OPINION: Despite his efforts, Trump has failed to kill the spirit of America

Folarin Balogun, a Symbol Against His Will

Folarin Balogun, a forward with a transnational background, has unwittingly become the center of a major political controversy. Sent off with a red card during the match against Bosnia in Santa Clara, his suspension was subsequently overturned under circumstances unprecedented in World Cup history. Never before, it seems, had a political leader exerted such direct pressure on FIFA regarding a player’s eligibility to play in a match so crucial to the host country’s chances.

Belgian head coach Rudi Garcia responded with biting irony: “I thought July 5 was actually April Fools’ Day.” The remark made headlines around the world. It sums up, better than any opinion piece, the feeling that soccer has been left at the mercy of a man who has never hidden his penchant for meddling.

A red card overturned due to political pressure is not a mere refereeing detail. It is a crack in the very integrity of the game. And the worst part of it all is that most American fans won’t care as long as their team wins. Perhaps that is Trump’s most disturbing victory: having made cheating acceptable as long as it benefits the “right” side.

A team that speaks louder than its president

The U.S. team itself, made up of players from diverse backgrounds, tells a story that Donald Trump cannot rewrite with the stroke of a pen. Every goal scored by a player of foreign origin is a silent rebuttal to the rhetoric of national homogeneity. The starting lineup doesn’t look like a country closed off from the world—it looks like what America has always been, when it’s given the space to be itself.

The FIFA Version of the Nobel Peace Prize

FIFA President Gianni Infantino had already begun to stray from the right path long before the Balogun affair, by awarding Trump the organization’s very first “Peace Prize.” This gesture, perceived by many as an act of allegiance disguised as sports diplomacy, set the stage for what was to follow: an organization supposed to referee the game without favoritism, now suspected of bowing to pressure from a head of state.

European reactions were swift. Yvan Verougstraete, a Member of the European Parliament and president of the Les Engagés party, summed up the unease: “Amazing how a red card suddenly becomes ‘unjust’ when Trump gets involved. FIFA must defend fairness, not give the impression of yielding to political pressures.” The message spread from the sports arena to the European political arena in just a few hours.

Let’s be blunt: a FIFA that hands out peace prizes to a man who threatens journalists and closes borders is no longer a sports institution. It’s a public relations firm disguised as the guardian of the game. Infantino didn’t betray soccer by accident. He did it methodically, one trophy at a time.

The meme that said it all: “the Trump card”

On social media, the phrase “the Trump card” took hold within hours to describe the reversal of the red card. MAGA supporters celebrated the decision as a victory for common sense. Others—and there were more of them—saw it as definitive proof that if the United States wins the tournament, the trophy will bear an invisible but indelible asterisk: won thanks to Trump, not in spite of him.

When Prophecies of Failure Become a Political Burden

There is something both satisfying and uncomfortable about the realization that even Trump’s political opponents are now struggling to deny the logistical success of the tournament. According to Politico, the American left has had to “grapple uncomfortably” with this unexpected success. Democratic strategist Rob Flaherty admitted: “I think there was a bit of liberal wishful thinking that maybe it would be a disaster to teach him a lesson.”

This admission, coming from a camp that had a thousand political reasons to wish for failure, speaks volumes about the complexity of the moment. The tournament is neither a total victory for Trump nor a total defeat. It is an event that eludes him on both counts at once.

Hoping for the failure of a popular event to humiliate a political opponent is also a form of contempt toward the millions of people who asked for nothing more than a month of football. The American left would do well to learn this lesson: the people will not allow themselves to be exploited in either direction.

Fox News and Its Triumphant Little Victory

On the other side of the spectrum, Fox News and its editorialists relished every attendance statistic as a personal victory over “the left-wing media,” which, in their view, had predicted chaos. This interpretation, too, oversimplifies a far more nuanced reality: the tournament’s popular success says nothing about the immigration policies that preceded it, nor about the families stranded at the borders.

