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Portugal star will hand Gianni Infantino the perfect publicity coup if he does play in America for the first time in more than 10 years, having already begun cosying up to Donald Trump Is it still safe to stage the World Cup in the United States? After more headline evidence this week of the extreme nature of American gun violence, some may conclude that the answer is no. Nine months out from the opening game, it is now almost impossible to ignore this. But believe it or not statistics suggest more than 300 people will have been shot in America last Wednesday alone. The same number will also be shot on Friday, Saturday, every day next week, and every day of World Cup year. On average 127 of these unnamed, largely non-famous people not called things such as the superstar influencer Charlie Kirk will die each day. Within this, youth gun deaths will be both alarmingly high and a register of social injustice: a disproportionate 46% of all young people shot will be black. So maybe the events of Wednesday really do suggest America isn’t a fitting World Cup host. Maybe it hasn’t been for a while, as members of the African media suggested while questioning Gianni Infantino in Nairobi a few days ago, expressing alarm at the hostile policies of the Fifa president’s special friend Donald Trump. Happily Infantino cleared this up on the spot. It is apparently “a misconception” that the US might be a hostile or dangerous place for non-white visitors, which is no doubt a relief for all concerned. Today I feel like a concerned black African football tourist. But you know what? With the benefit of this unique insight I, Gianni, have decided it’s all fine, so carry on. You may still have concerns, or consider Infantino’s assurances are worth exactly what you might expect from a person who seems to be composed entirely from a cylinder of reconstituted human inauthenticity crammed, kebab-meat-style, into a navy blue suit. Or that Fifa is already complicit in this state of alarm. The World Cup will offer a multibillion-dollar boost and a gloss of pure sportswashing to a regime that has used immigration theatrics to alarm its inhabitants and imposed brutal visa curbs on people from the wrong kind of competing nation. But there is at least one shaft of light here. Before anyone gets too worried about travelling to America for the World Cup there was a suggestion this week that one highly influential person may be about to buck this trend. Enter: Cristiano Ronaldo, who has the chance to demonstrate that it’s finally safe to go back in the water, a year into Trump 2. 0. It has been a good couple of weeks for Ronaldo. First he was given full superstar hysteria treatment during the Saudi Super Cup in Hong Kong, which included being mobbed during a surprise visit to a museum in Tsim Sha Tsui. A museum, you say? Surely an elite fitness powder emporium, or a skyscraper made entirely from yak fur and parmesan cheese? But this was a museum devoted entirely to the works of Cristiano Ronaldo, its official title the CR7 Life Museum, which certainly sounds like the best museum, a very tall, very handsome museum. And as of Wednesday Ronaldo is now in line for a return to the US after an unexplained 12 years away. According to a story first published in the Athletic, Portugal are in talks to play a friendly against the US next March. The last time Ronaldo played in America was a summer tour game for Real Madrid in 2014. The last time he was photographed there was in 2016. This is a significant development. Ronaldo still has a lifetime contract with Nike and assorted big-ticket endorsement deals. He even put his name to an NFT collaboration which has now collapsed into legal chaos, with Ronaldo at one point a named party in a class action suit, which may or may not be a related factor, nobody really knows. What is certain is his decade-long absence from the largest consumer economy in the world, no tours, no brand-building appearances, no Major League Soccer contract, has left millions of dollars on the table, for a Ronaldo-industrial complex that definitely likes millions of dollars. So presumably there must be a good reason. Ronaldo has never commented on this. There are no charges, and certainly no convictions. In fact it all seems to have been a terrible misunderstanding. But his absence coincides directly with the appearance of allegations in 2017, always vehemently denied, that Ronaldo sexually assaulted a teacher called Kathryn Mayorga in Las Vegas in 2009, and later offered a no-admission no-guilt payoff to make the whole thing stop. The case was reopened in 2018, ran on to 2022, and has now, it seems, died a death. None of which means Ronaldo’s