier for a small country like Korea to break through because of social media marketing. Even if BTS isn't the biggest band in the United States, you look at the Spotify numbers and you look at the global charts, they're way bigger globally than they are in the US. And the US not making BTS the biggest band in the US doesn't matter for their global success. And I think that that's what's happening with soccer. We're just like, for the first time, from a sports perspective, what's happened in pop culture is starting to happen in sports, where soccer is the biggest sport in the world. And it's going to be the biggest sport in the world, regardless of whether or not it's big in America. I think people under the age of 35 are like, we want to participate and connect with people all around the world. Jun, I am so grateful for you coming on the show. You were fantastic. Come back again soon. Yeah, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.