Is Trump going to collapse the world’s two biggest sporting events?

Plenty of public figures are in discombobulation because of US President Donald Trump, but the two most important people in international sports – Fifa President Gianni Infantino and Olympics’ boss Kirsty Coventry – are bricking it more than most right now.

Trump’s chaotic second term in office coincides with the US hosting both this year’s Fifa World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.

And the man himself promotes the notion that HE is hosting them. They are his personal playthings and he can do what he wants with them.

The Los Angeles Olympics are still 30 months away, which is about a million Trump years because his news world moves tectonically on an hourly basis.

Who knows where we will be by then? So, for now, the five-ringed circus is relatively under the radar, and Coventry, a Zimbabwean swimming gold medallist who is the new head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), is preoccupied with getting the tardy Italians to finish the showpiece skating rink in Milan in time for the Winter Olympics, which start in less than two weeks.

But Coventry must already know that she’s going to have her hands full holding attendance in LA together if the US president continues to bomb, ban and abuse with abandon.

Turmoil

A total of 204 nations sent competitors to the brilliant Paris games 18 months ago. How many of them will be in Trump’s black book when we are due to go round the track again?

There are plenty of Olympic precedents for turmoil; Nazi policies caused great angst among many nations before the 1936 Berlin games; Finland welcomed the Soviet Union team to Helsinki in 1952 even though Stalin had invaded their country in 1940 and sliced off some territory; the Mexico City games of 1968 went ahead in spite of more than 400 protestors being gunned down in the city’s streets 10 days before the games started; Black September terrorists killed 11 Israeli team members in Munich in 1972; the 1976, 1980 and 1984 games were all hit by substantial boycotts; and Russia has been banned in recent times. Somehow the games have always survived and thrived, but what we are experiencing with Trump now is next level for volatile unpredictability.

Coventry, who must be used to political dysfunction having served for seven years in Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government as minister of sport, is probably just hanging on to the hope that Typhoon Trump in some way blows itself out before July 2028 comes around.

World Cup fiasco?

Fifa’s Infantino doesn’t have the IOC’s luxury of time. His showpiece kicks off in less than 150 days. He assumed that becoming Trumps’ No 1 Global Sycophant (Exhibit A being the farcical Fifa Peace Prize he gave him) would guarantee him a smooth ride, but that was as futile as it was sickening.

To start with, Trump does nothing but threaten his co-hosts. He is openly speculating about American ground force intervention in Mexico, and routinely insults and tariff-loads Canada while postulating that it should become his 51st state.

Recently invaded Venezuela hasn’t qualified for the finals, but Colombia – very much in Trump’s literal gunsights – has. His bête noire Iran is coming.

And thinking of places he loathes, South Africa will play one of their games in Atlanta. (Good luck getting a visa with an SA passport if you want to attend that fixture.) Haiti, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire have qualified yet all have complete Trump travel bans in place at the moment.

The Danes are still in with a chance of making the finals – their footballing fate will only be known in late March – but if Trump takes their Greenland territory, surely they will boycott, as might other nations in Nato, which just happens to include four of the last five World Cup winners.

Trump also makes no secret of wanting to reclaim control of the Panama Canal, which could mean invading another finalist.

And a further fly in the ointment is Ukraine – still in the qualifying mix while Russia is banned from participating. The Donald would prefer that to be the other way round.

The good news is that, for now, Trump is a “big fan” of Argentinian President Javier Milei, so the defending champions will be allowed in. But Fifa’s gold standard, Brazil, are in the dog box because they have prosecuted former president and Trump-wannabe Jair Bolsanaro for his coup attempt after he lost an election.

And amid it all, Trump has threatened to take World Cup games away at late notice from Democrat-run American cities such as Seattle because they won’t bend to his political will. (Given that he loathes California and its governor Gavin Newsom, it is not beyond the bounds of his chaotic brain that Trump will want to move the 2028 Olympics to Texas!)

Nobody knows how this will all play out for Fifa.

Not even the grovelling Infantino. He’s no doubt relying on the fact that there was plenty of huffing and puffing about Qatar as a deeply unsuitable venue last time in 2022, but no one boycotted and the finals were a brilliant sporting spectacle. Once the first ball is booted, morality tends to get kicked out of the stadium.

But the norm of sporting history is that, in turbulent times, the host nation desperately tries to hold things together and diplomatically smooth troubled waters to ensure a successful event.

This time round it is the host who seems hell bent on wrecking his own party. DM