{"id":786102,"date":"2026-07-07T13:18:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T13:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/786102\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T13:18:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T13:18:23","slug":"so-its-trump-1-belgium-4-and-the-world-rejoices-nothing-like-failed-chicanery-to-bring-us-together-is-there-marina-hyde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/786102\/","title":{"rendered":"So it\u2019s Trump 1, Belgium 4 \u2013 and the world rejoices. Nothing like failed chicanery to bring us together, is there? | Marina Hyde"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh dear. Such a shame to see the US lose at football<\/a> after their insanely embarrassing president cheated for them<\/a>. Still, it really brought the world together. The last time this many people cheered on a Belgian resistance, it was 1914 and the Germans had just crossed the Meuse. As you\u2019ll be aware, the USA were dumped out of their own World Cup on Monday night by a wholly superior Belgium, after Donald Trump boasted that he\u2019d personally intervened in three phone calls<\/a> with Fifa president Gianni Infantino to get the red card shown to USA striker Folarin Balogun rescinded. Yes, the US cheats at football. Pass it on.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve heard a lot about shithousery during this tournament. We have even, excruciatingly, seen a few American commentators attempt to use the word in conversation. Guys, please, just \u2013 no. It\u2019s not for you. You have \u2019erbs, \u201ca couple things\u201d, and \u201ca ways to go\u201d. But let\u2019s call the events of the past few days by the name they deserve in all the languages of the world: Whitehousery.<\/p>\n

Some absolute Whitehousery has been on display and the world certainly has a way (singular) to go before we all forget it. As he made very clear, Trump really wet his Depends over Balogun\u2019s ban, and spent Monday gibbering to the news cameras that he\u2019d acted hideously inappropriately over the weekend by interfering because \u201cI\u2019m good at this stuff\u201d. Righto. It\u2019s somehow especially poignant that Trump genuinely thought he was going in to bat for the national side. After all, the only humane sporting reply to that is: oh my god, don\u2019t let him bat! Look at the state of him! He can\u2019t bat to save his life! Weird that Trump supposedly understands such a lot about sport, but doesn\u2019t get that if you do something outrageously unfair, your opponents will so often use that injustice to fire themselves up and beat you. But look, maybe those aren\u2019t the dynamics in the necrotic golf games Lindsey Graham lets him cheat<\/a> in. (\u201cSome people say you may outdrive him, but you\u2019re not going to outdrive his caddie,\u201d Graham told a grand jury in Trump\u2019s election interference case in 2022. \u201cIt is what it is.\u201d)<\/p>\n

A lot of people rightly feel sorry for Balogun, who never asked to find the president\u2019s malevolently gelatinous form supposedly in his corner. In fact, presumably the London-raised Balogun particularly didn\u2019t, given he\u2019s precisely the sort of chap whose birthright citizenship Trump would have done anything to limit until the supreme court finally struck down<\/a> his attempts to do so last week. But, to quote a phrase, it is what it is.<\/p>\n

No one, however, feels remotely sorry for Fifa president Infantino, to whom the focus must now decisively shift. Infantino produced some extreme bullshit explanation for why Fifa\u2019s supposedly independent judicial bodies triggered the opaque article 27 and overturned the ban, which I saw ran in one US publication under a headline<\/a> including the words \u201cInfantino defends Fifa\u2019s integrity\u201d. Sorry, Fifa\u2019s what?<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s come to this, but we\u2019re now officially in the nihilistic \u201cBring back Blatter\u201d era. Former Fifa president Sepp Blatter \u2013 last seen looking like he was sleeping in his car yet somehow finally contriving to be cleared of corruption charges<\/a> on appeal last year \u2013 yesterday launched a two-footed attack on his successor over the whole business. \u201cRed cards are not overturned by political phone calls,\u201d he stated. By what then? Sacks of cash and luxury watches? Apparently not. \u201cThey are overturned by rules, evidence and independent bodies,\u201d Blatter thundered. Wow, who knew, etc.<\/p>\n

If it seemed like Uefa couldn\u2019t hate Infantino more, meanwhile, it turned out it definitely could. European football\u2019s governing body issued its own lengthy statement<\/a> tipping all over the call. \u201cWhen the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,\u201d this ran. \u201cWe express our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision.\u201d It had, Uefa declared, \u201ccrossed a red line\u201d. A red line? A red line?! Call me cartography-obsessed, but I feel like we crossed that line a few moral galaxies ago. Maybe when Infantino was butching it out<\/a> in the photocall at Trump\u2019s Gaza Peace Summit For Ghoulishly Rapacious Businessmen (not its official title). Certainly when Gianni inaugurated the auto-satirical Fifa peace prize<\/a> and awarded it to Trump just a couple of months before the president decided to truly live according to its values and launch a war on Iran.<\/p>\n

Anyway: developments. A rising tally of members of the European parliament have called for an ethics investigation into Fifa<\/a> because of the Balogun affair. So, the European parliament calling for an ethics investigation and Sepp Blatter suggesting you\u2019re bent \u2013 if irony could kill, we could be looking at a bloodbath.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it can\u2019t. No football match could be as fixed as Infantino\u2019s presidential security at Fifa \u2013 not even if Trump\u2019s USA played the bribery-assisted 1993 Marseille side and it was overseen by corrupt German referee Robert Hoyzer<\/a>. Infantino is simply unbeatable \u2013 currently \u2013 within the organisation he leads because of the way he\u2019s played the member associations outside Europe with patronage and development cash. Eventually that will change \u2013 at Fifa, there\u2019s always someone ghastlier and hungrier waiting for their chance in the end. But for now, Trump and Infantino are free to poison their own tournament. Let\u2019s just hope the eventual champions realise their final tactical play will be doing everything possible to avoid these two villains annexing the glory.<\/p>\n

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