Europe has come up with a way to hit back at Donald Trump. What began last week as a suggestion that the continent’s football nations should boycott this summer’s World Cup has grown into a popular campaign.

As the New York Times reported earlier this week, the man who first floated the idea was Oke Goettlich, a senior member of the German Football Association’s executive committee and one of its eleven vice presidents. ‘What were the justifications for the boycotts of the Olympic games in the 1980s?’ said Goettlich, referring to the US-led boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and the USSR’s retaliation four years later. ‘By my reckoning, the potential threat is greater now than it was then. We need to have this discussion.’

Goettlich was born in 1975, so perhaps he can be excused for not knowing the justification for the 1980 boycott. With the Cold War raging, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 in support of the Marxist regime in their fight against Islamist rebels.

It is highly improbable that any European nation will boycott America’s World Cup

What is the ‘potential threat’ to which Goettlich refers? ‘We do not know yet what will happen with Greenland,’ he said. Yes we do. Grown-ups know that America is not going to invade Greenland. Goettlich also mentioned the recent........

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