People with close ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took part in an undisclosed disagreement with a fellow Cabinet department over a prominent international sporting event, according to a recently published account. Reports published Friday indicate that Hegseth's office moved to eliminate all Pentagon participation in the NFL's inaugural Paris contest, then reversed that position following pushback from State Department officials.
Plans for that Sunday fixture between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New Orleans Saints at Stade de France, situated on the outskirts of Paris, had called for the attendance of dozens of military personnel, according to people with knowledge of internal deliberations who were not authorised to speak on the record. The reversal was coordinated through Hegseth's office after a weekend in Paris that drew public remarks from President Donald Trump.
Diplomats at the State Department countered that stationing troops at a high-profile gathering carried real weight in foreign-policy terms. Hegseth's staff received word from those officials that no determination had been reached placing Americans or U.S. personnel in Paris at elevated threat levels.
After negotiations, the office agreed to restore a portion of the military's ceremonial presence, with a color guard among the elements brought back. Numbering fewer than ten members, these formations display the national flag alongside the colours of each military branch.
Pentagon sources did not name the person within Hegseth's office who drove the decision to pull the military from the programme, nor did they account for the speed at which the reversal came about. The department's backing for the NFL match was relayed through an unsigned communiqué handed to a television news organisation by a Pentagon official — language in the text running parallel to the stance the president had taken, with unrest ongoing across the city at the time.
A statement tracing the remark to Trump — who had portrayed France as being in a troubled condition — also noted that the position originated from within the Secretary's wider leadership team rather than from one person alone. Separately, Trump told reporters on Friday that the NFL would have been reasonable in postponing the game given conditions in France, which he linked to what he characterised as a leftward political trajectory. Both the State Department and the NFL chose not to provide comment when contacted by a media outlet.
Demonstrations over school funding and the cost of living had expanded through Paris and several other French cities, leading the State Department to issue a travel advisory urging Americans attending the event to keep their distance from the affected areas. Attributing the unrest to immigration and Islam, Trump drew a rebuttal from French President Emmanuel Macron, who described those remarks as lacking merit.
Separately, NFL fixtures hosted abroad this season have included stops in London and Melbourne, with Madrid and Munich still on the schedule, each featuring a U.S. military presence.
