Spain went home with the World Cup. But if you were watching on German TV, the real must-see moment of the night came from commentator Oliver Schmidt, who spent chunks of the final simply refusing to be polite about Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino.
Both men watched the match together before heading down to the pitch for the trophy presentation. Most broadcasters would have just named them as the cameras panned over. Schmidt had other ideas.
“Trump and Infantino, those two were made for each other,” he told viewers. “Fascinated by power. And by themselves, too.”
Then, a bit later, when the cameras found them again: “And there is the US president and his phone-a-friend on the right, his lackey, Gianni Infantino.”
Not exactly the usual tone for a World Cup broadcast.
Trump gets his hands on the trophy first
Trump was at the New York New Jersey Stadium for the final between Spain and Argentina, sat with Infantino and a row of other dignitaries. Early in the match, Ronaldo, the actual footballer, carried the trophy up to the presidential box, and Trump got to hold it and give it a pat before it went back for the proper ceremony.
There’s no FIFA rule saying only past winners or heads of state can touch the thing. But footballing custom is that players don’t handle the trophy until they’ve actually won it. So watching Trump get his hands on it before either team had even lifted a finger irritated plenty of people watching at home.
Which gave Schmidt his opening.
The Trump-Infantino friendship has become genuinely hard to ignore at this point. Infantino has praised him repeatedly, opened a FIFA office inside Trump Tower, and handed him the organisation’s first-ever peace prize back in 2025. At a pre-final reception, he told Trump directly: “This World Cup would not have been such an incredible success without you.”
Schmidt’s version was a little less flattering: two men bound together by how much they love power, and themselves.
Why ‘phone-a-friend’ landed so well
That line wasn’t a throwaway insult. It had a very specific backstory.
Earlier in the tournament, US striker Folarin Balogun was sent off during the win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, which should have meant an automatic one-match ban ahead of the Belgium game. Trump later admitted he’d personally called Infantino to get the decision reviewed. FIFA suspended the punishment. Balogun played.
FIFA insisted its disciplinary process remained independent throughout. Not everyone bought it. UEFA said the handling of the case threatened the integrity of the whole tournament. On ZDF’s own coverage, former Germany international Christoph Kramer said the pair seemed incapable of embarrassment, and ex-Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker warned that the whole point of having disciplinary rules disappears if a phone call can just override them.
Balogun did end up playing against Belgium. The US lost 4-1 anyway and went out of the tournament regardless.
So when Schmidt called Infantino Trump’s “phone-a-friend,” German viewers didn’t need the reference explained.
The final itself
Spain beat defending champions Argentina 1-0 after extra time. Argentina held out for the full 90 minutes, mostly by sheer stubbornness, while Spain dominated the ball and created nearly everything. Enzo Fernández picked up a second yellow and got sent off, leaving Argentina to survive extra time with ten men. They couldn’t. Ferran Torres scored in the 106th minute, and that was that. Spain now hold both the men’s and women’s World Cup at the same time.
For Lionel Messi, 39 now, this may well have been his last shot at the trophy. He looked visibly emotional collecting his runners-up medal, having barely had a chance to influence a game Spain controlled from start to finish.
Trump doesn’t quite leave the podium
After the final whistle, Trump and Infantino walked out to loud boos from parts of the crowd. Trump helped hand out medals, then joined Infantino in presenting the trophy itself to Spain’s captain, Rodri.
That’s usually the cue for the dignitaries to step back and let the players have their moment. Trump didn’t quite take the hint. Rodri seemed to gesture for him to move aside as Spain got ready to lift the cup, and Infantino had to hurry back over to steer him away, though not before Trump made it into the opening seconds of the celebration photos.
This wasn’t even the first time. He did more or less the same thing at Chelsea’s Club World Cup lift last year, with Infantino similarly trying to nudge him along. Apparently once wasn’t enough to put him off doing it again.
Germans loved every second of it
Clips of Schmidt’s commentary spread well beyond Germany once English subtitles started circulating.
“The commentators were dissing Trump and Infantino the whole time and I loved every second of it,” one viewer wrote. Another: “Saw that yesterday, I’m German, and yeah Oliver Schmidt was pretty much on point with this.”
Plenty of non-German viewers piled on too. “Truth has been spoken,” said one. “LOL. He is not wrong,” said another. One American was simply annoyed at what they’d missed: “I am infuriated that Americans were not given access to the superior German broadcast instead of Fox.”
The “phone-a-friend… his lackey” line got translated and shared just as widely. It’s the kind of thing that tends to stick.
Why Infantino’s closeness to Trump keeps raising eyebrows
FIFA obviously has to work with any host government on something the size of a World Cup, visas, security, logistics, all of it. Some level of coordination with the Trump administration was never avoidable.
What’s raised eyebrows is how far past “necessary coordination” the praise has gone. The Balogun episode made it worse, because it looked exactly like what everyone worries about: a president picking up the phone to the head of world football and getting the outcome he wanted on a specific disciplinary decision.
Infantino has denied interfering improperly and insists the relevant FIFA bodies operate independently. The sequence of events didn’t do much to reassure anyone.
And then there was Trump front and centre again during the final itself, holding the trophy early, refusing to fully clear the podium at the end, doing what he’d already done once before at the Club World Cup. It all fed the same impression: that FIFA had let its biggest tournament become a stage for someone else’s ego.
Schmidt just said the thing out loud that a lot of people were already thinking while watching at home: two men who seemed thoroughly impressed with each other, trying to squeeze themselves into a moment that was never supposed to be theirs.
Spain took the trophy home. Schmidt got the review in first.
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