It’s been a predictably hectic first week in office for the president of the US, which he has spent fretting over the size of the attendance at his inauguration while signing bits of paper with all the abandon of a small child with a long stick who has just stumbled across an unsupervised blank canvas of freshly laid cement.

In the time it takes most civil servants settling into a job to obtain a security pass and computer log-in, Donald Trump has – among other highlights – signalled his intention to do away with Obamacare, given torture an effusive thumbs up, threatened the city of Chicago with martial law on the back of inaccurate crime statistics, inked an anti-abortion gag that will imperil the lives of women, ordered an investigation into nonexistent voter fraud and demanded the immediate construction of a 1,000-mile wall between America and Mexico.

A lot done, more to do. Once these, and other equally trivial issues, have been dealt with there will inevitably come a time when what passes for Trump’s attention turns to the more serious business of sport. While it has been a struggle to avoid drowning in a tidal wave of polemics written by commentators incredulous at his apparently boundless capacity for self-delusion, dishonesty and impulsive buffoonery, this week’s back pages have at least remained something of a sanctuary, mercifully unsullied by talk of alternative facts until José Mourinho piped up to announce Manchester United’s impressive 18-match unbeaten run shows no sign of ending any time soon despite all available evidence to the contrary.

How Donald Trump almost bought Rangers (and Pablo Escobar's club) Read more

But back to Trump, who despite emphatic recent denials of a previously unpublicised enthusiasm for water-sports was a keen athlete in his youth. The 1964 edition of the New York Military Academy yearbook lists the 45th president as having played six different sports at his alma mater, including soccer. It was perhaps through his participation in so many different disciplines that he became an authority on what does and does not constitute harmless locker-room banter.

“He was just the best, a good athlete, a great athlete,” Trump’s former room-mate Ted Levine said. “He could have probably played pro ball as a pitcher. I think he threw 80mph. I was the catcher. He made my hand black and blue every day. Could he play football? Could he play soccer? He could do anything he wanted. He was physically and mentally gifted.”

Hmmm. As implausible as this testimony may sound, it should be noted Levine is not part of Trump’s administration, a state of affairs that suggests what he’s saying may well be true.

Now 70, Trump finds himself confined to the country club locker room, where he numbers Jack Nicklaus and Bernhard Langer among his friends, even if the latter may beg to differ. No stranger to playing a round, he remains a keen golfer and boasts a handicap of three, although the rock star Alice Cooper has hinted Trump is the biggest cheat he’s ever played with. With 17 courses around the world to his name, the Donald has no shortage of facilities on which to practise the game’s dark arts.

As the new president, many of Trump’s forays into the world of sport are likely to be little more than symbolic: welcoming victorious teams to the White House, bestriding the mound for the occasional ceremonial first pitch and waterboarding apologetic Mexicans who ring the White House doorbell to ask for their ball back. He is, however, likely to be called on to back his country’s bid for the 2026 World Cup and it is here his interest in football could serve him well.

Unlikely rumours that Trump once considered buying Rangers, a football club whose tax affairs were once even more opaque than his own, have been debunked but he does have other previous in the field of administration. In 1992, he appeared on an episode of Saint and Greavsie to pair Leeds with Manchester United in a League Cup draw, while the disgraced former Fifa and Concacaf executive-turned-supergrass Chuck Blazer once rented a couple of well-appointed Trump Tower apartments with “sweeping views of Central Park and the crenellations of the Plaza Hotel”. Blazer famously roamed wild in one of the apartments while his cats did so in the other. Beneath them, Chuck’s former employers Concacaf occupied the entire 17th floor of the building.

With it looking increasingly likely any United States bid for the 2026 World Cup may be looked on favourably by Fifa, Concacaf’s president, Victor Montagliani, has stated Trump could play a key role in helping the US ingratiate itself with a football governing body that has similar self-regard and is as open and accountable as the president. By contrast, Sunil Gulati, the president of the US Soccer Federation, has been more circumspect, perhaps because of his organisation’s close ties to high-ranking Democrats including Bill Clinton.

“He’s the president of the United States and we’ll work with him,” he said. Sadly for Gulati, with the US looking likely to co-host the tournament along with Trump’s football-loving Mexican chums, one suspects any requests for a White House endorsement will come up against a long, towering and prohibitively expensive brick wall.