Before his nation’s World Cup quarter-final against Norway on Saturday, the England captain Harry Kane confirmed that he played golf with Donald Trump, describing the experience as “surreal” and praising the US president’s game.
- Harry Kane confirmed the round took place in Palm Beach about 18 months earlier; Bayern Munich's winter break suggests it predated Donald Trump's second presidency.
- Donald Trump said he had played golf with Harry Kane, called him a great player, and praised him on social media after the Mexico win.
- Harry Kane's admission drew social media backlash; critics, including Musa Okwonga, called him a sportswashing tool and joked about an Trump Curse.
Trump surprised reporters on 6 July by saying that he had previously played golf with Kane, calling the England striker a great player and a good golfer.
Asked by a reporter about Trump’s comments, and how he played, Kane confirmed the round took place in Palm Beach, Florida, about 18 months earlier.
“I played all right, to be honest,” Kane said. “Yeah, we played about 18 months ago. He invited me to play when I was down in Palm Beach, so yeah, when the president invites you somewhere … it was a pretty surreal experience just to meet him and obviously play golf with him.”
Kane’s club side, Germany’s Bayern Munich, was on a winter break from late December 2024 to early January 2025, suggesting that the round took place before the start of Trump’s second presidency.
Kane, who once told the German site golfpunk.de that he plays to a 3 handicap, went on to praise the 80-year-old Trump’s golf game. “His golf’s pretty good, to be honest with you,” the England striker said. “I hope I can play golf as good as him when I’m his age, that’s for sure.”
“So yeah, unique experience but yeah, I was just grateful he invited me down to play.”
Trump had complimented the Bayern Munich forward on social media following England’s 3-2 round-of-16 victory over Mexico on 5 July, writing: “Harry Kane of England is a GREAT player!!!” The following day, Trump revealed the pair had golfed together.
“I think Kane is a great player,” Trump said. “I played golf with him and I like him a lot. He’s a good golfer. He’s really great.”
Kane’s confirmation that he golfed with Trump sparked a backlash on social media from critics of the president.
“Bleak, bleak. You don’t just pal around with someone like that,” the writer Musa Okwonga commented.
Jules Boykoff, a political scientist whose latest book is Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the Fifa Greed Machine, joked that Kane might have been tempting fate by associating with the president, who attended the only game of the NBA finals that the New York Knicks lost before they went on to win the league championship in June for the first time since 1973.
England hope to finally end 60 years of hurt since winning its first and so far only World Cup in 1966.
“Harry Kane just begging for the Trump Curse to come a-knocking,” Boykoff wrote.
Other US football fans suggested that rival strikers, including Kylian Mbappé, who has publicly criticized the French far right, and Norway’s Erling Haaland would have spurned the invitation to play with Trump.
“Guess Harry Kane has no issues with being a dumb sports washing tool for authoritarianism,” Murshed Zaheed, a former aide to the late Democratic senator Harry Reid, wrote. “Screw this guy. He certainly is no Mbappe. Hope Norway wins.”
