Noise around Donald Trump an unwanted distraction to World Cup draw of dreams
A man walks past signage prior to the final draw for the 2026 soccer World Cup at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
When the sculptor Joel Shapiro created Blue, the piece that stands around the back of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, looking out over the Potomac River in Washington, he wanted to tap into a number of elements. The giant matchstick figure denotes movement and energy, risk and possibility. As Shapiro himself has said, it is supposed to “reconfigure depending on how you look at it”.
It has the perfect home at the Kennedy Center, the vast cultural hub for ballet and opera, stage productions and concerts. And it resonates on a new level now as the venue prepares to host Friday’s World Cup draw, at which the competing nations at next summer’s extravaganza in the United States, Canada and Mexico will discover their group opponents and knockout round pathways. Because from one angle it is plain that Blue is executing a raking pass. From another, it is a spectacular side-on volley. Squint a little and it is Ciao, the Italia 90 mascot.
Kennedy was a champion of the arts and he was determined to have a national centre for them in the capital city, pushing hard to fund it. Two months after his assassination in 1963, it was decided by Congress that it should be named after him.
Washington DC is steeped in grandeur and self-assurance. It honours the most revered American presidents in style. You do not have to walk far from the White House to marvel at the monument to George Washington; when it was completed in 1884, it was the tallest structure in the world. Or to find memorials to Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, to Theodore and Franklin D Roosevelt.
As the gaze of the world prepares to fall on the Kennedy Center, to remember JFK, to feel a rush of excitement, it is his most recent successor in the Oval Office who has his elbows out, making a familiar dash for centre stage. It was confirmed on Tuesday that Donald Trump would attend the draw and confirmation is the appropriate word. There was never the scintilla of doubt about the president clearing a window in his schedule; Trump is not a man to miss an opportunity.
Nobody at Chelsea will forget Trump’s appearance on the podium for their Club World Cup trophy lift in New Jersey last summer and it even led to a question for the USA manager, Mauricio Pochettino. Would he allow Trump to get in on the celebrations in the unlikely event of a US World Cup win?
“For sure, I will give him the trophy and he can lift it … no problem for me,” Pochettino said. “Maybe he’s not a soccer person, and he was a little bit in a situation [at the Club World Cup] where he didn’t know what to do, but it was funny. That is America.”
Fifa had originally planned to stage the draw in Las Vegas – as it did for the 1994 World Cup, when the US were the lone hosts. As an aside, Bill Clinton, the president at the time, did not attend. But Trump pushed for Washington, even though it is not among the 16 host cities.
Trump has made another move. One of the musical acts on Friday will be the Village People and they will play their disco classic YMCA – which Trump has used as an anthem for his Make America Great Again rallies. The group performed at Trump’s inauguration event for his second presidency.
Then there is the Fifa peace prize, the brainchild of the organisation’s president, Gianni Infantino, who is a devoted member of the court of Trump. When the latter, to use the football parlance, was “robbed of” the Nobel peace prize by María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan politician, Infantino did what every good friend of a world leader ought to do – he created an alternative prize. There are a growing number of cynics who suggest that Trump is poised to collect it.
If and when that happens, it would not change a simple truth: the draw is not about Trump. It is about firing the starting gun on the most important tournament in football, the pinnacle. It is about the hopes and dreams of every participant in every team; every fan. They range from those connected to the Big Four nations, as Spain, Argentina, France and England (in that order of seeding) have come to be known. They will be placed in different quadrants to ensure they do not meet before the semi-finals, assuming they win their groups and progress.
And they get to the New Four. Uzbekistan, Jordan, Cape Verde and Curaçao (in that order of seeding) will play at their first World Cup. The number of debutants will swell if any of Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Suriname and New Caledonia emerge from the playoffs next March. The ties will account for the final six places in the expanded 48-team tournament.
It can sound corny when players and managers talk about fulfilling childhood dreams at the World Cup. But the emotion during qualification has been real. The scenes, for example, when Scotland secured their first spot at a finals since France 98 with the epic Hampden Park victory over Denmark will live for ever. And how about when Cape Verde got there with the home win over Eswatini? Africa had five places for Qatar 22. They now have a guaranteed nine. It will be 10 if the Democratic Republic of the Congo win their playoff final against New Caledonia or Jamaica.
Fifa has assigned every group game to a stadium but will wait until Saturday before it says which teams play in each game. It will also reveal the kick-off times in what will have the feel of a follow-up ceremony, beginning at 5pm GMT (noon EST). After Friday’s draw, which also starts at 5pm GMT, teams will at least have either/or answers for where they play and will know their general region. It will mark the start of an arms race for training bases, long-researched options suddenly whittled down.
In Washington on Thursday, it was hard to see any evidence that the draw was about to take place. Or to find many locals aware of it. But it will be supersized because that is how things are over here – and not just the security for Trump.
Heidi Klum and Kevin Hart will host the show. Andrea Bocelli, Robbie Williams and Nicole Scherzinger will perform. Rio Ferdinand and Samantha Johnson are the draw hosts. Tom Brady, Wayne Gretzky, Shaquille O’Neal and Aaron Judge – legends of the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB – are the draw assistants. Brady and Gretzky were in Trump’s VIP suite at the Club World Cup final.
It will be easy for supporters of a certain age to cast their minds back to USA 94. The Roberto Baggio penalty miss. The Diana Ross penalty miss. The Republic of Ireland storming to the last 16. USA reaching the last 16. No England. It is time for new legends to emerge.
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