Folarin Balogun has unwittingly found himself at the centre of a geopolitical storm.
The striker, who was shown a questionable straight red card in the United States’ 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina last week, has been granted the most controversial of reprieves by FIFA ahead of his side’s round-of-16 clash with Belgium tomorrow after personal intervention by US President Donald Trump.
Trump and FIFA president Gianni Infantino have enjoyed a cosy relationship for several years, with Infantino visiting the Oval Office more than many members of Trump’s own cabinet.
In the latest statement of what has become a constant stream of official comms today, Infantino said that, while he did have a conversation with Trump about Balogun’s sending off, FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee is completely autonomous and not beholden to political pressure.
That account, it is fair to say, has stretched the credulity of many well-informed journalists, commentators and even insiders at FIFA itself. And now, the mood music is that this could be an existential threat to his presidency of world soccer’s governing body.
World-famous sports lawyer Nick De Marco speaks out on Balogun controversy
Infantino, an expansionist, is a highly divisive figure in the public eye. He has orchestrated three of the most controversial World Cups in history, brazenly squeezed fans in the US this summer, and he wants to challenge the supremacy of the Champions League in the club game with the revamped Club World Cup.
But among the soccer federations who elected him, he has always been in fairly robust standing. Mainly, that’s because while FIFA’s commercial approach is seen by many experts as cent-wise but dollar-foolish, it has seen more money flow into their budgets.
However, the Balogun incident is arguably the biggest threat to his presidency so far.
Many national soccer federations are understood to be livid at Infantino for supposedly allowing this kind of political incursion. France, for example, have now launched an appeal against a yellow card received by their player Michael Olise in an apparent bid to expose the precedent FIFA have now set.
Nick De Marco, a barrister at Blackstone Chambers who is routinely described as the ‘Lionel Messi of sports law’ in the English press, has now given his verdict on the controversy following a statement from the Belgian FA which effectively accuses FIFA of attempting to bend procedures to make their appeal inadmissible.
In a longer post on X, De Marco – who works regularly with Premier League clubs – said this latest development “makes matters considerably worse.”
“FIFA,” he says, risks undermining the “integrity of the World Cup, and its own authority as the global regulator of football, by appearing either to invent a procedure or, at the very least, to apply its rules in a wholly unprecedented way, against a backdrop of acknowledged political pressure, while refusing to give reasons and seemingly leaving the decision with no meaningful avenue of challenge.”
Trump, who is yet to attend a match at this summer’s World Cup, has put Infantino in a real bind here.
This unlikely bromance could have the messiest of endings.
READ MORE: Why FIFA and UEFA’s relationship was at breaking point even before Balogun statement
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