Trump Calls Soccer 'One of the Fastest Growing Sports.' The World is Not Pleased.
Source – He added: ‘Soccer is a game, I guess you call it football. But over here, maybe at some point they’ll change the name, I’m not sure. But we’ll see. It’s working very well either way.’
Fans around the world were quick to point out that football is already the world’s most watched game worldwide, rather than a ‘growing sport’.
Graham Breeze wrote: ‘It’s been around in “the world” for many years. It just happens to be growing in the USA where they play mens netball and rounders.’
Liverpool supporter Josh tweeted: ‘”Has to be one of the fastest growing sports in the world”. Yeah, I’m hoping it catches on in Europe, Donald!’
Dennis Taylor asked: ‘Do you even know what soccer is? The game has been played in many forms for 1000s of years, before England laid out rules in the early 1800s. Look up facts before opening mouth.’
Like Trump or hate him, you have to give him credit for one thing: Nobody trolls better than he does. Nobody comes close. He’s the Troller-in-Chief.
A simple meeting in the Oval Office to celebrate the 2026 World Cup he credits himself and Mr. Kraft for bringing to North America – the most photo oppy of photo ops – and he turns it into a master class on pushing buttons. Here and overseas. He understands that there’s nothing his base enjoys more than seeing him trigger the groups they don’t like. The press. Foreigners. Whomever. The more sensitive the group, the better.
And let’s face it, nobody is more sensitive than soccer fans. There are two things Europeans love more than anything. Drawing us into their wars and complaining that we don’t love their game enough to their liking. And the only people more insecure about it than European soccer fans are U.S. soccer fans. So Trump throws a rock at their beehive with his passive/aggressive “Yeah, it’s a nice little game you’ve got there. Maybe after we’re done taking all your tourism Euros it’ll finally amount to something.” Then dangles the carrot that maybe we’ll all start calling it football (as if), then pretending to kick out the very news crews he invited into his office, just for the sport of it. Hate him all you want; it’s your Constitutionally protected right. That and the word “soccer” are what separates us from most of the countries that belong to FIFA. But while you might think it’s The Beautiful Game, but just acknowledge that no one plays The Ugliness Game better than DJT.
A blog within a blog: I’d forgotten about this until it came up on a “Worst Movies” list I was watching on YouTube the other day. Does anyone remember that FIFA financed a movie that was entirely about … FIFA? Not the sport of international futbol, but about them forming the organization. Called United Passions, it starred Sam Neill and Tim Roth, who admitted it’s objectively awful and he only took the role because he needed to pay his kids’ tuition bills. And Roth thought it would be about corruption at FIFA, a governing body so crooked they make the NCAA look like Doctors Without Borders. But nope. It painted these kleptocrats as earnest and heroic. And was released in 2015, just around the time they were all being led away in handcuffs.
United Passions cost FIFA somewhere between $25 million and $30 million to produce. And on it’s opening weekend in the U.S. it grossed $319. That is not a typo. Three hundred. Nineteen. Dollars. If you’re into the high-intensity adrenaline rush that is two hours of rich, white businessmen having board meetings, it is the film for you.
Just remember, when Trump trolls the people who buy into this bullshit, he trolls for thee.