New York: MetLife Stadium in New York is set to host the FIFA World Cup Final between Spain and Argentina on Sunday night. More than 80,000 fans will pack the stands. But the match on the pitch may not plane be the most interesting races happening inside that stadium. Up in the VIP box, Donald Trump will be sitting slantingly one of his sharpest critics on the global stage. And his closest friend in the world has refused to show up at all.
Why is Trump hosting his biggest critic?
Spain made the final, that ways Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has flown to New York to cheer his team. Spain's King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia and their daughters are moreover attending. Politically this is anything but a well-appointed situation for Trump. Sanchez has spent years openly criticizing Trump's policies. He has slammed America's stance on the Iran conflict, pushed when versus US support for Israel's military operations in Gaza and clashed with Washington over NATO defense spending. At the recent NATO summit Trump tabbed Spain a terrible partner and threatened economic sanctions considering Madrid refused to commit five percent of its GDP to defense. Sanchez tried to smooth things over without that but the tension between the two men never fully went away. Now fate has placed them in the same VIP box. And if Spain wins, Trump may have to hand the trophy personally to Sanchez's team.
Why did Trump's biggest fan stay home?
Argentina is in the final. Argentine President Javier Milei is considered Trump's closest wive and greatest truelove in the western world. Trump would have loved having him in that box. But Milei had denied and is not coming to New York. The reason has nothing to do with affairs or politics. It is pure superstition and In Argentina this is tabbed Cabalas.
Milei believes that watching matches from a specific chair at his presidential residence in Olivos has been a lucky recreate for Argentina throughout this tournament. Every one of Argentina's seven wins in this World Cup has been watched by Milei from that same chair. He is not well-nigh to transpiration that now. Speaking to a local radio station, he said that there is no way he is waffly the routine and will watch from Olivos.
What is the lucky jacket story?
Milei's superstitions go plane further. During the quarter-final versus Switzerland he was wearing a thick YPF branded jacket considering it was unprepossessed and he had not turned the heating on. At some point during the match he felt warm and took the jacket off. Immediately the opposition scored. He put the jacket straight when on and has not taken it off during a match since. He told the story himself and was completely serious well-nigh it.
This kind of thinking runs deep in Argentine football culture. At the 1990 World Cup, then-President Carlos Menem attended a match and Argentina lost to Cameroon in their opener. Menem was labelled Mufa, which roughly ways jinx or bad omen. Since then no sitting Argentine president has gone to watch the national team play in a stadium. Milei has no intention of stuff the one who breaks that tradition and ends up in the history books as the man who forfeit Argentina the World Cup.
How the football, politics and superstition all at once?
On the pitch, it is Lionel Messi's Argentina versus Spain's young and hungry squad. In the VIP box it is the silent but loaded diplomatic tension between Trump and Sanchez. And hovering over the whole thing is the ghost of Milei sitting vacated in his palace chair in Buenos Aires, jacket firmly on, refusing to move. It is nonflexible to remember a World Cup final that has packed in this much politics, friendship, rivalry and superstition all at the same time.
