Strongmen, populism and soccer: comparing Silvio Berlusconi, Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump

Do populist strongmen use soccer for their political career? If so, is this mainly rhetorical or do they develop specific policies. In other words, do populist strongmen share a ‘soccer politics’? And, if they do, is this soccer politics specific to populist strongmen? Developing a theoretical framework based on the academic literature on populism, strongmen and their relationship to sports in general and soccer in particular, I try to answer these questions through a comparative case study of three political leaders that are broadly referred to as ‘populist strongmen’ and who are publicly linked to sports in general and soccer in particular: Silvio Berlusconi, Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump. The analysis draws on a combination of secondary scholarship, public statements, interviews, policy documents and media reporting. Together, these sources make it possible to examine both the symbolic and policy dimensions of the leaders’ relationships with soccer. I find more differences than similarities. Whereas Berlusconi (the entrepreneur) used soccer to launch his political career, Orbán (the fan) has used politics to try and ‘make Hungarian soccer great again’. In contrast, Trump (the hater) is barely interested in soccer and mostly communicates negatively about sport in general. Moreover, as far as the three ‘populist strongmen’ do share a soccer politics, it is the use of soccer to connect to the ‘common man’ and portray themselves as ‘men of the people’ – which is common to a broad range of politicians, be they authoritarian or democratic, left or right and populist or not.