{"id":550623,"date":"2026-07-15T08:25:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T08:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/550623\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T08:25:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T08:25:26","slug":"infantino-reported-to-ioc-over-alleged-rules-breaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/550623\/","title":{"rendered":"Infantino reported to IOC over alleged rules breaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

A complaint alleging FIFA president Gianni Infantino has breached rules on political neutrality in his dealings with United States President Donald Trump has been submitted to the International Olympic Committee.<\/p>\n

Human rights group FairSquare says Infantino \u2013 who became an IOC member in 2020 \u2013 has repeatedly breached the Olympic Charter and the IOC’s code of ethics, most recently in his handling of the Folarin Balogun affair.<\/p>\n

The United States striker\u2019s one-match ban was suspended by FIFA\u2019s disciplinary committee, freeing him up to play in their World Cup last-16 match against Belgium.<\/p>\n

That followed a phone call from President Trump to Infantino<\/a>, with the Swiss insisting FIFA\u2019s committees are entirely independent.<\/p>\n

The Times has reported that the disciplinary committee chair Mohammad Al Kamali made the key decision to suspend the ban alone, having never been the sole arbiter in any published previous disciplinary cases.<\/p>\n

FIFA has offered no explanation of why the ban was suspended.<\/p>\n

FairSquare\u2019s complaint alleges five clear breaches of the IOC\u2019s rules on political neutrality, along with ‘prima facie\u2019 evidence of two further serious breaches \u2013 including the handling of the Balogun case.<\/p>\n

In December FairSquare made a similar complaint to FIFA\u2019s ethics committee. FairSquare said it had received acknowledgement that its complaint had been received, but has not had any further information.<\/p>\n

The Norwegian football federation wrote to the FIFA ethics committee last month requesting it consider FairSquare\u2019s complaint.<\/p>\n

Fifty members of the European Parliament wrote to the same committee on 29 June urging it to address FairSquare\u2019s complaint.<\/p>\n

\"
\nFolarin Balogun was sent off after a VAR review in the USA’s last-32 match<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Balogun has revealed he predicted President Trump’s involvement in overturning his World Cup suspension would “cause a lot of controversy”.<\/p>\n

Speaking to US broadcaster CBS, he said: “My initial reaction was I was happy to be back in the team, but when I kind of started to reflect, I knew it was going to cause a lot of controversy, and I could almost see within my team-mates a bit of nerves, because it’s something that is so unique.<\/p>\n

“But the closer we got to the game I tried to just focus as best as I could, but it was difficult. A lot of outside noise, and that’s hard to avoid.”<\/p>\n

The Arsenal academy product still maintains the red card he was issued for a tackle on Tarik Muharemovic was not the correct decision.<\/p>\n

He added: “I was in shock. It wasn\u2019t even a tackle. I was totally in shock, I think you could see my reaction, but I just had to accept the decision and just try to be there for my team.<\/p>\n

“When something\u2019s not intentional it should never be a red card, so it was just an unfortunate situation, and I think it put a lot more pressure on us than we needed.”<\/p>\n

Watch every game of the FIFA 2026 World Cup live on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player with highlights on RT\u00c9 Sport digital platforms and live blogs on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app<\/p>\n

\n

Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A complaint alleging FIFA president Gianni Infantino has breached rules on political neutrality in his dealings with United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-550623","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\/550623","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=550623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}