Crooked Timber

One month. 12 stadiums. 32 teams. 63 games.

Mercifully, the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup is finally over.

Certainly, some of the football, or soccer, on display is entertaining. A small number of performers enhance reputations. Somewhat surprisingly, Chelsea, an English Premier league side, upsets France’s heavily favoured Paris St Germain (PSG) 3-0 in the tournament final.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino immediately hails the competition, held in the USA, as a “huge, huge success.”

However, for me at least, most of the event is decidedly anti climactic. Not compelling at all. In reality, an abject failure.

With few exceptions, games play out in front of deserted stands. Even the most powerful and famous clubs in the world struggle to entertain in front of the tens of thousands of unoccupied seats. Not even ridiculously overpriced tickets, reduced to next to nothing, persuade fans to attend.

Other issues quickly become apparent. Game day travel, to and at many of the various venues, proves problematic and time consuming. Bumpy grass surfaces are deemed not up to standard. Crazy kick off times, in brutal 40+C heat and high humidity, place players in real danger of injury. Further compromise the overall quality of matches. Weather delays provide an extra irritation.

Add in broadcasting apathy, which makes viewing from the comfort of home awkward and costly.

Much worse, much, much worse, are other sinister forces lurking in the background. Whose long-term consequences will likely reverberate for years.

First, back to Infantino. Arrogant, grandstanding, paying lip service to player welfare, boasting of a golden era of club football, he shoehorns the global tournament into an already overcrowded annual schedule. FIFA complicit in its greed.

Still, far more concerning is the role and impact of Donald Trump.

Desperate to host mega sporting events, to strut in the limelight, to appear important on the world stage, the USA president earns the wrath of fans by crashing the Chelsea trophy celebration and victory photo.

Significantly, multiple other far more serious issues remain unanswered.

America, thanks to Trump’s cruel, shameless, and wildly erratic leadership, lurches dangerously towards becoming a police state. Traditional moral values seem no longer important. Dishonesty on a grand scale, bribery, coercion, vengeance, lack of transparency, commonplace. The constitution, law, and order, ignored. Racial profiling and discrimination rampant. A groveling MAGA base and a nasty, snarling, predatory administration further accelerate the collapse of democracy and national politics.

Take, as examples, Trump-directed travel and visa bans on over forty countries. Borders close. Tensions escalate. International students and journalists face pressure and arrest. The Supreme Court majority abdicates responsibility. Universities encounter persecution, education departments and government agencies are gutted.

Massive government funding swells the ranks of ICE, a modern-day Gestapo. Already, thousands of unauthorized or undocumented immigrants, even those with no criminal record, detained in prison camps or deported.

In addition, Trump's denial of climate change only ensures deadly flooding, severe temperatures, killer winds. His unpredictable economic and trade policies chip away at consumer confidence, hamstring the working class, strip millions of health care. While granting more money and power to an already wealthy elite.

And, all the while, ongoing conflict in eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, threatens to send a fractured world hurtling into the abyss.

Perhaps, as it has done many times in past times of toil and trouble, sport can be a salve of sorts.

Still, I worry.

For if the recently completed Club World Cup is a test run that fails, what hope for the full World Cup in 2026, to be primarily hosted by the USA, or the Los Angeles Summer Olympics two years later?

Will visiting fans from competing countries be at risk? Might qualifying countries withdraw or boycott for safety or other reasons? Already, it becomes clear that certain delegations, supporters, and media will struggle to secure entry into the USA. Some countries, such as Iran, have already qualified for 2026. Guaranteeing only that FIFA’s stated commitment to inclusion and equal access is soon to be tested.

Given these factors, allied to the country’s concerning political division and downward spiral to authoritarianism, questions must be raised about the ability and readiness of the USA to host the two events.

For even if the current “Epstein” scandal undermines Trump’s aura of infallibility and tanks approval ratings, his bluster, bullying, belligerence, and messiah complex, remain formidable obstacles. Rest assured that FIFA and Infantino, when it comes to the full World Cup, will kowtow as required to every Trump/USA whim and demand.

In terms of the Olympics, Los Angeles needs only look back to 1984. Any lustre tarnished when nineteen countries withdraw just months before the event is set to begin.

What a challenge for Kirsty Coventry, newly elected to the IOC presidency. Not only a woman, but an African from Zimbabwe. And, by having to stand firmly against any discrimination affecting the Olympic movement, in Trump she faces not only a pathological liar but also a racist and deep-rooted misogynist.

Morally, politically, and economically, America, and the world, stands at an extremely dangerous crossroad. What is true, what is just, no longer seems to actually matter.

Still, given his vanity, no doubt Trump, and by extension Infantino, expects the upcoming sporting extravaganzas to proceed without serious complaint or thorny issues. That all involved parties and participants will, in the end, bend to his will.

Myself, I cannot see it. For, as stated long ago by Immanuel Kant, the great 18^th century German philosopher, “out of crooked timber, no straight thing was ever made.”