Juventus players, staff, and FIFA execs with U.S. president Donald Trump in the Oval Office on June 18, 2025. Juventus players, staff, and FIFA execs with U.S. president Donald Trump in the Oval Office on June 18, 2025. (@WhiteHouse on X.)
By Andrew Bucholtz on

A long-debated question in sports media is when it’s appropriate for reporters to ask about off-field issues. That discussion can get especially thorny around politics, and team and league executives often try to block questions there even when the door’s been opened by their organization or its representative. That’s what a FIFA press conference moderator did Wednesday.

The moderator’s action came against The Athletic’s Adam Crafton. It was in relation to an attempted question to Juventus coach Igor Tudor about being in the Oval Office during a political discussion, as Crafton relayed on X Thursday morning with a link to his story on this (which had comments from players, but not Tudor):

Crafton added his rationale for the attempted question to Tudor in a follow-up post:

Here’s a further detailing of that exchange in Crafton’s piece:

Tudor was also asked a general question about the trip to the White House in his post-match press conference. He said: “You don’t go to the White House every day so it was a pleasure to go.”

The Athletic then asked him to expand a little on what the experience was like and how it felt to be a football coach standing behind the desk at the Oval Office as the president discussed major global issues like Iran and Israel.

The FIFA moderator of the press conference intervened. He said that questions should be focused on the game. The Athletic argued that, given the owner, players and executives had been present on game day, it was a fair question. The FIFA official reiterated questions must be focused on the game.

It is somewhat understandable why a FIFA official would want questions after Juventus’ FIFA Club World Cup match (they beat United Arab Emirates club Ail Ain 5-0 Wednesday night) to be about the match rather than an associated appearance with a political figure. FIFA is trying to promote their tournament, and they’ve already tried to take steps to avoid political confrontation with U.S. president Donald Trump and his administration, including axing previously-seen displays of “End racism” messaging. (Notably, Crafton had a key report on that subject recently, so he may have already been on FIFA officials’ radar here.) Questions about the often-controversial Trump probably don’t enhance FIFA’s goals for media availabilities, regardless of how they’re answered.

But Crafton had a much stronger argument for asking this question than what we’ve seen at times in the past. This wasn’t just asking an athlete or coach how they feel about the U.S. president out of the blue. Juventus players and coaches, along with FIFA president Gianni Infantino and other executives, were literally in the Oval Office with Trump Wednesday afternoon ahead of their match, presenting the president with a Club World Cup jersey (with the “football unites the world” tournament slogan) and then standing there as backdrop while he took questions from political media on generally-unrelated topics, including the Iran-Israel conflict and America’s actions in it:

Trump also did have some strange conversations with the players and executives, including asking them “Could a woman make your team, fellas?” The players didn’t comment and general manager Damien Comolli praised Juventus’ women’s team (the reigning Italian champions), leading to a Trump follow-up comment of “But they should be playing with women” in apparent reference to recent administration actions against trans athletes (including Trump’s “Keep Men Out Of Women’s Sports” executive order in Februrary). That didn’t get a response, so Trump said “They’re being very diplomatic.”

Trump also initially deferred a question on travel bans affecting this tournament and next year’s FIFA World Cup to Infantino. The FIFA president said “No, it is not a concern for us,” and Trump then said “They’re largely sold out (at the Club World Cup)” and “tonight is totally sold out.” Neither of those claims appears accurate; the overall tournament has had tens of thousands of empty seats to date despite slashed prices, and Wednesday’s game had tickets available that morning on Ticketmaster and announced an attendance of 18,161 at 20,000-seat Audi Field.

This is not the first time sports figures have served as backdrops for Trump’s Q+A sessions (and had to watch their on-camera expressions as a result), with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris doing so earlier this year around a stadium announcement. And the figures who have appeared in these kinds of events have generally been asked about it afterwards.

That doesn’t mean those figures always say much of note about Trump. In fact, they generally haven’t. But it’s reasonable to ask them the question. And if Tudor didn’t want to comment on that, it would have been better for him to just say “No comment” himself rather than for a FIFA official to block the question entirely.

The truly mistaken assumption from the moderator in closing this line of inquiry down is that it somehow works out better for the organization if people don’t comment. If Tudor had answered the follow-up here, he might have just added a vague “It’s nice to see the president supporting soccer,” or a number of other things that wouldn’t have bothered FIFA at all. Indeed, some of the responses Crafton got from Weah weren’t too controversial at all:

“I guess it was a cool experience, obviously, being in the White House… as the first time, it’s always wonderful, but I’m not one for the politics, so it wasn’t that exciting,” Weah said after the game.

But Weah (son of Liberian soccer star George Weah, who served as that country’s president from 2018-24; Liberia is a country that’s been discussed as a potential target for an expanded travel ban) did also mention that this wasn’t an experience he sought out:

“It was all a surprise to me, honestly — they told us that we have to go and I had no choice but to go,” Weah said after Juventus’ 5-0 win on Wednesday. “I was caught by surprise, honestly. It was a bit weird. When he started talking about the politics with Iran and everything, it’s kind of like, ‘I just want to play football, man.’”

Even those comments have nothing negative about Trump or politics, though; if anything, they make FIFA and/or Juventus look bad for forcing this appearance on players. But at least FIFA allowed Weah to make those comments. If they had let Tudor comment further (or not, as he desired), the Juventus White House appearance would have been a much smaller story without a particular sports media dimension. But blocking Crafton’s question backfired there, and added to FIFA’s long list of questionable media dealings.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

View all posts by Andrew Bucholtz