set to present the World Cup trophy to the winner of the Sunday game between Argentina and Spain. <\/a><\/p>\nSpeaking to Fox ahead of the match, Trump was asked who he thought would triumph and said he\u2019d been giving the question a lot of thought as he \u201cknew\u201d they would ask.<\/p>\n
After describing Argentinian president Javier Milei as a \u201cfriend of mine\u201d who has done a \u201cterrific job\u201d, Trump declared that he thought the South American country would come out on top because of their star player.<\/p>\n
He went on to describe Messi\u2019s game-winning assist in the semi-final against England, saying: \u201cI watched that pass… I guess you\u2019d call it a pass… that was perfect. If you had a strike zone, it was exactly where it had to be. I watched also just before that, the way he got away from the defender. He was very well defended, and then all of a sudden he was standing by himself… It\u2019s hard to bet against Messi, he\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"President](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-19-at-10-16-25-AM-(2).png\")
President Donald Trump reveals he’s backing Argentina ahead of the Fifa World Cup final (Fox Sports)<\/p>\n
Trump declined to be drawn on whether Messi is the greatest player of all time, citing his friendship with Cristiano Ronaldo and his memories of watching Pele play for the New York Cosmos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got to see Pele play, and he was great,\u201d said the president. \u201cLook, these are great players, and there are others. Look at France, he had a rough game the other day, but he\u2019s [Mbappe] certainly one of the greats. I get this information from my son. My son Barron is a tremendous soccer fan.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cYou have some other really incredible players playing here, but I would say right now, when you look, I\u2019ve always liked Ronaldo and I\u2019ve always liked Messi. I met Messi just recently, and I have known Cristiano, and they have a pretty good life. I think they have a pretty good life, actually, much easier than my life! I\u2019d like to switch for about a month or so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked when he would like to see the World Cup return to the United States, Trump said he had \u201can idea\u201d for Fifa President Gianni Infantino.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe got it all started, and I brilliantly said: \u2018Well, we\u2019ll do it, but you could have a lot of empty stadiums!\u2019 Didn\u2019t work out that way, I think they were 99.9 per cent full, I think they were overflowing actually,\u201d said the president.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI had a great idea for Gianni. I said: \u2018You have to do two countries. So announce us for next time, and then announce another country after that and it\u2019ll take out some of the anger and the shock!\u2019 Now I think it\u2019s a great idea. Based on the numbers, we will be requesting it again immediately. I said, to take out the shock, you could announce another country for the next one… but we have to do this again. You hear that, Gianni?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-700526","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\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}