Why FIFA can't say NO to Donald Trump

For a while, it was easy to forget that the World Cup was being held in Trump’s America. There were no clashes between ICE and fan groups. Fans making NSFW chants about the president were not hauled off into detention centres.

People were actually having fun, discovering the America that existed beyond the stereotypes they saw on sitcoms. And then a red-card reprieve came back to remind us that the World Cup is being held in rather tumultuous times. And then came a phone call. But let’s start from the beginning.

The Big Picture

The 2026 World Cup was always going to be too big to remain just football. It is the first 48-team edition, spread across the US, Mexico and Canada, stretched over 104 matches and sold as the biggest, grandest and most lucrative tournament FIFA has ever staged. It is also being played in the year America marks its 250th anniversary, which gives Donald Trump exactly the kind of backdrop he understands instinctively: flags, stadiums, anthems, cameras, national theatre and the possibility of a home team carrying the pageant deeper into the month.That is the context in which FIFA’s relationship with Trump has to be understood. FIFA may own the World Cup, but it does not own America’s borders, airports, policing, airspace, visa systems, emergency protocols or federal security machinery. For all its Zurich swagger, FIFA cannot run a tournament of this scale in the US without the White House and the American state playing ball. Trump is therefore far more than a VIP in a box.

He is the host president of the country that controls much of the tournament’s physical reality.This is where Gianni Infantino’s FIFA enters more dangerous territory. Infantino has spent years turning FIFA from a football regulator into a kind of travelling court of global power. He likes presidents, princes, prime ministers and anyone else who can deliver stadiums, sponsors, television pictures and silence.

Trump has called him the “king of soccer”, which sounds ridiculous until one sees how much of modern FIFA has become a projection of Infantino’s own authority.The New Yorker’s profile of Infantino captured this shift sharply. One former UEFA colleague said his vision was to expand “FIFA’s power and his own power”. Another former high-ranking FIFA official said there was “no major decision” at this tournament without Infantino’s direct involvement.

That matters because the Balogun case did not happeni vaccum. It arrived inside a relationship that had already included a FIFA Peace Prize for Trump, a FIFA office in Trump Tower, the shifting of the World Cup draw to Washington, DC after Trump suggested the Kennedy Center, and the sight of the Village People performing “YMCA”, Trump’s unofficial anthem, at a FIFA event.So when the phone rang, FIFA was not hearing from a random politician with an opinion about VAR.

It was hearing from the host president, the anniversary impresario, the security gatekeeper, the trophy-presenter-in-waiting and a man Infantino had already spent months elevating inside the tournament’s theatre.

The Red-Card Redemption

The football part of the story began in USA’s Round of 32 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, when Folarin Balogun was sent off for a foul on Tarik Muharemovic. Under football’s usual disciplinary rhythm, the path was simple enough.

A red card brings an automatic one-match suspension, which meant Balogun would miss the Round of 16 against Belgium, US fans would rage at the referee, pundits would argue about slow-motion replays, and everyone would eventually discover a new outrage by breakfast.Instead, Trump called Infantino and asked for a review. Around that call came a wider push involving lawyers, officials and people close to US Soccer, all searching for a way to make Balogun available.

FIFA eventually found its answer in Article 27 of its disciplinary code, which allows the implementation of a sanction to be suspended. The red card remained on Balogun’s record, but the punishment was delayed for a one-year probationary period, which meant he could play against Belgium.

Trump celebrated the decision in his usual register, thanking FIFA “for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” UEFA saw a very different picture and called the decision “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable”, adding that FIFA had “crossed a red line”.

That phrase matters because this was no longer only about whether Balogun’s tackle deserved red. Even some critics of FIFA’s decision thought the original call was harsh.

The problem was that a supposedly automatic punishment became flexible once the president of the host country decided it should be reviewed.Article 27 is the kind of clause that lives quietly in disciplinary codes until power needs a door. Earlier this year, Cristiano Ronaldo had two matches of a three-game suspension suspended after a red card against Ireland, allowing him to play Portugal’s opening World Cup group matches.

Balogun has now used the same route, which is why the provision already feels like the Ronaldo Rule: the offence survives on paper, the punishment is delayed in practice, and the spectacle gets the player it wants.Belgium understood the danger immediately. Its federation said it was “astonished”. Belgium coach Rudi Garcia mocked the timing, saying, “I didn’t know that July 5 was equal to April 1 at FIFA.” Wayne Rooney called it an “absolute disgrace” and said Infantino “should be ashamed”.

Gary Neville said the decision “absolutely stinks”. Norway coach Stale Solbakken made the more lasting point when he warned that if the US won, the decision would sit in the background.

That is what FIFA has done here. It has given every future argument about the US campaign a second scoreboard, where the goals matter and so does access to power.

Beyond the Headlines

The Balogun reprieve becomes even more revealing when placed next to Iran’s World Cup experience.

Iran’s tournament was shadowed by visa and security complications, with members of its wider delegation struggling with access and the team’s base moved from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana, Mexico. Iran captain Mehdi Taremi said, “We have to fight against everything here.” That line lands because it captures the difference between playing in the World Cup and being welcomed by it.For Iran, host-country sovereignty became a wall. For the US, FIFA found a door.

That contrast is the heart of the piece. FIFA sells the World Cup as football’s great republic, a place where the ball is supposed to flatten hierarchy for 90 minutes. Yet the tournament still lives inside the political systems of its hosts. Some teams meet immigration queues, security anxieties and suspicion. The host nation gets a presidential phone call and a creative reading of the disciplinary code.

Infantino’s defenders will argue that FIFA merely followed its rules, and technically they may have a document trail to point towards.

But FIFA’s problem is no longer the absence of rules; it is the suspicion that the rules bend most easily when bending helps the powerful. The same organisation that insists on political neutrality has no trouble standing next to power when power comes with stadiums, money and global attention.Infantino himself has helped create that impression. He awarded Trump FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize, saying, “This is what we want from a leader.”

He has praised Trump in public, telling an audience that “he’s just implementing what he said he would do” and adding, “I think we should all support what he’s doing, because I think he’s doing pretty good, right?” These are not the words of a distant sports administrator carefully maintaining institutional separation.

They are the words of a man who sees proximity to political power as part of FIFA’s natural habitat.

No More Veneer

There is still one final image waiting for this World Cup. Infantino has said Trump will present the trophy at the July 19 final, explaining, “We will be together with the president enjoying the final and handing the trophy to the winner, of course, together.” In that one sentence sits the whole tournament: Trump at the draw, Trump with the prize, Trump on the phone, Trump in the final photograph.

Balogun’s reprieve did not create FIFA’s Trump problem. It exposed a relationship already hiding in plain sight. FIFA can cite committees, codes and Article 27, and every line of the paperwork may yet be made to look respectable. But football is rarely damaged only by what is written in the rulebook. It is damaged by what people think happened behind the room where the rulebook was read. The World Cup was supposed to be about the world putting all its differences aside.

Where we all put aside our geo-political differences and worried more about seeing our team play football. That veneer is completely gone now.