After a tumultuous weekend for World Cup fans, US striker Folarin Balogun will play in the game against Belgium on Monday night. Maybe that doesn’t sound at all surprising, perhaps because you only learned the name Folarin Balogun today, when you heard that President Donald Trump was involved in all of this in some capacity. Maybe you heard there was an unprecedented appeal. Perhaps you know it’s controversial but you don’t know why.
Good news: You’ve come to the right place.
On Sunday, FIFA made the decision to reverse Balogun’s one-game red card suspension, which will allow him to play against Belgium on Monday night — the US’s most important match of the 2026 World Cup.
That decision raises a slew of questions. Why is this red card such a big deal? What does it mean for the US? Who exactly got the call reversed? And, given FIFA’s long and well-established history of doing bad things, is this just a little bit of corruption or, like, capital “C” corruption?
Here’s what you need to know about the most controversial call of the World Cup so far.
What happened to US striker Folarin Balogun’s red card?
Balogun was given a red card during the US’s round of 32 match against Bosnia-Herzegovina on July 1. Balogun and Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemović were going after the same ball in the second half (at roughly the 61-minute mark), and Balogun stepped on Muharemović‘s ankle and the back of his leg during the play. Initially, no transgression was called, but after a brief video review, the referee sent Balogun off in the 64th minute citing a serious foul or dangerous play. Players that get red cards are immediately taken out of the game and are given an automatic one-game suspension.
At the time, fans, some sports journalists, and Fox’s on-air commentators criticized the call because it appeared to be “incidental contact”; they believed that the video assistant referee (VAR) slow-motion review made the play look more serious than it was. Though he writhed on the field, seemingly in pain, Muharemović finished the game, which could imply it was not a serious foul or dangerous play.
The unprecedented part of this saga is that on Sunday, FIFA announced that Balogun’s red card was suspended, which means his suspension for the Belgium round of 16 match on Monday night would be reversed and he would be allowed to play. FIFA cited Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code (FDC) — a measure that allows the organization to suspend the execution of a disciplinary sanction.
1.The judicial body may decide to fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure.2. By suspending the implementation of the sanction, the judicial body subjects the person sanctioned to a probationary period of one to four years.
ESPN reported that Balogun’s automatic DQ would be suspended for a probationary period of one year.
Why is this such a big deal?
A player getting a red card wiped and being allowed to play in their next match is fairly unheard of in soccer, especially on a stage as grand as the World Cup, so this would be a big deal no matter what team was involved. But it’s getting even more attention because of the optics: Balogun is the US’s most threatening goal-scorer, the US appears to be fielding its best men’s team in recent history, and the US is hosting the World Cup this year.
So, some fans were already suspicious of what was really behind the reversal. Then, in the wake of FIFA’s decision, President Donald Trump thanked FIFA on Truth Social on Sunday, and went on to claim at least partial credit for getting Balogun’s suspension nixed.
“All I did was ask for a review. I didn’t say, ‘you have to do this,’” Trump said during a White House media briefing on Monday. “[A referee] made a call that nobody could believe…he’s our best player, or one of our best players. And he gave him a red card. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t think it meant much. Then I started hearing, you can’t play in the next game.”
After Trump tried to take credit for the reversal — essentially saying he pulled strings to help the US — it put the spotlight on FIFA president Gianni Infantino and people began wondering whether or not he took a call from the sitting US president and then changed course. While Infantino asserted FIFA’s independence, he said in a statement on Monday that he did take Trump’s call, and also that he regularly fields calls from all kinds of important people who wield all kinds of influence:
Yes, I regularly discuss matters related to the FIFA World Cup with the President of the United States, and on this matter, I did receive a call from President Donald Trump, just as I receive calls from heads of state, government officials, football stakeholders and business executives from around the world on many different issues.
Essentially, after the questionable red card, the US (aka the 2026 World Cup home team) benefited from a slew of extremely rare, unprecedented decisions which will allow its team to play at full strength when it, under normal circumstances, would not be allowed to. These decisions came after its sitting president, one of the most powerful men in the world, bragged about calling the FIFA chief, who not just confirmed the call, but also confirmed that he is regularly on calls with other world leaders and very rich people who, one might assume, aren’t just interested in having innocuous gabs.
FIFA is pretty famously corrupt; how big of a deal is this red card thing?
When talking about FIFA, it’s not really a question of whether soccer’s governing body is or isn’t corrupt, but rather the severity of said corruption.
In 2015, the US Department of Justice indicted nine FIFA officials for racketeering, conspiracy, and bribery. The DOJ at the time noted that “defendants also include U.S. and South American sports marketing executives who are alleged to have systematically paid and agreed to pay well over $150 million in bribes and kickbacks to obtain lucrative media and marketing rights to international soccer tournaments.”
In 2022, when Qatar hosted the World Cup, FIFA was criticized for widespread human rights and labor violations. Watchdog and advocacy organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International sounded the alarm that the government was taking advantage of and exploiting migrant workers under grueling conditions with little to no pay. FIFA, they say, reaped the benefits of this human cost.
Through this lens, a decision about whether or not someone plays their next game is obviously way less serious than reports of slave labor. And given the 2015 indictment, and everything else we know about FIFA at this point, the existence of corruption and favoritism in FIFA’s system isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Balogun also might not even be the most controversial player still in the tournament — Morocco’s captain and star player Achraf Hakimi has been ordered to stand trial for rape charges. (Hakimi denies any wrongdoing.)
One could make the argument that no professional sport is immune from scandal, exploitation, and corruption: We’ve seen gold medal ice dancers with abuse allegations in the Olympics, NBA players allegedly betting on themselves, doping in tennis, and the way the NFL handles domestic abuse. Still, FIFA’s ability to stand out in this crowded field is remarkable, in the bleakest sense of the term.
Now that Balogun’s red card has been essentially rescinded (at least for this game) and all eyes are on FIFA and the refs, a new can of corrupt worms appears to have been opened. On Monday, a member of the UK Parliament asked for the Balogun treatment be applied to UK player Jarell Quansah. Similarly, France has also asked for the same appeal with star player Michael Olise, who received a yellow card during its match with Paraguay on Saturday.
FIFA has not ruled in either of those cases. Though, to be fair, Trump hasn’t said he’s put in any more calls either.
