Donald Trump asked if USA will 'start dominating' football before 2026 World Cup and his answer speaks volumes
Donald Trump has been quizzed about the USA's chances of one day 'dominating' football ahead of next year's World Cup, which his country will co-host.
The global international football tournament will take place in the summer of 2026, with Argentina seeking to retain their crown won at Qatar over the winter of 2022.
The USA will co-host the tournament along with neighbours Canada and Mexico, making it only the second World Cup to be hosted by multiple nations - following the 2002 edition which took place across Japan and South Korea.
The USA has just finished playing host to the newly expanded FIFA Club World Cup, the final of which took place over the weekend.
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Chelsea have won the title for the second time after beating Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain 3-0.
The Stamford Bridge club stunned the European champions with three goals before half-time, with a brace from Cole Palmer followed by a third from summer signing Joao Pedro.
PSG's misery was further added to as full-time approached when Joao Neves was shown a red card after pulling Marc Cucurella's hair.
The victory also means that Chelsea's earnings from their progression in the competition have risen to more than £90m after winning the tournament.
President Trump was in attendance at the final, which attracted 81,118 supporters at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
The US will be on home soil for next year's competition and all eyes will no doubt be on how the USMNT perform.
The Americans have reached the World Cup on 11 occasions, with their best performance being third place achieved back in 1930.
What did Donald Trump say about the USA?
President Trump was interviewed by DAZN ahead of the FIFA Club World Cup final and was asked if America could start 'dominating' football on a global stage.
And his response appeared to go off on a political tangent as he reflected on his second term in office so far, before giving football a brief mention at the end of his answer. However, he failed to address if America could one day dominate the sport internationally.
He said: "Well I can tell you we're doing very well on the other stage, on the political stage, on the financial stage. I was just in Saudi Arabia, I was just in Qatar, I was in the UAE, here we have Qatar and the big presence they have.
"You look at NATO, all of the leaders said 'a year ago your country was dead and now you have the hottest country in the world'. There's a lot of truth in that - we were doing very badly as a country. We had an incompetent administration and now we have a hot country, truly hot.
"And I think the soccer's going to be very hot here too.
"It already is, it's gotten a lot of play and I think with the play come the great players and I think it'll do very well."
Topics: FIFA Club World Cup, FIFA World Cup, Donald Trump, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain
John McDougall