Trump presence an unnecessary distraction at the draw of dreams

There will be enough World Cup drama from tonight's ceremony without the president's own sideshow

- David Hytner

When the sculptor Joel Shapiro created Blue, the piece that stands around the back of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, looking out over the Potomac River in Washington, he wanted to tap into a number of elements.

The giant matchstick figure denotes movement and energy, risk and possibility. As Shapiro himself has said, it is supposed to “reconfigure depending on how you look at it”.

It has the perfect home at the Kennedy Center, the vast cultural hub for ballet and opera, stage productions and concerts. And it resonates on a new level now as the venue prepares to host today’s World Cup draw, at which the competing nations at next summer’s extravaganza in the United States, Canada and Mexico will discover their group opponents and knockout round pathways. Because from one angle it is plain that Blue is executing a raking pass. From another, it is a spectacular side-on volley. Squint a little and it is Ciao, the Italia 90 mascot.

Kennedy was a champion of the arts and he was determined to have a national centre for them in the capital city, pushing hard to fund it. Two months after his assassination in 1963, it was decided by Congress that it should be named after him.

Washington DC is steeped in grandeur and self-assurance.

It honours the most revered American presidents in style.

You do not have to walk far from the White House to marvel at the monument to George Washington; when it was completed in 1884, it was the tallest structure in the world. Or to find memorials to Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, to Theodore and Franklin D Roosevelt.