Ronaldo, who has played club soccer in Saudi Arabia since 2023, had not been in the United States for nearly a decade following a 2009 legal case in which Ronaldo was accused of rape. The charges were dropped in 2019 and the case was dismissed in 2022, clearing the way for his return. But what does the timing of His reappearance mean?
“President Trump is deeply aware of the symbolism of hosting the World Cup during the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and as we saw with the Club World Cup, he wants to closely associate himself with the glitz and glamor of the tournament,” Christian Coates Ulrichsen, Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told DW.
“This has come out very clearly with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, so given Ronaldo’s importance to Saudi Arabia and the importance of the Saudi relationship to both Trump and FIFA, it is no surprise to see Cristiano Ronaldo being drawn into the triangular Trump-Infantino-MBS orbit.”
Saudi Arabia has been criticized for using sport to distract from the country’s human rights record.
Indeed, earlier in November Ronaldo attended a tourism event in Riyadh and reiterated the role he wants to play in the country’s World Cup in 2034.
“I want to be part of Saudi Arabia’s efforts to host the World Cup,” Ronaldo said. “I believe in the vision for tourism in the state.”
As a result, some people consider Ronaldo’s presence at the White House not only surprising but actually part of Ronaldo’s job.
“The team has paid him for window dressing, OK? He’s not there to be an all-star player. He’s there to look pretty and stand out, attract attention and lend his football credibility to whatever politician he’s standing next to, whether it’s Gianni Infantino or Donald Trump or MBS,” Aaron Ettinger, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa and an expert on US foreign policy and international relations, told DW.
“He’s not there to give his opinion. He’s just there to be Cristiano Ronaldo.”
Ettinger believes this is sports diplomacy rather than sports washing.
“It falls under the broader umbrella of game diplomacy where you use fantasy games to gain geopolitical advantage,” Ettinger said. “It’s not that complicated, right? It’s probably disturbing to see a 40-year-old Ronaldo standing unnaturally next to all these figures.”
Sportswashing is not working in the current environment
Ronaldo’s presence could also signal the beginning of more visits by famous footballers to the US to generate buzz ahead of the tournament next summer.
Interest still seems low, partly because elite-level soccer, as it is called in the US, is low on the list of popular sports compared to the rest of the world. Ettinger believes there is something more involved.
“The political system in North America in 2025 is simply not conducive to harmony,” Ettinger said. “Coming from Canada, yes, there is a moderate to high level of excitement about the World Cup and that it will get there, but right now we are more concerned about Donald Trump taking over the country and destroying our economy.
“If we step back, it shows that the game-washing elements in all this are not really working. This is really not normalizing. This is not having the desired effect of tarnishing Saudi Arabia’s reputation in the eyes of North Americans,” Ettinger added.
“It is successful in achieving the economics of hosting the Games and may also have an impact on properly normalizing economic relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, but it is not improving the reputation.”
What about Trump and the World Cup next year?
The 2026 World Cup starts in just 200 days. There is just less than a decade left for the World Cup to be held in Saudi Arabia. In both cases, it would be surprising if more examples of sports diplomacy or sports washing did not emerge. However, Ettinger believes Trump is doing something else with the game. Actually his current research is related to this question.
“I think Donald Trump is using sports to fight a culture war,” Ettinger said. “One of the famous Breitbart sayings is that politics is downstream from culture and if sports is culture, you can connect politically by appealing to young male UFC fans or NASCAR fans or yelling about Colin Kaepernick. And so Trump has found a way to find that vein in sports that appeals to his right-wing radical base.”
However, football is a challenge for Trump. It’s a game he’s outside of, not necessarily familiar with. Ronaldo’s presence in the White House, as well as Trump’s increasingly close relationship with Infantino, shows that the US President has key figures to help him.
Edited by: Chuck Penfold
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