The uproar surrounding the World Cup after FIFA’s controversial U-turn over the red card given to American forward Folarin Balogun may be unprecedented and strange, but experts say it is not unexpected given US President Donald Trump’s history of meddling in non-political matters.
FIFA rejected Belgium’s appeal to overturn Balogun’s suspension as “inadmissible” on Monday, hours before kickoff of the US-Belgium knockout match in Seattle.
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Balogun received an automatic one-game suspension after receiving a red card for awkwardly stepping on the ankle of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Tarik Muharemovic during the United States’ 2-0 win in the Round of 32. In that case, Balogun would have been left out of the U.S. squad for the last-16 match against Belgium until FIFA announced the suspension of the red card on Sunday. The decision came after President Trump urged FIFA Director General Gianni Infantino to reconsider the matter.
The bond between Mr. Trump and Mr. Infantino is no secret, but leading sports industry experts say the dispute highlights Mr. Trump’s growing influence over soccer’s world governing body.
“President Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) agenda, like Infantino’s and FIFA’s pursuit of profit, is now on display for the whole world to see,” Simon Chadwick, professor of African and Eurasian sports at Emlion Business School in Shanghai, told Al Jazeera.
“I’ve been waiting for an accident to happen for a long time.”
President Trump had been vocal about World Cup-related issues such as Iran’s participation in the tournament just before the tournament, but after the World Cup began he did not comment on soccer-related incidents until Balogun’s red card.
Chadwick explained that as events developed, “it seemed inevitable that Mr. Trump would break his three-week silence and that Mr. Infantino would accede to his request.”
Infantino’s damage control on Monday only strengthened Chadwick’s analysis of the situation.
In a statement, FIFA’s president insisted that world football’s governing body’s judicial committee was independent and called for the penalty to be reversed.
“They operate autonomously, apply the FIFA Disciplinary Code, and decide cases based on applicable regulations and the specific facts at hand,” he said before acknowledging the conversation with President Trump.
“Yes, I regularly discuss issues related to the FIFA World Cup with the President of the United States. And just as I receive calls from heads of state, government officials, soccer officials, and business executives around the world on a variety of issues, I also received a call from President Donald Trump on this matter,” he said in a statement.
“During our conversation, I explained that legal proceedings involving FIFA’s independent judiciary are underway and that this matter will be decided in due course by the competent authority. That is how the FIFA system works and that is the principle that I always uphold,” Infantino added.
The FIFA president said he always reads the decisions that are taken and “sometimes I am surprised by them. Sometimes I agree with them and sometimes I disagree with them.”
“But what I always do is respect the autonomy of those decisions and the organizations that make them.”
However, Chadwick argued that FIFA’s third-party intervention provisions disappeared with President Trump’s intervention.
“What happened in the Balogun case appears to be highly irregular and in violation of established ethical standards,” he said.
“To obviously change the rules in the middle of a tournament without consultation under the influence of often disruptive politicians sets a very dangerous precedent,” he added.
The decision sparked outrage at FIFA and support for Belgium, and inevitably led to jokes from national team head coaches questioning whether red and yellow cards given to players could be challenged.
England manager Thomas Tuchel questioned the decision after England defender Jarrell Quansah was sent off during England’s 3-2 last-16 win over Mexico.
“Who will reverse this decision and when? And on what basis? How far along are we now? This is strange to me,” Tuchel told reporters at the Mexico City Stadium on Sunday.
Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who resigned in 2015 amid corruption allegations, also joined in the criticism.
“Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls. They are overturned by rules, evidence and independent institutions,” he wrote in a post on X.
“If the president of the United States intervenes with the FIFA president and suddenly suspends players before the World Cup final, the question is inevitable: ‘Quo vadis, FIFA?’ Football should never become a playground for political power.”
Chadwick expressed a similar opinion.
“All sorts of questions arise. What next? By whom? For what purpose? In whose interest? FIFA appears to have overstepped its mandate and allowed itself to be commercialized, geopoliticized and Americanized.”
