{"id":822216,"date":"2026-07-24T03:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T03:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/822216\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T03:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T03:20:13","slug":"norway-considers-filing-fifa-ethics-complaint-over-trump-role-in-world-cup-red-card-saga-world-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/822216\/","title":{"rendered":"Norway considers filing Fifa ethics complaint over Trump role in World Cup red card saga | World Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump\u2019s role in clearing Folarin Balogun from a mandatory one-game ban at the World Cup<\/a> is set to provoke a formal complaint to Fifa ethics investigators.<\/p>\n

The Norway<\/a> soccer federation said Thursday its board of directors will consider filing the complaint at its next meeting, likely on 6 August.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need our leader in Fifa to say that this was an error,\u201d Norwegian federation president Lise Klaveness told the Times<\/a> in an interview published Thursday.<\/p>\n

After Trump called Fifa president Gianni Infantino, a one-game ban for Balogun\u2019s red-card tackle against Bosnia and Herzegovina was deferred so he could play against Belgium with a quarterfinals place at stake.<\/p>\n

Belgium beat the US 4-1<\/a> after a chaotic 36 hours at the World Cup. The Belgium players were seemingly fired up by one of the all-time controversies in tournament history.<\/p>\n

Trump called the referee\u2019s red card for Balogun after video review a \u201chorrible\u201d call and took credit<\/a> for getting Fifa to review what should routinely have been a one-game ban.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know that this verdict was influenced from external forces and did not have the proper process,\u201d Klaveness told the Times of the Fifa ruling that was unprecedented in the past 60 years at World Cups. \u201cWhen you bend a rule like this, you\u2019re on a slippery slope that will put the whole game at risk,\u201d said the former Women\u2019s World Cup player for Norway, who is an elected member of European soccer body Uefa\u2019s executive committee.<\/p>\n

Klaveness is a lawyer and judge who has positioned the Norwegian federation as a conscience in world soccer since her election in 2022. \u201cIt is a worry for the game when you compromise fundamental rules of the game,\u201d she said Thursday about not enforcing Balogun\u2019s ban.<\/p>\n

Norway previously joined a London-based NGO\u2019s complaint to the Fifa ethics committee alleging Infantino breached a statutory duty of political neutrality, including by creating a peace prize to award to Trump at the World Cup draw in December.<\/p>\n

The close personal and political ties between Trump and Infantino include the US president believing the soccer official could be a good pick as next secretary general of the United Nations, the New York Post reported this week.<\/p>\n

The human rights NGO, FairSquare, also has filed an ethics complaint<\/a> about the Balogun incident to the International Olympic Committee, where Infantino is an elected member, about breaching its rules on political neutrality.<\/p>\n

Fifa and the IOC rarely acknowledge or provide updates on potential cases before their ethics bodies. The independence of Fifa\u2019s process to handle complaints alleging unethical conduct has been questioned since the lead investigator and judge both were replaced in 2017, in the second year of Infantino\u2019s presidency. Fifa has yet to publish documents explaining how its disciplinary judges reached verdicts about Balogun or other World Cup players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump\u2019s role in clearing Folarin Balogun from a mandatory one-game ban at the World Cup is set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-822216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822216","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=822216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}