Trump — who said before the kickoff that “it’s hard to bet against Messi,” in reference to Argentina’s superstar forward — sat in the same row as Felipe, Queen Letizia and Sánchez during the game and at one point got up to shake each of their hands. At its end, Trump descended from his luxury box to field level, where he and FIFA President Gianni Infantino presented the new champions with the tournament’s gold trophy for the second time in Spain’s history.

To be sure, Spain’s soccer leadership had played down the idea that Trump helped motivate the squad in North America this summer. “There are no problems with him and so far we haven’t had any problems with the team,” one senior soccer official told POLITICO the day before the final. “The politics are outside of the team … they only think of the football,” insisted another, both granted anonymity to discuss internal squad dynamics.

But Spanish national team player Borja Iglesias, who did not play in the final, suggested in the days beforehand that the soccer players weren’t totally blind to the political tensions between their country and Trump, when he was asked about potentially shaking hands with the U.S. president after the game.

“I hope to greet him at a moment when we’re all very happy, that it passes very quickly and I forget about it. This isn’t the time to stir up controversies; people know perfectly well how I think, but I don’t have that much power,” Iglesias, a player for club Celta de Vigo who is noted for his progressive stances on issues from Gaza to sexism in Spanish soccer, told the Panenka show on Friday.

Their handshake was brief.

‘Humility and respect’

There isn’t much that the left-leaning Sánchez and nationalist Trump agree on. In his most enduring policy priority, Trump has pushed to eject unauthorized immigrants from the U.S.; across the Atlantic, Sánchez launched a government extending legal status to at least half a million people living without documentation in Spain.

Trump frequently derides sources of renewable energy, particularly wind turbines, and made drilling for fossil fuels a cornerstone of his second term; Sánchez has overseen a program that aims for Spain to derive 81 percent of its electricity output from renewables by 2030, well above the EU average.