FootBiz newsletter #181: The Balogun affair is not about Folarin Balogun

Well that was probably for the best, wasn’t it?

After the American president leant on FIFA to ensure that the USMNT’s star striker could play in their crunch knock-out fixture against Belgium, the US side proceeded to get summarily dog-walked last night by a Belgian side that didn’t even start Kevin De Bruyne or Jeremy Doku.

There are two different schools of thought on the best way last night could have gone in terms of drawing attention to FIFA’s behaviour:

1) Balogun scores a hat-trick to put the USA into the quarter-finals and him being allowed to play becomes an even bigger story that dominates the coming days as Belgium appeals the decision and louder voices criticise FIFA — including the tournament’s first rest day on Wednesday.

2) Belgium go through easily, showing that whatever shenanigans went on to restore Balogun to the line-up did not get rewarded — but FIFA still have their moment of shame.

Obviously we ended up with the latter.

In case you hadn’t being paying attention, here’s an attempt at chronologically piecing together what happened.

Last week, USMNT striker Folarin Balogun was given a red card after video review in the round-of-32 victory over Bosnia Herzegovina. While it wasn’t even given as a foul on the pitch, the review concluded that this was potentially dangerous conduct and Balogun was sent off.

Watching it in full speed, it didn’t look like a red card. When you slow it down and rewind and play it back from several angles, you can make it look like a red card or just a foul, which is part of a broader issue of VAR being used to re-referee games rather than just helping avoid huge errors, but the decision from the officials was a red.

Regardless of your opinion on the dismissal itself, the player was sent off after VAR review and was therefore suspended for the round-of-16 tie with Belgium, which took place last night in LA.

After the Bosnia match, per The Athletic, multiple FIFA officials told teams directly that red card suspensions during this World Cup were not eligible for appeal. The rules were clear.

Until Donald Trump got involved.

The New York Times reported, citing three people familiar with the conversation, that President Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino on Wednesday — the same day as the red card — to ask for a review of the decision. talkSPORT’s Ben Jacobs first reported that the White House placed the call for this purpose. Trump also deployed US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Andrew Giuliani — the executive director of the White House Task Force for the 2026 World Cup — to recruit lawyers and communicate with US Soccer. Per a US official cited by Yahoo Sports, the "US government" also provided "additional evidence" to FIFA's Disciplinary Committee as part of the process that followed.

FIFA then announced on Sunday morning that "in line with Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, the implementation of the match suspension is suspended for a probationary period of one year."

The reversal was, per ESPN, the first time since 1962 that a red card during a World Cup had not resulted in an automatic suspension. Article 27 gives FIFA's judicial bodies discretionary power to suspend disciplinary sanctions — a provision that, as Belgium would point out, directly contradicts Article 66.4 of the same code, which makes red card suspensions automatic, and Article 10.5 of the Competition Regulations, which states the same. US Soccer issued a brief statement welcoming the decision.

During press availability at the White House, in his own words, Trump said: "I am the one that got them [FIFA] to do it… I asked for a review.”

Fawning simpleton Ted Cruz said on Monday morning: "On behalf of all Americans, thank you for getting rid of that ridiculous red card, Mr President."

"That was interesting," Trump responded. "It was spectacular. There was a reason the FIFA trophy sat here for as long as it did.”

According to FIFA’s statutes, its participants must abide by political neutrality and political interference is not permitted in its processes.

Perhaps understandably, the Belgian Football Association issued a lengthy, furious statement describing itself as "astonished" by the decision. Head coach Rudi Garcia, at his pre-match press conference, said: "I didn't know that at the World Cup, the fifth of July is actually the first of April." Goalkeeper Thibault Courtois said the team was "surprised by the timing."

Belgium's Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Prevot said: "If it was really this phone call behind this incomprehensible decision, then that would be flouting the most basic rules of football and sport" while US Ambassador to Belgium Bill White — a Trump appointee — denied any interference, writing on Instagram that "President Trump would never interfere with the inner workings of FIFA."

It wasn’t just the Belgians unhappy, either.

Norway coach Ståle Solbakken, whose team had beaten Brazil the same day in the other last-sixteen fixture, called it "a big mistake by FIFA."

Wayne Rooney on BBC Sport called it "an absolute disgrace — Infantino should be ashamed of this."

UEFA issued a statement calling it a decision that "crossed a red line," describing FIFA's position as "unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable" and stating plainly that "the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined."

The Belgian federation wrote to FIFA requesting a copy of the decision and an explanation of the process. FIFA responded by treating the letter as a formal appeal, appointing a judge — not associated with UEFA or CONCACAF — and giving Belgium a deadline of 8am Eastern time (5am Pacific) to make its submissions. This gave Belgium, effectively, a few hours to construct a legal appeal while simultaneously preparing for a World Cup knockout match. Oh, and the other issue with mounting a serious appeal was that FIFA had provided "no information whatsoever" about the original decision, per the RBFA’s statement, before treating their request for clarification as the appeal itself.

Unsurprisingly, FIFA’s Appeal Committee found Belgium's request "inadmissible on the grounds that the RBFA is not a party to the proceedings and, as such, has no standing to appeal the decision."

This meant Belgium had no further route within FIFA's own structures. The RBFA said it would "continue to fight in the coming hours, days and months." The Court of Arbitration for Sport — the only external avenue — was almost certainly going to be involved at some stage if Balogun had fired the US to victory.

At this point, FIFA realised quite how this thing had spiralled out of their control and published a statement of their own.

