By Charlie Harper

London, New York, Paris and Donald Trump came together on Sunday, and while some aspects of this were predictable others, spectacularly, were not.

The occasion was the final match of a heretofore relatively obscure soccer competition known as the FIFA Club World Cup (CWC). FIFA is the world’s governing soccer organisation. Until this year, this competition’s participants have been the champions of the six leading soccer federations from around the world plus the host country titlist. Most of the time, the champion of Europe’s premier Champions League tournament has won this trophy.

For 2025, ambitious FIFA president Gianni Infantino reimagined the CWC as a companion to the quadrennial World Cup that is contested among the world’s national teams. That’s regarded by many fans as even bigger than the Olympic Games, and is really the world’s only rival to the Olympics in terms of global reach.

Infantino, who has cultivated a friendship and now a business partnership with US president Trump and has even opened an office in Trump Tower in New York City, decided to unveil his new, 32-team CWC tournament in various US stadiums this summer as a prelude to next year’s World Cup, which will also be held in North America. Infantino went all in on the CWC this summer.

While US television coverage was relatively weak and attendance at the numerous host stadium sites (including Miami) was often embarrassingly meagre, FIFA put up one billion US dollars in prize money and many of the world’s best, most celebrated teams competed in earnest for a share of that enormous pot.

Because of the tournament’s somewhat complicated qualification terms however, some English powerhouse teams like Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal were not included in the field, while club teams from Miami, Seattle and Auckland, New Zealand were invited. Still, many European and most South American giants were there, and they all played hard in the stifling heat and humidity.

The heavy favourite before play began in June was recent European champions Paris Saint Germain, which had prevailed by an astonishing 5-0 score over 2023 finalist Inter Milan to win the 2025 Champions League. But while that victory margin was the second largest in tournament history, PSG really impressed the experts by rolling through English powers Liverpool, Arsenal (of north London), Manchester City and Birmingham’s Aston Villa in the competition’s knockout rounds.

London’s Chelsea was PSG’s final opponent. The Blues, located on Fulham Road in the English capital’s tony SW6, have a long history in England’s top leagues, but it has only been in the past 20 years that the team has consistently challenged for titles in the world’s top soccer competitions. That’s because they have been owned since 2003 by a superrich Russian oligarch and since 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, by a conglomerate headed by the US investor who has inspired the spending that has sparked the recent domination of American baseball by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The value of the team soared by 3,000 percent during the period of the Russian oligarch’s ownership.

While plucky spirit and inspiring play can lead to victory for underdog, underfunded soccer teams, money and associated power ultimately reign supreme in world soccer just as in most other professional sports. Chelsea, like PSG with its Qatari oil wealth support, has been a major beneficiary of the trend toward soccer club control by some of the world’s wealthiest people.

When PSG and Chelsea squared off Sunday at Met Life stadium in New Jersey outside New York City, the French champions were overwhelming favourites. But they got outcoached and outhustled in the mid-afternoon heat by Chelsea and the final score of 3-0 was an appropriate measure of the play in the game.

For many in the US, however, the biggest story occurred just after the game had concluded with an ugly, sore loser display by PSG’s coach and goalie.

Trump and Infantino, flanked by their obviously bored wives, had watched the game together and went down to the field to present the championship trophy to the winners. The expectation was that the two men would then respectfully retreat out of sight while Chelsea’s exultant players rejoiced in the traditional wild, gesticulating victory celebration.

Trump however, lingered. He did not leave the stage. A few moments of stunned confusion by the Chelsea players ensued. Infantino had to come back and retrieve the US president, who seemingly cannot imagine a scenario where he is not at the centre of any event.

According to numerous accounts and TV coverage, Chelsea captain Reece James couldn’t figure out what on earth was going on. Trump had just handed him the Club World Cup trophy but was still there on the podium, grinning, not going anywhere.

Some of James’ Chelsea team-mates, standing behind him, couldn’t stop laughing. Cole Palmer, the star of Chelsea’s 3-0 victory against PSG, furrowed his brow and looked at Trump in apparent bewilderment before urging James to wait. “I was admittedly a bit confused,” Palmer told reporters afterwards.

Palmer, incidentally, claims ancestry on St Kitts and travelled there immediately after the team’s New York celebrations concluded. He received a hero’s welcome.

According to the Independent, “fresh from rubbing shoulders with Donald Trump after lifting the FIFA Club World Cup with victory over PSG in New York on Sunday, Palmer made his first visit with his family to the birthplace of his grandfather, Sterry Palmer. The midfielder, born and raised in Wythenshawe, Manchester, is also proud of his Caribbean heritage, wearing the flag of St Kitts and Nevis – alongside the England flag – on his football boots to honour his family’s roots.”

Back in New York, Trump was of course interviewed after the game.

“We’re doing very well on the other stage, the political stage, the financial stage,” Trump said, before going on to talk about Qatar (the 2030 World Cup host), NATO, and the US being the “hottest country in the world.” He was clearly not referring to the air temperature.

Asked about sport being a unifying, powerful tool. Trump said “it’s about unity, about everybody getting together, a lot of love between countries. I guess soccer is the most international sport, it really can bring the world together.”

The president finally spoke the truth.

Move on from Epstein, Trump urges

While Trump was in New York feigning interest in and knowledge of the world’s premier sport, leftist media were rubbing their hands in glee.

This was because a furor had erupted over the “Epstein papers”, a compendium of various federal investigations of a man universally referred to in the press as “disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein”, a convicted felon and sex abuser who died in prison in 2019 under still mysterious circumstances and whose friendships with both Trump and Bill Clinton had elevated him to the national stage.

Epstein has been a political hot potato for years. Now, after Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared to foreclose further public comment on or release of the Epstein papers, some of the most virulent MAGA trolls were outraged, and their indignation has appeared to rattle the GOP establishment.

Last week, the Justice Department had announced that Epstein’s death was a suicide and that there was no list of his clients to be made public. In effect: “Nothing to see here.”

But Trump for years used the Epstein case to rile up his base. Now he seems to be evading an issue that has inflamed his supporters and spurred their devotion to him.

The assertion by billionaire and former DOGEr Elon Musk last month that Trump was named in FBI files on Epstein opened a crack in the president’s support system.

Conservative allies of Trump have since criticised the president and Bondi, for what they see as evasive and opaque handling of the case. Included in this group are Trump ally and advisor Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, various current and former Fox News commentators, etc.

According to the Guardian, US House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson, a reliable Trump ally, yesterday called for the Justice Department to make public all documents related to Epstein.

You get the idea. MAGAs conspiracy theorists are upset.

Over the weekend, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to move on, urging them on social media not to “waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about”. Hmmm.