The game is rigged— how Trump’s influence corrodes the soccer pitch and financial markets

At what point have the rules changed so much that the game simply ceases to exist? Soccer is an unusual place to look for guidance on financial markets. But this week’s bizarre spectacle that is the current World Cup provided as perfect a metaphor for the last two years in financial markets as anyone could have hoped for.

On Sunday, Fifa abruptly waived the one-match ban on Folarin Balogun, the US striker sent off during the hosts’ win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the process clearing him to face Belgium in Monday’s round-of-16 tie in Seattle. The reversal came days after a phone call from Donald Trump to Gianni Infantino, the president of football’s governing body Fifa; a call Trump has cheerfully confirmed, while insisting that he had “nothing to do with the decision”, just that he had merely asked for a review. He did, however, offer his own version of events: it was not a foul, or a red card, just two athletes who got “entangled”.

Infantino, “brilliant” at what he does, according to the president, explained that the matter had been decided by Fifa’s “competent bodies”, whose rulings he always respects. Those competent bodies had reached, mid-tournament and without any precedent, remarkably and coincidentally the same outcome requested by the host nation’s head of state. We can draw our own conclusions. European footballing body Uefa duly drew theirs; it accused Fifa of crossing a red line. The Belgian football federation was angrier still.

At least the outcome of the game was inarguable and, for just about every non-American fan watching and possibly many Americans, a relief. Belgium won 4-1. The US, nervous and outplayed from the start, tumbled out of the tournament short of their first quarterfinal since 2002. Balogun – played in the starting 11 by coach Mauricio Pochettino, who decided not to decline Trump’s gift – was anonymous.

The intervention was as futile as it was corrosive. The US was not only humiliated on the pitch, but the context also highlighted how far the country has fallen and is now an embarrassment to any American with a modicum of moral rectitude.

The same week we learnt just how literally the man leaning on the referee is also a player. Trump’s official financial disclosure, all 927 pages of it, landed at the US Office of Government Ethics. It records more than $ 1 1-billion in earnings from a portfolio ranging from cryptocurrencies and golf courses to Bibles and perfumes.

World Liberty Financial, the crypto group founded in 2024 by Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr and the sons of special envoy Steve Witkoff, has become one of the president’s biggest earners: token sales linked to the venture raked in $526-million last year, up from $57-million in 2024. Royalties tied to the $Trump shitcoin added a further $635-million. An additional $196-million came from a capital contribution to a stablecoin holding company in which he owns a 38% stake.

Then there are the disclosures relating to his trading activities. Trump reported more than 21,000 trades across eight accounts in 2025 — roughly 80 per trading day, and about 24 times the volume previously disclosed. His earlier filings this year captured barely 800 transactions; the new one concedes, in the most anodyne prose possible, that late filing fees were paid on the rest.

A matter of timing

Of course, the timing on these all is revealing. The largest purchase of Nvidia stock — valued at between $5-million and $25-million — came on 18 August, a week after Trump announced the chipmaker could resume selling its H20 chips to China provided Washington took 15% of the revenue. The largest purchase of Intel stock came the same day, conveniently less than a week before the White House announced that it was taking a 10% stake in the company. And on 18 September, one of the accounts moved between $25-million and $50-million into a US government money-market fund, the day after the Federal Reserve delivered its first rate cut of the year.

Trump’s defence is that he never speaks to the people who run his money; they are big institutions, and they invest in whatever they invest in. The White House added that neither the president nor his family has “ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest”. Readers, as well as potential future Congressional commissions of inquiry, can weigh those assurances against the timestamps of the trades.

But the implications of both Fifa’s crossing the Rubicon of soccer’s rulebook and Trump’s blatant disregard for free market trading — his indulgence in casino capitalism —extend beyond just the World Cup quarterfinal or Trump’s own balance sheet.

A market, like a tournament, rests on one critical assumption: that the same rules bind all players, especially the most powerful. That is why insider trading regulations exist. Remove this assumption of fair play for all protagonists and the game — be it on the pitch or on the trading floors — ceases to exist in any meaningful way, and devolves into a tawdry, macabre charade.

Belgium found out on Sunday what it means to compete against a team whose suspensions dissolve on presidential request and decree. Anyone trading US assets should recognise the feeling. The president front-runs his own policy announcements, discloses late, pays the fees and moves swiftly on. He is not playing the same game as the rest of us, and unlike Balogun’s reprieve, this version of the fix works. For investors watching from the periphery — South Africans among them — the position is even worse; they are spectators holding a ticket to a match whose result has been arranged.

As to what to do about it, the revealed preference is depressingly predictable; if you can’t beat them, join them. Fifa has capitulated. Cristiano Ronaldo has performed at the Oval Office. Chief executives queue to fund the president’s vanity projects such as the White House’s grotesque ballroom. But the implications for financial markets are profound; they have ceased to be free, with the court of Trump resembling more a latter-day Ottoman Empire, viziers pressing favours on a sovereign while the entire edifice — in this case a wobbly tower of AI capital expenditure — sways beneath them.

Republicans will say that the Democrats are no better, pointing to the suspiciously well-timed trading in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s household. That base whataboutism does not, however, exonerate what Trump is doing; it makes clear how far the US has fallen. Trading on privileged information is not only more blatant than ever, but also entirely bipartisan. The whole structure is rotten.

The consolation, such as it is, came from Seattle. The ban was waived, the striker started, but Belgium won 4-1 regardless. Rigged games still end. The only question for investors is what side of the scoreline they will be on when this one does. DM