Penned by (or at least bearing the name of) Gianni Infantino himself, the FIFA president defended the independence of FIFA's judicial bodies and acknowledged receiving a call from US President Donald Trump about the ongoing case — but emphasised that disciplinary decisions are made autonomously according to FIFA regulations.

Surprisingly enough, people didn’t necessarily buy it.

The damage was done.

The Balogun affair is not even really about a red card anymore.

It is a story about FIFA kow-towing to political pressure from strong-man governments — and what happens when that is exposed in real time, very publicly, during the world's most-watched sporting event.

Because if you squint hard enough then FIFA’s immediate legal position might be unusual but it is not technically indefensible.

FIFA's Article 27 does exist. Indeed, it has been invoked before, though for similarly questionable reasons — Cristiano Ronaldo had a three-match ban reduced ahead of this tournament under the same provision. The difference, and it is the difference that makes this episode categorically distinct from the Ronaldo precedent, is that in this case the trigger for the review was a call from a sitting head of state(!), the call was publicly confirmed by the president himself(!!), and FIFA publicly thanked him for it (!!!).

That’s the crux of all this.

The procedural sequence — Trump calls Infantino, US government provides "additional evidence," FIFA reverses a decision it had previously declared non-appealable — is a sequence that any governance scholar, sports lawyer or independent observer would describe as the architecture of improper influence, regardless of whether the formal legal mechanism was technically available.

Indeed, leading sports lawyer Nick De Marco shared almost those exact concerns.

“The issue is no longer simply whether the original red card was justified. It is whether FIFA has undermined the integrity of the World Cup, and its own authority as the global regulator of football, by appearing either to invent a procedure or, at the very least, to apply its rules in a wholly unprecedented way, against a backdrop of acknowledged political pressure, while refusing to give reasons and seemingly leaving the decision with no meaningful avenue of challenge.”

“For years I have represented players and others facing lengthy bans for betting offences where there has been no suggestion whatsoever of match manipulation, because the governing bodies, including FIFA, have consistently argued that preserving confidence in the integrity of the sport requires robust and uncompromising enforcement.

“If that is the standard expected of participants, the regulator itself must be held to at least the same standard. If the reports are accurate, this decision, and the consequences for FIFA, could prove to be truly seismic, eclipsing the controversy about the red card itself.”

FIFA's position laid out in the Infantino statement on Monday requires us to believe simultaneously:

• that Trump's call to Infantino had no bearing on the Disciplinary Committee's deliberations

• that the US government's submission of "additional evidence" to that committee was a normal and uncontroversial thing for a host nation's government to do

• that a provision designed for exceptional circumstances was correctly applied to an automatic suspension explicitly described as non-appealable in documentation distributed to all teams six weeks earlier

• and that the procedural treatment of Belgium — given hours to construct an appeal, denied the underlying reasoning, then told their challenge was inadmissible — was consistent with natural justice.

Individually those are a stretch. Together, they constitute a narrative that struggles for credibility.

FIFA's governance depends on the perception — not merely the reality — of independence from its member associations and host governments. That perception is now shattered.

Which means that every future disciplinary decision involving a host nation's player at a major tournament will be evaluated against this precedent. Every government that believes its star player has been wrongly treated now has a template for intervention, and indeed France are now appealing Michael Olise’s yellow card. Every small federation that lacks the political leverage to make that call now understands, with clarity, that the rules do not apply equally to all. The RBFA's statement — "we are defending football in general, its integrity and its ethics" — is dramatic but not even that hyperbolic. It is a fair description of what is actually at stake here.

FIFA's relationship with the Trump administration has been prominent and transactional throughout this World Cup cycle: the FIFA Peace Prize, the Iran situation, the NJ Transit standoff, the visa bond complications. Each of those tested FIFA's independence in different ways, and FIFA navigated each with varying degrees of success.

This one is different.

This time the president of the United States publicly stated, in the Oval Office, that he is "the one who got it." And FIFA's president confirmed the call, declined to deny any causal relationship between the call and the outcome, and offered no explanation of why a provision that has existed for decades was applied for the first time to an automatic World Cup suspension on the weekend when the US played its most commercially significant match of the tournament.

UEFA's statement — describing the decision as crossing "a red line" — must be placed within the context of the much wider ongoing feud between them and UEFA… but it is not simply a bureaucratic formality to blindly back one of their members either.

In terms of public perception, that statement also makes UEFA the most senior institution in world football to actually come out and say what almost all of world football is thinking.

Whether UEFA was planning to escalate formally or whether CAS finds any procedural avenue post-tournament will determine how this episode is ultimately resolved or just buried (guess which one’s more likely!) but the credibility damage is already done. It was done the moment Trump said "thank you to FIFA" and FIFA said nothing to contradict the implied causal relationship.

And they should have known better, as Adam Crafton wrote:

“Something FIFA appear to have completely underestimated when signing off Balogun decision is the current U.S. administration will always prioritise claiming credit over how something is seen optically… it’s arguably the entire philosophy of the administration: the advancement of American interests even if it contravenes all rules-based norms across global institutions.”

The 2026 World Cup is the most commercially successful tournament in history. It is generating record broadcast audiences, record sponsorship income, and record FIFA revenues. By making a 48-team tournament a success, it also makes future expansion and the consequent revenue jumps a real possibility too.

Congrats guys!

None of that insulates world football’s governing body from the consequence of appearing to have bent its own rules for the convenience of its most powerful host. Commercial success and institutional integrity are not substitutes for each other. One cannot be used to offset a deficit in the other.

As we are increasingly seeing, when those who regulate also profit from the competitions the incentives get skewed and the ethics get murky.

The USMNT’s exit may quieten the issue, but everyone will remember how this played out.