{"id":536041,"date":"2026-07-06T16:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/536041\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T16:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:57:10","slug":"i-understand-sports-really-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/536041\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I understand sports really well’"},"content":{"rendered":"

United States President Donald Trump has confirmed he personally asked FIFA president Gianni Infantino to “review” USA striker Folarin Balogun’s red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was controversially overturned on Sunday<\/a>.<\/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 “was not a foul” and adding that the referee “is a little bit suspect”.<\/p>\n

Infantino released his own statement after Trump’s comments, admitting he spoke to President Trump but insisting the decision was made by FIFA’s disciplinary committee.<\/p>\n

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

“I 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

“These 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

“He 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

“It\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.”<\/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 said it “crossed a red line”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President Trump, who had posted on social media on Sunday to thank FIFA for “reversing a great injustice”, added on Monday: “All 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

“If 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

“I 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.”<\/p>\n

Folarin Balogun red card incident<\/p>\n

\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 “getting rid of that ridiculous red card”.<\/p>\n

Infantino released a statement through FIFA accepting he had spoken to President Trump, but insisting that he had no hand in Balogun’s suspesion being overturned.<\/p>\n

“Yes, I regularly discuss matters related to the FIFA World Cup with the President of the United States, and on this matter, I did receive a call from President Donald Trump, just as I receive calls from heads of state, government officials, football stakeholders and business executives from around the world on many different issues,” stated Infantino.<\/p>\n

“During our conversation, I explained that there was an ongoing legal process involving FIFA\u2019s independent judicial bodies and that the case would be decided in due course by the competent bodies. That is how FIFA\u2019s system works, and it is a principle that I will always uphold.”<\/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

“After 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,” the RBFA said on Monday.<\/p>\n

“As 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

“For 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

“All of this occurred while FIFA simultaneously refused to respond to the RBFA\u2019s legitimate requests.”<\/p>\n

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

UEFA expressed “disbelief” at the decision taken by FIFA and said it was “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable”.<\/p>\n

The statement from European football\u2019s governing body added: “When 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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"United States President Donald Trump has confirmed he personally asked FIFA president Gianni Infantino to “review” USA striker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-536041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536041","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=536041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}