The curse of Donald Trump: where he goes, sporting defeat follows

Breaking a mirror. Walking under a ladder. Spilling salt. A black cat crossing one’s path.After the events of this week, it feels safe to add one more item to the list of things said to bring bad luck: the support and intervention of Donald J Trump.The president waded into the fortunes of the US men’s soccer team over the weekend, personally asking the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, to overturn a red card shown to the team’s star striker, Folarin Balogun.It worked. Balogun’s red card was controversially reversed, prompting uproar from the global football community but allowing him to play against Belgium on Monday.Before Trump’s intervention the US had been in the middle of arguably their best World Cup run in decades. After, they collapsed, crashing out of the tournament with an insipid performance that ended in a 4-1 defeat.The team had suffered the curse of Donald Trump.Yes, an increasing body of evidence suggests that where the president goes, sporting defeat follows. From the basketball court to the Nascar ring, from the golf course to the NFL stadium, Trump’s presence serves as a harbinger of defeat.The rumors picked up steam after Trump attended Game 3 of the NBA Finals in June. The Knicks were in imperious form, riding high on a run of 13 consecutive wins until, with Trump watching on (amid naps), the Knicks slumped to their first defeat in weeks.A pattern was emerging. Last November, Trump became the first sitting US president in nearly 50 years to attend a regular season NFL game, when he traveled to the Washington Commanders’ stadium to watch them play the Detroit Lions. The Commanders got battered, 44-22.Earlier in the year, Trump had visited the Daytona 500. The race was subjected to three and a half hours of weather delays. When Trump served as grand marshal for the same event in 2020, it was suspended after just 20 laps, rain causing the race to be postponed until the next day for only the second time in history.The examples keep coming.Trump speaks to press before departing the Ryder Cup tournament in September 2025. Photograph: Andrew Leyden/Zuma/ShutterstockIn September, the golf-loving Trump was front and center at the Ryder Cup, watching the US take on Europe. Europe won, its first victory on American soil in 13 years, and only its fifth overall. This January, he was in Miami to watch the Miami Hurricanes take on the Indiana Hoosiers in the College Football Playoff National Championship. Indiana won.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe curse of Donald Trump is not necessarily a recent phenomenon. During Trump’s first term he spent a late October night at Nationals Park in Washington DCwatching the Washington Nationals take on the Houston Astros in the World Series. The Nats lost 7-1, although – with Trump not in the crowd for Game 7 – managed to win the series overall.The ill-fortune that Trump transfers to sporting teams wouldn’t really matter – we can all agree that his policies have far more serious consequences for far more people than the outcomes of the games he insists on attending – if it weren’t for the president being so obsessed, despite all available evidence, with presenting himself as a winner.“We’re winning so much,” Trump said in a speech to Congress this year, “that we really don’t know what to do about it.”He continued: “People are asking me: ‘Please, please, please, Mr President. We’re winning too much. We can’t take it any more. We’re not used to winning in our country. Until you came along, we were just always losing, but now we’re winning too much.’“And I say: ‘No, no, no. You’re going to win again. You’re going to win big. You’re going to win bigger than ever.’”Instead, there is mounting evidence that where Trump goes, teams lose big. They lose bigger than ever.