{"id":810924,"date":"2026-07-19T21:33:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T21:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/810924\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T21:33:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T21:33:16","slug":"world-cup-final-2026-and-trump-why-the-world-cup-trophy-ceremony-might-be-about-to-get-very-awkward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/810924\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup final 2026 and Trump: Why the World Cup trophy ceremony might be about to get very awkward"},"content":{"rendered":"

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New York New Jersey Stadium: There are no prizes for guessing who Donald Trump is supporting in the World Cup final.<\/p>\n

The US president \u2013 a sports fan, but not a soccer aficionado \u2013 has long been close with Argentina\u2019s right-wing libertarian leader, Javier Milei.<\/p>\n

\"TrumpTrump and Milei at the White House last October.AP<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s MAGA all the way,\u201d Trump said when the two met at the White House last year, just a few days before Anthony Albanese\u2019s visit. He even handed Argentina a $US20 billion ($28.6b) emergency credit swap, although little of it was ultimately used.<\/p>\n

Milei has been something of a regular in Washington, too – he joined Elon Musk on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference last April, where he gifted the world\u2019s richest man a chainsaw for use in cutting government largesse.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a fairly strong bromance between the two conservative presidents. But one can\u2019t say the same for Spain, which is in the Trump doghouse.<\/p>\n

At the NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month, Trump called Spain a \u201cterrible partner\u201d and told secretary-general Mark Rutte: \u201cSpain doesn\u2019t agree to anything, and you \u2060shouldn\u2019t carry them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FIFAFIFA President Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump present the FIFA Club World Cup trophy to Chelsea last year.Getty Images<\/p>\n

He also instructed his treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, to sever all US trade with Spain. \u201cI don\u2019t want anything to do with Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, trade continues as normal, as it did the last time Trump made such threats. And by the end of the NATO conference, he had softened a lot, telling reporters on Air Force One that Madrid \u201ccame back all the way today\u201d.<\/p>\n

The main source of Trump\u2019s beef with Spain is its refusal to sign up to a new NATO target \u2013 at Trump\u2019s insistence \u2013 of spending 5 per cent of gross domestic product on defence. That comprises 3.5 per cent on core military spending and another 1.5 per cent on related matters such as road or cyber infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Madrid secured an exemption that would see its defence expenditure capped at 2.1 per cent of GDP.<\/p>\n

\"JavierJavier Milei, Argentina\u2019s president, right, presents a chainsaw to Elon Musk at a conservative conference in Washington.Bloomberg<\/p>\n

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez \u2013 who, unlike Argentina\u2019s Milei, is attending the World Cup final \u2013 is a left-wing leader who heads the Spanish Socialist Workers\u2019 Party and is also the president of Socialist International.<\/p>\n

He has recognised a Palestinian state, described Israel\u2019s campaign in Gaza as \u201cgenocide\u201d, and denounced Trump\u2019s capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro as a violation of international law. In short, S\u00e1nchez is something of an anti-Trump.<\/p>\n

Which will make it all the more awkward if Trump \u2013 who is supposed to be doing the honours at the end of today\u2019s match \u2013 has to hand the World Cup trophy to Spain.<\/p>\n

One outspoken Spanish player, Borja Iglesias, joked that he would shake Trump\u2019s hand at the ceremony if only to avoid jail.<\/p>\n

\"SpanishSpanish player Borja Iglesias said he would shake Trump\u2019s hand to avoid jail.Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to go to prison,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope to greet him at a time when we are all very happy, and that it passes very quickly, and I can forget about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the question of what kind of welcome Trump will get from the Spanish fans in the house, and what kind of spectacle he will be on stage.<\/p>\n

Last year, when Trump was on hand to present the FIFA Club World Cup trophy to winners Chelsea, he lingered on stage awkwardly and even took part in Chelsea\u2019s customary celebrations.<\/p>\n

His buddy, FIFA president Gianni Infantino, eventually pulled him away.<\/p>\n

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what\u2019s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"MichaelMichael Koziol<\/a> is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-810924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}