World Cup finalist says he's reluctant to shake Trump's hand if his team wins

Borja Iglesias is welcome to his opinion, and he's welcome to keep his hands in his pockets if he wants. But let's be honest about what's actually happening here. A guy who plays a game for a living has decided that the biggest moment of his career should also be a political statement, and he's telling us about it before he's even won anything. That's not principle. That's someone auditioning for headlines.

The bigger question is why this keeps happening specifically around Trump and specifically around sports. Athletes shake hands with all sorts of heads of state, dictators included, without a press release explaining their moral qualms. Nobody staged a walkout over shaking hands with leaders who jail journalists or run actual authoritarian states. But an American president who won an election fair and square gets treated like a hygiene risk. The double standard isn't subtle, and pretending it's about deeply held values rather than which team jersey the politics come in insults everyone's intelligence.

There's also something a little backwards about a foreign athlete deciding he needs to lecture Americans about our own president on American soil, at an event happening partly because of American infrastructure, security, and money. If Spain wins, great, they earned it. If Iglesias wants to skip the handshake line, Trump will survive the snub just fine. But spare us the idea that refusing a handshake is bravery. It's theater, and everyone involved knows it.

We'd just note this: the World Cup is supposed to be about the game. If Iglesias wants attention for something other than his footwork, he's found a reliable way to get it. Just don't call it courage.