{"id":536001,"date":"2026-07-06T16:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/536001\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T16:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:20:08","slug":"donald-trump-admits-asking-gianni-infantino-to-review-folarin-balogun-red-card-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/536001\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump admits asking Gianni Infantino to review Folarin Balogun red card \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

United States President Donald Trump<\/a> has confirmed he personally asked Fifa<\/a> president Gianni Infantino<\/a> to \u201creview\u201d USA striker Folarin Balogun\u2019s red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was controversially overturned on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Balogun was sent off after VAR reviewed a challenge he made in the last-32 match against Bosnia, with the dismissal thought to have meant an automatic ban for Monday night\u2019s last-16 tie against Belgium.<\/p>\n

President Trump has now confirmed he personally lobbied Infantino at an event on Monday, telling the Fifa president that Balogun\u2019s challenge \u201cwas not a foul\u201d and adding that the referee \u201cis a little bit suspect\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump said at the Oval Office on Monday: \u201cI spoke to Gianni, who\u2019s highly respected.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the play and I\u2019m a person that loves sports and was a good athlete, and I understand sports really well, really well and that wasn\u2019t a foul, that wasn\u2019t even an infraction, that was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were two great athletes that got tangled up and this referee, who is a little bit suspect, if you check his past. I don\u2019t want to say that, because I don\u2019t like to create controversy, but very suspect.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe made a call that nobody could believe. He [Balogun] didn\u2019t do anything wrong and he\u2019s our best player, or one of our best players\u2026 and he [the referee] gave him a red card.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very unfair, you can\u2019t do that. So, yes, I asked for a review by Fifa. I spoke to a man who\u2019s highly respected [Infantino] and by the way, whose level of respect has gone up tenfold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fifa\u2019s statutes prohibit political interference in matters relating to its national associations, but it has not yet commented on how it came to the decision to suspend Balogun\u2019s ban.<\/p>\n

Belgium have appealed against the decision to overturn the ban, while Uefa<\/a> said it \u201ccrossed a red line\u201d.<\/p>\n

President Trump, who had posted on social media on Sunday to thank Fifa for \u201creversing a great injustice\u201d, added on Monday: \u201cAll I did, I asked for a review because I didn\u2019t think it was a foul, and you know again, I\u2019m good at this stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they wouldn\u2019t allow a top player, maybe among the best players on the team, to play, I think it would have had a big stain and I related just that feeling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t tell [Infantino] what to do, I can\u2019t tell him what to do. I don\u2019t believe he made the decision, I think it was a committee that made the decision, and they made the right decision because it wasn\u2019t a foul and you want to see a game with your best players.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite President Trump\u2019s insistence that he did not tell Infantino what to do, Republican Senator Ted Cruz had earlier thanked the President for \u201cgetting rid of that ridiculous red card\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Belgian Football Association (RBFA) says it has been kept in the dark by Fifa about the reasons behind the suspension of Balogun\u2019s ban.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter learning through media reports of Fifa\u2019s decision to lift the automatic suspension of player Balogun, the RBFA sent a letter to Fifa requesting a copy of the decision, an explanation of the process that had been followed, and setting out its position regarding the applicable regulations,\u201d the RBFA said on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs its only response, Fifa sent a letter to the RBFA stating that it considered this correspondence to constitute an appeal, that a judge had been appointed, and that the RBFA had only a few hours to complete that appeal. No information whatsoever was provided by Fifa.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor an appeal to be admissible, Fifa\u2019s own regulations state that the reasoned decision must first have been communicated to the appellant. While the RBFA was merely seeking legitimate explanations, Fifa itself created an appeal and immediately ensured that it would be declared inadmissible.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of this occurred while Fifa simultaneously refused to respond to the RBFA\u2019s legitimate requests.\u201d<\/p>\n

The RBFA claimed Fifa had \u201cdeliberately removed the section concerning the automatic suspension of players from its presentation\u201d at a pre-match co-ordination meeting for the match against the US.<\/p>\n

Uefa expressed \u201cdisbelief\u201d at the decision taken by Fifa and said it was \u201cunprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable\u201d.<\/p>\n

The statement from European football\u2019s governing body added: \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<\/p>\n

World Cup Wallchart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"United States President Donald Trump has confirmed he personally asked Fifa president Gianni Infantino to \u201creview\u201d USA striker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[969,2956,53114,61,60,112,4018],"class_list":["post-536001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-donald-trump","tag-fifa","tag-gianni-infantino","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}