Donald Trump gives a “red card” to the media after a visit with US Soccer President Carlos Cordeiro and FIFA President Gianni Infantino. (Getty)
A word on this seems appropriate given the surprising shoulder-shrug it’s been given elsewhere.
Two months after wearing pride jerseys, months after reading anti-racism and discrimination statements prior to a USWNT friendly and a little more than a year after Bruce Arena’s defiant defense of Mexican-Americans and immigrants ahead of a US qualifier in Mexico City, a strange thing happened last week, when the less than one year in office US Soccer Federation President, Carlos Cordeiro, along with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, visited Donald Trump at the Oval Office, presumably to discuss the 2026 World Cup.
The Trump visit was bizarre and troubling for a host of reasons, even allowing for the fact that Cordeiro, a wealthy Colombian-American from Miami, has been consistent in his praise for Trump’s economic policies.
The mutual admiration between the President and Cordeiro runs deeper than just economics, of course.
Thank you for all of the compliments on getting the World Cup to come to the U.S.A., Mexico and Canada. I worked hard on this, along with a Great Team of talented people. We never fail, and it will be a great World Cup! A special thanks to Bob Kraft for excellent advice.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2018
Mr. Trump (above) was quick to take full credit for the successful World Cup host selection of the “United 2026” bid of Canada, Mexico and the United States; Cordeiro was equally quick to defend a classic strongman tweet by the President arguably intended to wield influence and pressure on other FIFA member-states prior to the vote, contrary to FIFA rules.
Whatever credit Cordeiro and other members of the US Soccer community, like Alexi Lalas, may give the President in regard to the success of the North American 2026 World Cup bid, the reality is the President’s influence was minimal at best.
In fact, CONCACAF and CONMEBOL member presidents and officials that spoke to TYAC indicated that Mr. Trump’s hardline immigration stances, particularly his “travel ban”, were significant source of contention in the year leading to the vote. The sense from a host of sources and federations is that but for the involvement of Canada and Mexico in the process, political backlash would have sunk the U.S. bid.
“I wouldn’t say anyone was running to give the US the bid when the current President is an immigration hardliner implicated in multiple federal investigations,” one federation spokesman told TYAC.
Perhaps, in the light most favorable to Mr. Cordeiro, this was an Infantino-driven idea. FIFA did not respond to our inquiry for comment. But given the political background, the decision to visit the Oval Office was strange, and the idea US Soccer received any genuine long-term benefit from a photo op with an unpopular President implicated in active election tampering, corruption and obstruction of justice investigations is unpersuasive, for several reasons.
First, the World Cup is eight years away, so there’s no feasible argument a visit to Trump was particularly critical, especially given the reality that a new President will (barring a constitutional amendment or coup) be in office come the 2026 tournament.
Second, the Trump Administration’s policies are decidedly anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and anti-women.
That matters, because it makes Cordeiro’s decision to visit the White House a bizarre move and at a minimum, a symbolic rebuke of US Soccer’s self-proclaimed commitment to advancing the women’s game, advancing inclusion on LGBTQ issues and advancing a game that at least at the senior men’s team level is dominated by immigrants. The widely circulated images of Cordeiro joking around with President Trump and suggesting he issue a “red card” to the media who have tried, despite an active and aggressive campaign against the truth, to hold Mr. Trump accountable, was particularly ghastly.
Even accounting for financial considerations and World Cup planning, the visit warrants scrutiny.
Can the Federation authentically stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ community and “Pride” movement when its leadership is aligning itself with an administration that uses its Justice Department as a sword, having filed embarrassing briefs deriding the dignity of same-sex couples?
Can the Federation claim to want to make the game more inclusive, especially to Mexican Americans, when its leadership aligns itself with an administration that opened its foray into presidential politics with a stump speech calling Mexican-Americans “rapists” and “murderers”?
The answers aren’t complicated. The hypocrisy is glaring. The moral bankruptcy of such a strategy- even factoring in utilitarian gain (which is minimal)- is galling.
Finally-as the retirement of Clint Dempsey so vitally reminded us—US Soccer suffers from an inclusion problem and an access problem, especially in underserved, working class communities. Dempsey learned his creative brand of soccer in part from playing Sunday games with immigrants, many of whom came from nations the sitting President consistently vilifies. The identification and alignment of Carlos Cordeiro, joking and laughing it up in the White House with a President who has made it his and his Justice Department’s practice to exclude immigrants, deny even basic procedural protections to working class people of color and assault what areas of the safety net remain for working class Americans (who more than any other subset of Americans lack access to the US Soccer developmental structure) is at a minimum tone-deaf, and at worst an incredulous act of hubris.
If it feels at times like the US Soccer Federation can’t get out of its own way, that’s because it can’t.
Neil W. Blackmon co-founded The Yanks Are Coming. Follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.