FIFA suspended Folarin Balogun’s one-game red card ban on Tuesday — after the sitting president of the United States picked up the phone and called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to ask. According to NPR, this is the first time since 1962 that a player has been allowed to compete in a World Cup match after receiving a red card in the prior one.
Trump posted on Truth Social: “Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice! President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Andrew Giuliani and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also communicated with FIFA. The ruling arrived wrapped in probationary language — the ban is “suspended,” not vacated, contingent on Balogun staying clean going forward — but the effect is identical. He plays Belgium on Monday in Seattle.
https://x.com/FabrizioRomano/status/2073828193568436595
Here is what is worth acknowledging: the red card may genuinely have been a bad call. Balogun said himself that “there are scenarios you simply can’t avoid,” and video review calls in the 64th minute of a World Cup group stage match deserve scrutiny. None of that is fabricated grievance. Belgium’s Royal FA, which is furious and “investigating all potential options,” is arguing about process — not necessarily about whether the card was correct.
But that’s exactly the problem.
FIFA’s written competition regulations mandate an automatic one-game suspension for a red card. The “probationary” mechanism FIFA used doesn’t technically overturn the ruling — it defers enforcement. Belgium’s coach Rudi Garcia put it plainly: “I didn’t know that at the FIFA World Cup, the 5th of July is now the 1st of April.” Defender Chris Richards, told during a bus ride to training, thought the initial reports were AI-generated. That’s how normal this decision looked from the outside.
Pochettino deflected cleanly when asked about political pressure — “We cannot mix that” — which is the correct thing to say and tells you nothing. Christian Pulisic told CBS that Balogun is “super happy” with the decision, which is also the correct thing to say and tells you even less.
My brother texted me Tuesday afternoon: “ok but was it a bad card tho.” And I said: probably, yes. And then he texted back: “so what’s the problem.” The problem is that a sitting head of state called the governing body of the sport and the governing body complied — mid-tournament, for the host nation’s leading scorer — and now every future disciplinary decision involving the United States will be made in the shadow of that phone call. You don’t get to un-ring it.
FIFA has spent decades cultivating the image of an institution too intractable to bend, even when bending was obviously right. The corruption scandals, the Qatar decisions, the vote-buying investigations — through all of it, the one thing you could say was that FIFA’s rules, once applied on the field, were immovable. That was cold comfort. It was also the only structural guarantee the tournament had.
Now that’s gone too.
Balogun has three goals in this World Cup. He is a genuinely exciting player on a team that has earned its run. None of that changes what FIFA just handed every future host nation: a blueprint.
The asterisk on this World Cup isn’t going away, even for the people cheering.
