FIFA Just Let the Host Nation’s President Reverse a Red Card. The Game Will Never Fully Recover From This.
Let me start with Folarin Balogun, because he deserves to be treated fairly in this essay: the red card, on the merits, was debatable.
Balogun, the 25-year-old Monaco striker and U.S. Men’s National Team forward, collided with Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemovic during the 64th minute of the United States’ 2-0 Round of 32 victory. Balogun raked his cleats down the player’s leg and landed on his ankle. The referee consulted VAR and produced a straight red card for what was classified as a serious foul. Players on the USMNT immediately disagreed with the call. Balogun himself said he felt the decision was unfair given that he and Muharemovic were battling for position. “If you played the game, you would understand there are scenarios that you simply can’t avoid,” he said.
He may well be right. This is a legitimate sporting debate. The contact looked accidental. The ankle landing looked unintentional. Serious people watching the same footage came to different conclusions about whether it warranted the sport’s most severe in-game punishment.
That debate — that honest, reasonable sporting debate — is now buried under something much larger and much more damaging. Because the President of the United States picked up the phone.
What Happened
The New York Times reported that Trump called FIFA President Gianni Infantino on Wednesday and asked him to review Balogun’s suspension, citing three people familiar with the conversation. During the call, Trump wanted to better understand why Balogun was hit with a red card and why that led to his suspension. Trump confirmed the call himself on Monday. “I asked for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I thought it was two great athletes that crashed into each other and got entangled.” He added: “I didn’t know what the hell a red card was.”
He did not know what a red card was. The president of the host nation called the president of FIFA to intervene in a disciplinary ruling for the home team’s star striker — and he confirmed, in those exact words, that he did not understand the basic rules of the sport whose tournament his country is hosting.
FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee reversed Balogun’s suspension on Sunday, clearing the way for him to play against Belgium. FIFA cited Article 27 of its disciplinary code, which says “the judicial body may decide to fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure.” Trump posted on Truth Social: “Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!”
His gratitude was, under the circumstances, the most damning thing he could have expressed.
The Rules Are the Rules
For international readers — and I want to address this specifically to you — here is what makes this extraordinary.
The Royal Belgian Football Association said it was “astonished” by FIFA’s decision. “FIFA bases its decision on Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code. This provision states that the FIFA Disciplinary Committee may decide to suspend the enforcement of a previously imposed disciplinary sanction. However, Article 66.4 of the same FIFA Disciplinary Code clearly provides that a red card automatically results in a suspension for the team’s next match, as has been the case for all previous red cards issued during this FIFA World Cup.”
The RBFA called FIFA’s decision to allow Balogun to play “a direct contradiction” of the competition regulations for the 2026 World Cup, which state: “If a player or team official is sent off as a result of a direct or indirect red card, they will automatically be suspended from their team’s subsequent match.”
It appeared to be the first time in more than 60 years of World Cup matches that FIFA said it would allow a red-carded player to play in the next game.
UEFA, Europe’s governing body for soccer, said the decision “crossed a red line.” “We express our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision,” the body said in a statement.
Unprecedented. Incomprehensible. Unjustifiable. These are not the words of bitter Belgian officials doing sour grapes public relations. These are the words of UEFA — the organization that governs soccer across 55 European nations and runs the Champions League and the European Championship — describing a decision by FIFA as something that has never happened before and cannot be explained.
Infantino’s Impossible Position
FIFA President Gianni Infantino confirmed the call and issued a statement defending the process. He maintained that the disciplinary committee’s decision was made independently. FIFA also pointed out, correctly, that a similar decision was made for Cristiano Ronaldo, who picked up a red card against Ireland in qualifying that would have kept him from playing in Portugal’s opening World Cup match. This precedent is real. Article 27 exists. The disciplinary committee has discretion.
None of that matters.
It doesn’t matter because the president of the host nation called Infantino and asked for a review, and four days later the review went the host nation’s way, for the first time in 60 years of World Cup matches. Even if the committee’s decision was completely independent — even if Infantino never mentioned the call to the committee, never exerted any pressure, never so much as raised an eyebrow — the sequence of events has made that independence impossible to establish or demonstrate. The phone call poisoned the well. Every subsequent decision is now suspect.
USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino, to his considerable credit, said what needed to be said: “No, we cannot mix that. We cannot mix that. Politicians lobbying FIFA — no. We cannot mix that.”
The coach of the team that benefited from the intervention said the intervention was wrong. That is a man with integrity. It makes what happened no less damaging.
The Poisoned Victory
I am glad Balogun played. I want to say that clearly. He may well be the best player available to the United States right now. The red card was questionable. His talent is genuine and his contribution to this tournament has been real. I wanted to see him on the pitch.
But I also want to say this, for the international audience especially, because I think it matters and I think American fans have a responsibility to say it even when it costs us something:
Whatever the USMNT achieves from this point forward will carry an asterisk. Not because Balogun is undeserving. But because the rules were bent by a phone call, and everyone in the world of football now knows it, and FIFA allowed it to happen, and the president of the host nation thanked FIFA for it publicly on social media.
Belgium was playing that game too. They prepared their tactics around Balogun’s absence. They built their game plan around a specific lineup. Belgium lost their appeal of Balogun’s eligibility not because their case was wrong — their case was legally and regulatorily correct — but because FIFA chose to invoke a provision it has not used in six decades, for the home team, after a call from the home team’s president.
If Belgium had pulled off the same thing — if the King of the Belgians had called Infantino and a Belgian striker’s red card had been reversed — American soccer fans would have been, rightly, furious. The outrage would have been universal. Everyone watching would have understood that the integrity of the tournament had been compromised.
The integrity of the tournament has been compromised. The fact that the home team benefited does not change that. It makes it worse.
What FIFA Should Have Done
Infantino should have thanked the President of the United States for his interest and told him the matter was in the hands of the disciplinary committee and would be resolved through proper process without further communication. He should have done this publicly. He should have made clear that no government official — not the leader of the host nation, not the leaders of any nation — has any standing to contact FIFA regarding disciplinary decisions affecting their national teams.
He did not do this. He took the call. He engaged. He allowed the process to proceed in a way that, whatever its actual independence, cannot be distinguished from a process influenced by a powerful man who wanted a specific outcome and got it.
The rules exist for everyone. They exist most importantly for the home team, because the home team has advantages — crowd, familiarity, logistics — that the rules are designed to balance against. When the host nation’s president calls the governing body and the rules are suspended for the home team’s benefit, the entire structure of sporting neutrality that makes international football meaningful collapses.
I am happy the decision was reversed. The penalty didn’t seem egregious enough to warrant what it cost. But I want to be honest about what it cost beyond the sporting outcome. The process was wrong. The phone call was wrong. FIFA’s capitulation was wrong. And the victory, however genuine Balogun’s talents and however real his contribution, will always carry the shadow of the call that made it possible.
Donald Trump has now intervened in the rules of international football. He didn’t know what a red card was. He called anyway. FIFA answered.
That is what this World Cup will partly be remembered for.
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