Donald Trump called FIFA's president, a red card got reversed four days later, and Belgium found out it had a few hours to appeal a decision that had already been made. If that sequence doesn't tell you everything about how FIFA operates, nothing will.
Folarin Balogun — the U.S. team's top scorer — was sent off in the July 1 match against Bosnia-Herzegovina. Trump acknowledged he rang FIFA President Gianni Infantino shortly after. Four days later, the red card was gone, the suspension lifted, and Balogun was cleared to face Belgium on July 6 in Seattle. The Royal Belgian Football Association called it out directly, warning it would "continue to fight in the coming hours, days and months in defence of the fundamental principles of ethics, fair competition, and the interests of football as a whole."
Strong words. FIFA dismissed the Belgian appeal within hours of the match anyway.
This isn't new — it's just the latest chapter
The relationship between Trump and Infantino adds context worth knowing: last year, Infantino presented Trump with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize after Trump was rejected for the Nobel Peace Prize. That's the working relationship at the center of the most politically charged refereeing reversal in World Cup history.
But FIFA's problems didn't start with a phone call from the Oval Office. The organization's corruption timeline reads like a criminal case file:
- 1966 – "The Wembley Debacle": An Argentine captain refused to leave the pitch after being sent off by a German referee in a match full of spitting and reckless challenges. The chaos led directly to the introduction of yellow and red cards in 1970.
- 1974–1998: Under João Havelange, FIFA's commercial explosion also brought kickbacks and vote-trading. The World Cup expanded from 16 to 24 teams in 1982, then 32 in 1998 — and the money that followed wasn't always clean.
- 2001–2002: Marketing firm International Sport and Leisure collapsed, exposing illicit payments to FIFA officials. FIFA Secretary-General Michel Zen-Ruffinen then accused president Sepp Blatter of misleading accounting — an early internal warning that went largely ignored.
- 2015: The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a 47-count indictment in Brooklyn charging 14 defendants with racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering. Swiss authorities made arrests in Zurich. Blatter stepped down. Jérôme Valcke was suspended, then banned. Former officials were convicted in U.S. courts and went to prison.
- 2010 World Cup votes: FIFA awarded Russia the 2018 tournament and Qatar the 2022 edition. Later investigations found six FIFA executive committee members had been suspended before the vote after being offered cash for their ballots.
What it means for the tournament — and the markets
Balogun's reinstatement changes the U.S. attacking picture significantly. He's their sharpest finisher, and his availability shifts the calculus on U.S. match odds going forward. Any line set without him playing was already outdated the moment FIFA made its call.
The deeper issue is structural. FIFA's appeal process in this case gave Belgium "a few hours" to respond to a decision involving one of the tournament's highest-profile matches. That's not due process — it's a formality designed to look like one. Belgium's football association knows it, which is why they've promised to pursue this "in the coming months."
Whether that fight goes anywhere is another question. FIFA has absorbed far worse — prison sentences, federal indictments, a president forced from his post — and the institution carried on largely unchanged. A diplomatic complaint from the Belgian FA isn't going to land harder than the U.S. Department of Justice did in 2015, and FIFA weathered that too.
