Just before Reece James went to lift the Club World Cup trophy, the Chelsea captain politely told Donald Trump that they were likely about to leap around in celebration so he might want to move. A remarkable sentence in itself. The US president, according to sources in the middle of this, very much gave the impression he was loving it and wanted to stay. You can see the images for yourself. There’s certainly something incongruous about the player of the tournament, Cole Palmer, looking confused beside one of the world’s most powerful leaders in this moment of triumph.
That kind of scene is no longer new, of course, but it does look like it’s becoming normalised in this authoritarian-leaning political era. This was one step up from Qatar 2022. If that saw the Emir give Lionel Messi the otherwise innocent garment of the bisht in the centre of an immortal image in order to signal his state’s presence, this was a leader himself in the middle of it. If Chelsea want a giant poster of their trophy-lift outside Stamford Bridge, Trump will be front and centre. We’re beyond symbolism here. It’s too obvious.
