The US election comes to a head today. Donald Trump is aiming to secure a second term and presumably not his last. Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democrats’ candidate seeking to succeed President Joe Biden.
Such is the public nature of American politics, figures of authority and celebrity are very often willing to wear their voting intentions on their sleeves.
The round-ball version of football has an uneasy history with the White House, especially a Republican White House, but that doesn’t mean America’s footballers are all backing Harris.
The go-to MAGA man in American soccer is former USMNT defender and Fox Sports pundit Alexi Lalas.
The most memorable face of the 1994 World Cup is now one of the foremost broadcasters in the game in North America and makes no secret of his Republican preference. Though his commentary (the political kind) chimes with Trump, he actually backed rival candidate Ron DeSantis initially.
We don’t know for sure that Christian Pulisic will vote Republican but he has aligned himself, deliberately or not, with some of the more extreme views associated with Trump’s supporters.
Back in 2021, Pulisic and former US international Geoff Cameron were spotted in the likes and comments of a very unpleasant Instagram post. Pulisic has not endorsed Trump. Cameron’s conservative views are much more public.
Megan Rapinoe played more than 200 times for the USWNT and has been locked in an ongoing war of words with Trump for years. In the run-up to polling day, Rapinoe spoke of the “violent reality that Donald Trump has very clearly laid out” and is enthusiastic about the opportunity to elect a Black woman as president.
Trump blamed the national team’s most recent World Cup exit on their wokeness, which doesn’t really demonstrate the sort of tactical insight one expects from a world leader.
Abby Wambach, capped 255 times and the scorer of the USWNT record 184 international goals, is another vocal opponent of Trump.
In a recent Instagram post she argued that “If Trump wins, we lose” on the grounds of women’s rights. Alex Morgan threatened to unfollow her mother on Twitter because of her pro-Trump tweets around the election in 2020.
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We can also assume that former men’s international Michael Bradley will vote for Harris. Prior to the 2020 US presidential election, he told TSN that then-President Trump was “completely empty” and that the nation was devoid of leadership during his time in office.
“There is no moral bone in his body,” said Bradley.
There’s a perception in the USA that soccer is a left-leaning sport. The prominence and success of the women’s national team reinforces that from an electoral perspective because women’s rights, gay rights and non-binary rights are issues that matter in women’s football.
Trump can expect to be heavily opposed within the women’s soccer demographic but the picture among men in American soccer is less clear.
What we do know is that few players openly support the Republican Party. Sometimes concentrating on the football really is for the best.
