Just One Call Away
- Sangwoo Cho
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
32 years and eight tournaments ago, the United States hosted the World Cup for the first time in the country’s history. Soccer was peripheral to American culture, but circumstances were different heading into this year’s edition of the world’s largest sporting event. The US entered its second home World Cup with one of the most talented teams in its history, an accomplished head coach in Mauricio Pochettino, and hopes of making a respectable run on home ground.
A CONTESTED RED CARD
Those hopes appeared to suffer a major blow during the team’s Round of 32 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina. Folarin Balogun, the United States’ starting striker and scorer of three goals in the tournament, was sent off after a VAR (video assistant referee) review for planting his boot into defender Tarik Muharemovic’s ankle. Under the conventional consequences of a red card, Balogun faced a one-match suspension and was expected to miss the Round of 16 match against Belgium.
The red card was disputed by USMNT fans and publicly challenged by Pochettino—but divisive refereeing decisions are inseparable from soccer, and fans of the sport expected to see a US team face its toughest opposition yet in Belgium without its star striker.
TRUMP THOUGHT DIFFERENTLY.
POLITICAL PRESSURE, JUDICIAL PROCESS
The president personally called FIFA President Gianni Infantino and asked that the sending-off be reviewed. In what reporting described as the first such decision in 64 years, FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee subsequently suspended the implementation of Balogun’s one-match ban for a one-year probationary period, allowing him to face Belgium without rescinding the red card itself. Belgium’s football association said it was “astonished,” while Germany’s federation warned that the integrity of the competition and FIFA’s credibility were at stake.
FIFA insisted its disciplinary body possessed the authority to defer the punishment, but the organization has made neutrality difficult to believe. Infantino awarded Trump FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize at the World Cup draw, a month after the latter was passed over for a Nobel Peace Prize he publicly expressed he deserved. Trump also previously boasted that, if he wanted World Cup matches moved from Boston, he could call “Gianni” and Infantino would do it “very easily.”
THE NEUTRALITY QUESTION
This history became further fuel for accusations that Infantino broke political neutrality, a value FIFA must abide by under its statutes. Considering Trump’s history of attempting to bend political norms, his intervention was hardly surprising. FIFA’s decision to seemingly entertain it with the entire world watching, however, definitely was.
FIFA, as an independent organization that governs the most popular sport in the world, has a responsibility to demonstrate that personal political interests do not determine its decisions—especially when the person applying pressure is the president of a host nation.
FIFA failed to fulfill that responsibility. Even if its disciplinary committee reached its decision independently, the organization should have known that a favorable ruling immediately after Trump’s call would appear compromised. It could have offered a detailed public explanation of the decision, clearly separated Infantino from the process, or refused to entertain political involvement altogether.
Instead, it gave Trump precisely the outcome he wanted and the world every reason to believe that FIFA had folded to political pressure.
WHAT FIFA LOST
Ultimately, Balogun’s reinstatement hardly made a difference: the United States was humbled in a 4-1 defeat, one that rendered the entire controversy irrelevant in the broader scheme of the tournament. Trump gained little beyond criticism for yet another disregard of institutional norms, but FIFA surrendered something more valuable: the appearance that its rules applied equally, even when the president of the host nation wanted otherwise.
