Trump managed to make the US even more disliked around the world by pressuring FIFA to suspend the red card given to their star player Falorin Balogun in the previous game that would have required him to sit out yesterday’s game with Belgium. I have not followed the games, have little knowledge about soccer, have not seen the foul in question, and so cannot judge if the red card was warranted or not. But I do know that reversing a red card ruling in highly unusual. Making it worse for FIFA was that Trump publicly bragged about calling on FIFA president Gianni Infantino to drop the suspension. Infantino, who has been sucking up to Trump in a big way, going to the extent of giving him a fake peace prize after Trump sulked about not getting the real one, is believed to have acquiesced to Trump’s wishes to allow Balogun to play.
This move caused widespread anger in the soccer world, not just in Belgium but also with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).
Uefa vice-president Laura McAllister says there is a risk of “an absolute cesspit” of political interference in football after Folarin Balogun avoided a ban at the World Cup.
Balogun was expected to be suspended for the USA’s last-16 tie against Belgium after his red card against Bosnia-Herzegovina.
But the Monaco striker played against the Belgians after his one-game ban was suspended by Fifa following an intervention by US President Donald Trump.
Fifa’s decision led to widespread criticism, with Trump saying he had personally asked for a review of Balogun’s dismissal because he “didn’t think it was a foul”.
Uefa, European football’s governing body, expressed “disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision”.
Now former Wales international McAllister, a Uefa vice-president since 2023, says she is concerned by what the Balogun decision – and Trump’s involvement – could mean for football.
“You’re creating an absolute cesspit for the future because anyone can appeal,” she told BBC Radio Wales.
“Any political leader could potentially pick up the phone and say there’s a precedent for changing a punishment awarded to a player and I think it’s extremely dangerous.
That move by Trump and Infantino seemed to have backfired bigly with an energized Belgian team easily defeating the US.
The summer of soccer love is over for the USA’s World Cup squad after losing 4-1 to Belgium, and many US players were in tears after the final whistle. Two early goals from Charles De Ketelaere and some awful US defending allowed a third from Hans Vanaken. Romelu Lukaku added the final goal in the last seconds.
…Added to the embarrassment was the fact that much of the world will take joy in the US’ humiliation after the controversy over FIFA’s decision to suspend Folarin Balogun’s one-game ban following a red card in the Round of 32.
After the game, Belgian spectators and players wasted no time in mocking Trump.
Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, has yet to comment on the national team’s triumph, but the official Instagram account of his cat offered a sardonic, albeit indirect sign of satisfaction. Maximus, De Wever’s beloved cat, was shown lying on a rug holding a soft toy in the image of the US president. “I slept really well last night. And you?” reads the speech bubble in Dutch.
…Reporting from Kalmthout, De Standaard said crowds booed images of the Americans and Gianni Infantino, the president of Fifa, which took the decision to lift the suspension of Balogun, after Trump’s lobbying. In Brussels, supporters set fire to an American flag.
The retired Belgium defender Philippe Albert, a centre-back for Newcastle United in the 1990s, described the Red Devils’ victory as “a real slap in the face for Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino”.
…Amid celebrations, the national team’s social media post after the emphatic 4-1 victory saying “Overturn this” went viral. Also gaining vast numbers of likes and clicks were clips of the teams on-pitch celebrations mocking Donald Trump’s dancing. After Romelu Lukaku scored the final goal for Belgium, the team celebrated by imitating Trump’s stiff arm-shuffling moves to YMCA. The midfielder Axel Witsel was quoted by the Dutch public broadcaster VRT as saying it had been a group idea.
Here they are doing the mocking dance.
Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize but he does deserve some credit for uniting almost the whole world, even if it is only against him.
Oh dear. Such a shame to see the US lose at football after their insanely embarrassing president cheated for them. Still, it really brought the world together. The last time this many people cheered on a Belgian resistance, it was 1914 and the Germans had just crossed the Meuse. As you’ll be aware, the USA were dumped out of their own World Cup on Monday night by a wholly superior Belgium, after Donald Trump boasted that he’d personally intervened in three phone calls with Fifa president Gianni Infantino to get the red card shown to USA striker Folarin Balogun rescinded. Yes, the US cheats at football. Pass it on.
…As he made very clear, Trump really wet his Depends over Balogun’s ban, and spent Monday gibbering to the news cameras that he’d acted hideously inappropriately over the weekend by interfering because “I’m good at this stuff”.
…Weird that Trump supposedly understands such a lot about sport, but doesn’t get that if you do something outrageously unfair, your opponents will so often use that injustice to fire themselves up and beat you.