presence in the US wouldn’t have been met with protests, bad publicity, a reigniting of some kind of action. Pre-season tours at his various clubs over this period stayed away from the States. No pics, no talkshow stuff, no temporary deal with the Kansas City Wangdoodles. And now it seems the waters may be clearing. And it is, let’s face it, hard not to associate this with a change in voice, power dynamics, names at the top. Trump likes winners. Trump likes vibey, wealthy masculine guys. Trump knows what it is to suffer historical allegations that just won’t go away. Trump technically even has the power to offer a legal pardon, even to a foreign national, even before any charge is made, or likely to be made. Either way, in June there was an overt cosying up as Trump was presented with a CR7 shirt via the Portuguese European council president, António Costa, at the G7 summit in Canada (on it Ronaldo had inscribed “To president Donald J. Trump, Playing for Peace”, pandering very obviously to the aspirant Ballon de Peace winner). And this really is a late-career crunch time for Ronaldo, 40, still a goalscoring machine, and with a chance to dip a toe in those waters before the World Cup, where he really just needs to be present to energise both the tournament and his own brand legacy. For those who have followed his astonishing professional existence it is also a chance understand a little more clearly what Ronaldo is, which is still slightly mysterious. In many ways football has still not really come to terms with the magnificent monster it has built. Ronaldo is arguably the most famous person in the world, already the most followed person on Instagram ahead of Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, God, authentic human feeling and diverse Kardashians. At the Club World Cup this summer he was massively present despite not taking part, anecdotally the most high-profile, obsessively admired footballer most local people could name. He is also deeply now, the most prominent single catalyst of a transformation of the sport into a brand-driven global platform, a nation state arm of power, an endlessly amplified celebrity content machine. For all that, it is still hard to get your head around the basic question of why exactly Ronaldo is quite so famous. Clearly he is a magnificent footballer. But still. Why the state of outright worship? Why is he so far ahead of everyone else in this? To understand this is to understand the internet, and the strangely intimate nature of online fame. Ronaldo is perfect for the internet. He embodies its obsessions: self-made triumph, motivational success, bodily obsession, porn-like aesthetics. Ronaldo has mastered his routines, his intake, accumulated wealth spectacularly. As a facial signifier, a human logo, he has that indefinably moreish quality of the online hyper-famous. Lots of people are handsome. Ronaldo is handsome in a way that is always him, a face, a six-pack, a flaring neck you just have to click on. What does he look like? A perfectly glazed wedding cake figurine. A hyper-advanced robot replicant at the interstellar fleet captain’s ball. An avatar of human immortality made out of marzipan, yeti-sperm and greed. This is often couched in a weird kind of reverence. “For most of my life I’ve always been worried I wouldn’t be able to see Ronaldo, ” one member of the Saudi Cup crowd told the South China Morning Post. Another said: “I like Ronaldo because of his values, what he stands for, it’s very respectable. ” Is that what it is? Orderliness in a crazed and dysfunctional world. Devotional perfection. Success, attainment, compacted into a single lighted square. Ronaldo also got there first, colonised that space, understood his own power before anyone else. And now he has a chance, should the stars align, to breach the final consumer frontier, to conquer America decisively next summer, decks finally clear and with a president on hand who will be very interested in any hint of a brand-building collab. Call me cynical, paranoid, conspiracy-prone but it seems inconceivable there hasn’t been some kind of pre-chat, a feeling-out, a focus-grouping of what it may mean, optics-wise, good and bad, finally to get Ronaldo on that stage. There are so many strange and manipulative aspects to America’s public contortions right now, so many aspects that seem out of control, leading right into a World Cup where even the logo looks mildly sinister, a strange black cancerous date stamp oozing out from beneath that iconic, throbbingly veined golden trophy. Ronaldo to America just feels like a very natural extension, the ultra-influencer, here to bring peace, and above all to spread his own version of irresistibly monetised human theatre.