{"id":792553,"date":"2026-07-10T10:12:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T10:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/792553\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T10:12:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T10:12:17","slug":"the-dark-side-of-the-world-cup-balogun-and-egypt-var-decisions-fuel-allegations-of-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/792553\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Side of the World Cup: Balogun and Egypt VAR Decisions Fuel Allegations of Corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Donald Trump pressing FIFA President Gianni Infantino to reverse Folarin Balogun\u2019s red card<\/a>, to controversial VAR calls against Egypt<\/a> and Iran<\/a> \u2013 there\u2019s no shortage of incidents in the 2026 World Cup that remind the world of FIFA\u2019s corruption, its alleged biases, and how politics cannot be removed from sports. <\/p>\n

But the story goes much deeper than the surface of the pitch.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve shown throughout \u2018The Dark Side of the World Cup\u2019, authoritarian leaders like Trump have long used the tournament to sanitize their crimes and misdeeds. But in this final episode, we dive deep into FIFA\u2019s own role in enabling that sanitization, and the major corruption scandals that have plagued the governing body and several of its now-notorious past presidents.<\/p>\n

We also talk about how money rules the game. As political scientist and former footballer Jules Boykoff puts it:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe World Cup is an opportunity for a privileged sliver of the global 1% to come together, meet in the luxury boxes, and cut deals with each other. That\u2019s what the World Cup can often be about, not just the game on the field, but the game up in the luxury boxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Share<\/a><\/p>\n

Join Mehdi, Jules, Global Affairs Columnist Ishaan Tharoor, and FIFA whistleblower Bonita Mersiades for a timely unpacking of the dark side of this incredibly cherished international tournament. <\/p>\n

Paid subscribers can watch the full episode. Free subscribers can watch a 3-minute preview. Become a paid subscriber<\/a> to Zeteo today to support the work we\u2019re doing and to get access to all our premium content!<\/p>\n

Check out the other episodes from \u2018The Dark Side of the World Cup\u2019:<\/p>\n

\"\u26bd\ud83c\udfc6\u26bd\ud83c\udfc6 The Dark Side of The World Cup: Episode 1<\/a>\"HowHow Shameful Can the World Cup Get? We Take a Look at Four Previous Tournaments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Donald Trump pressing FIFA President Gianni Infantino to reverse Folarin Balogun\u2019s red card, to controversial VAR calls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-792553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}