FIFA is an extremely corrupt organization and I suspect that Infantino has stacked its governing body with cronies so that his own position is secure, however much he is vilified.
I haven’t seen the foul either, but what I understand is that the red card could in principal have been appealed through appropriate channels (i.e. not a call from Trump to Infantino) and repealed. What has shocked everyone is that it was suspended, in direct contradiction of the rules.
another stewart @#1,
If Trump had just shut up and not claimed credit for the switch, things might have not blown up so badly and FIFA could have said that they were just correcting an injustice.
But no, Trump’s ego demanded that he get the credit for the reversal and it has blown up in his and Infantino’s face,
I saw the foul. I’m not enough of a fan to know if it was red card worthy or not. I’ve seen worse that wasn’t called at all. The officiating seems pretty inconsistent to me.
From what I’ve heard about the foul, it was a case of ‘it looked worse on the slow-motion replay than it did on the field’; he didn’t even get a yellow card until after the replay was watched. It probably was mostly an accident rather than a deliberate foul, but the rules on that sort of foul are unfortunately harsh as a result of decades of previous problems of both deliberate injury attempts and active faking. So, yeah, it was a questionable but not entirely unreasonable call to give him a red card.
Which, if anything, makes Trump’s reaction and the clear corruption of all this even worse. It was something that could have been handled by normal channels. FIFA is already considered possibly the most corrupt large sport organization in the world (and now that is a competitive field), mostly due to the actions of the current head. (The previous head was corrupt, too, he just wasn’t as open and personal with it.) But, as you say, this unprecedented act united much of the world. Against Trump and Infantino.
I’ve also seen pointed out that Trump and Miller loudly believe that Balogun shouldn’t be an American citizen, even if they haven’t said it specifically about him. He was only born in the U.S. because his English mother wasn’t allowed to fly back to London due to medical concerns while she was very pregnant. So he’s actually a shining example of the sort of ‘birthright citizenship’ that Trump has been actively trying to get rid of.
So, is Belgium now ‘two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon”?
Even if you intend to play the ball but miss, striking the opposition player instead, it is still a foul. This incident was clearly a foul and correctly called as such. That others are missed does not negate that this was a clear foul.
Jenora Feuer at 4. Yes, questionable (appealable) as a red card, but clearly a foul, the severity of the contact only revealed after the fact. I personally think the red card was correct.
Referee here, albeit not a very good one as I usually work youth recreation games and not serious adult competitions…but Jenora @4 is correct about the law. It reads, “A tackle or challenge that endangers the safety of an opponent or uses excessive force or brutality must be sanctioned as serious foul play.”
Some (I think mostly people who are not referees) complained that VAR protocol states, ” normal speed should be used for the ‘intensity’ of an offence” but only slow-motion was used. I think that objection is not valid because Balogun’s challenge fell under that first part where “excessive force” is not being judged.
Where Jenora may be wrong, though I cannot easily confirm, is FIFA may not have an appeal process nor an automatic review process for the World Cup Finals. Most leagues do have an appeal process and I would hope most leagues would have looked at that challenge and agreed it was incidental and not given the additional suspension. If it is indeed true FIFA has no appeal nor automatic review process, I think they should have one for the future…but, then again, maybe they don’t out of concern of this very corruption? (In other words, such processes might end up favoring the more dominant soccer nations over the underdogs in the competition.)
Kind of hard to cheer for a team that looks like it’s cheating. None of the players or staff deserved that.
Trump is kind of like the inverse of the great thief archetype, the kind that leaves calling cards and tells you a week ahead of time what they’re going to steal. Then makes off with it anyway despite the precautions taken because they’re just that competent.
Trump is decidedly not competent. Instead of warning ahead of time* and pulling off an amazing trick solo, he suckers some corrupt person into helping him. I’m not sure what he does. I’d bet it’s not threatening them because he’s not very scary. Then he brags about how great he is at his criming and how he totally dominated this other person into helping him do it, throwing them under the bus as a weakling AND a criminal. It’s really striking how willing he is to make himself and his accomplisses look like a couple of bungling clowns. And all for the cheapest of ego trips.
* Trump does sometimes warn us ahead of time that he’s doing something sketchy. It’s less a flex than a tic though.
The ref’s decision is final*.
* Except when you’re playing the USA.
From now on, why would anyone play the USA? Even if you were to win, it would be relitigated like a six year-old general election by the cry baby in chief†.
† Minimum investment in cryptocurrency and fealty oath required, void in case of 25A.
The same DT who “didn’t think it was a foul” also acknowledged, in a rare example of honesty, that he didn’t know what a red card was.