Atlanta, Boston, New York: An Unexpected Bond

It’s the scenes on the streets, more than the official stands, that tell the true story of this World Cup. In Atlanta, Moroccan fans—some of whom had clearly been living in the United States for a long time, judging by their accents—flooded the streets before facing Haiti. In Boston, an unlikely bond formed between Scottish fans and the city’s residents. In New York, the Brazilian crowd ended up celebrating with Knicks fans, in a blend of sports cultures that no political script could have foreseen.

These images—tiny when taken one by one—together form a collective rebuttal to the rhetoric of isolation. Soccer, freed for a moment from political posturing, returns to what it has always done best: bringing together what borders seek to separate.

There is an almost poetic justice in these street scenes. A president can close a border. He cannot close a stadium filled with people singing in six different languages. He cannot legislate against the collective joy of a goal scored in the 89th minute. Perhaps that is the only victory that truly matters, in the end.

Japan discovers potato chips and salsa; the world discovers itself

Almost trivial details also tell this story: Japanese fans being introduced to the very American delights of chips and salsa, in an atmosphere of mutual curiosity that contradicts, point by point, the narrative of an America closed off from the world. It’s not grand declarations that best prove a country remains open—it’s those thousands of small encounters, invisible to the eyes of politics, but real for those who experience them.

A nation that is building itself despite its leaders, not because of them

The real lesson of this 2026 World Cup isn’t that Trump failed to undermine the tournament—the record attendance figures might even suggest the opposite from a strictly logistical standpoint. The real, deeper lesson is that a country’s identity cannot be decreed from the Oval Office. It is built in the streets, in the stands, and in the unlikely encounters between Norwegian fans and New York neighborhood bars. It is built by the Baloguns of this world—players whose personal journeys tell the story of an America far more complex than any campaign speech.

This World Cup does not whitewash the administration’s immigration policies. It does not make up for the families turned away at the borders, nor the phones searched, nor the visas denied to fans whose only “crime” was wanting to watch a soccer match. But it proves, with almost brutal clarity, that the planned isolation was not enough to extinguish what made this country capable of welcoming the whole world.

I don’t know if Trump understood what just happened right before his eyes. He wanted a tournament in his own image—filtered and controlled. He got a tournament that defies him, spilling over from every side he had so carefully sealed off. You can’t kill the soul of a people with an immigration executive order. You can wound it, wear it down, and sometimes humiliate it. But you can’t extinguish it. This World Cup is proof of that—proof paid for by those who were barred from entering, but proof nonetheless.

A Tournament That Eluded Its Host

The overall picture is a mixed one, much like the country that hosted it. On the one hand, record attendance, scenes of spontaneous camaraderie, and a national team that embodies the very diversity that official rhetoric claims to combat. On the other, tens of thousands of travelers turned away or discouraged from coming, a FIFA whose neutrality crumbled before the eyes of the entire world, and a red card that was overturned—a decision that will remain an indelible stain on an otherwise spectacular tournament.

The America of this World Cup is not the one Trump wanted to build. It is the one that survived his efforts to shut it down.

And yet, despite the executive orders, despite the border searches, despite the forty countries subject to restrictions, despite the red card overturned due to political pressure—the stadiums were filled with songs in every language of the world. And yet, the celebration went on. And yet, America has shown, once again, that it is greater than the man who claims to represent it. Perhaps that is the only honest conclusion we can draw from this summer of 2026: you cannot shut down an entire country with a visa application form.

What Remains After the Final Whistle

When the last confetti has fallen onto the field of the final stadium, what will remain of this World Cup will be neither the Balogun controversy, nor the attendance figures, nor even any one team’s eventual victory. What will remain is that enduring image of fans from forty different nations, singing side by side in American cities that were said to be closed off. What remains is living proof that a country is never defined solely by its current leader.

By Jacques PJake Provost