A discredited Fifa at the beck and call of a petulant Trump

Fifa reinstated Balogun but ignored appalling refereeing at the France v Paraguay matchThe international football federation (Fifa), the body responsible for the overall conduct and supervision of the 2026 World Cup, brought the beautiful game into disrepute earlier this week. In an unprecedented move it lifted the automatic ban on US top player Folarin Balogun, after he was red carded and sent off in the US match against Bosnia on July 1 so that he could play against Belgium. He played and the US lost 4-1 anyway, so all’s well that ends well? Well, not really. Fifa’s decision was entirely arbitrary. No reasons were given and though the US was allowed to make submissions, Belgium was not given the right to reply and told it had no standing to appeal. What happened was that President Trump leaned on his friend, the president of Fifa, Gianni Infantino, and Bob’s your uncle! The ban was lifted in time for Balogun to play in the match against Belgium. The first the world knew of Fifa’s decision to lift Balogun’s ban was when Trump boasted about it claiming he had asked for a review because the foul for which Balogun was shown the red card and sent off was wrong – it was a mere entanglement between two players and not a sending-off offence, he said, while conceding he did not know much about the red card rule. Trump makes no secret of his disdain for rules, so leaning on Infantino to change the referee’s decision to red card US’ top player, was natural for him, but not permissible under the rules of the competition. Trump’s call to Infantino was parallel to submissions filed by US lawyers that were more nuanced. They did not argue that the referee’s decision was wrong but that it was procedurally flawed because the video assisted referee (VAR) protocol was not followed. It is not clear why this was thought to matter or why the reasons for lifting the ban are not in the public domain – if they exist at all. The US is not a footballing nation like say Brazil and Argentina are in South America, or England, France and Spain, are in Europe. It is however a very litigious country, and Trump is a litigious president, and his lawyers built a case for Fifa’s judicial disciplinary committee to consider on the basis that the VAR protocol was not followed, even though the committee has no power to review a referee’s decision. Fifa’s judicial bodies were given the power to suspend a ban because bans are triggered automatically when a player is red-carded and there was a perceived need to make provision to lift bans in exceptional cases. The relevant rule is contained Article 27 of the Fifa Disciplinary Code. It says that Fifa’s judicial bodies may decide to suspend an automatic ban for a probationary period of one to four years. It is a wide discretion and there are no guidelines on how it is to be exercised, except that the correctness of the referee’s decision cannot be challenged. However the nub of the US complaint is useful to know even if it was not a relevant matter. The complaint was that in assessing the seriousness of the foul the referee viewed a slow-motion video clip, which it was argued was in breach of the VAR protocol. The video showed that Balogun’s studs landed with force on the inside of the victim player’s lower leg just above the foot that twisted his ankle, which it was argued, the slow-motion clip distorted. According to the VAR protocol the referee should have viewed the incident at normal speed and a still of the point of contact. While a slow-motion replay is acceptable to show what happened in fact, it is inappropriate to assess the intensity of a foul, as slow motion replays tend to exaggerate the force used and make incidental contact look deliberate. The finality of referees’ decisions and use of the power to review only in exceptional cases are both essential to the integrity of the game. If this were otherwise the result of football matches would be decided by lawyers instead of referees, and the floodgates would open for political requests to review every ban. If for example France’s Kylian Mbappe, Argentina’s Leo Messi or England’s Jude Bellingham were red carded and banned, would Fifa have to review and suspend their bans too if requested by their respective political leaders to do so à la Trump? It is a fine mess Fifa got itself into. It should have told the US president that it has a duty to ensure that players are protected from foul play that could ruin their lucrative careers in club football and that referees are required to penalise dangerous play to secure player participation in international football. Take the appalling refereeing of the France v Paraguay match on July 4 by Ilgiz Tantashev from Uzbekistan. He was not only oblivious to serious foul play by the Paraguayan players on the ball, but of a number of violent assaults on French players off the ball that were not only sending-off fouls but criminal offences under the state criminal code as well. Football is a physical game, and players are taken to consent to contact withintherules of the game and contact that breaches a rule, when it is incidental to the game. But the consent is to a general risk of injury in a contact sport but not to any specific injury, and does not include unlawful violence that can be and has been prosecuted as a crime. The Paraguay players in the match against France’s precious squad of players crossed every red line in the book, and since they were not penalised themselves, their football association should be sanctioned and the referee called to account by Fifa’s ethics committee.