{"id":678620,"date":"2026-07-07T14:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T14:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/678620\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T14:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T14:13:09","slug":"world-cup-2026-la-liga-chief-critical-of-complicit-silence-surrounding-fifa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/678620\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: La Liga chief critical of ‘complicit silence’ surrounding Fifa"},"content":{"rendered":"

La Liga president Javier Tebas has criticised the “complicit silence” which surrounds Fifa after United States striker Folarin Balogun was controversially spared from suspension at the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n

Balogun was able to play in the 4-1 defeat<\/a> to Belgium in the last 16 after Fifa’s disciplinary committee opted to suspend his one-game ban<\/a> for 12 months.<\/p>\n

Uefa, which has been at loggerheads with Fifa over a number of issues, strongly criticised the decision on Monday, calling it “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But outside of Europe there has been little noise about Fifa’s decision from football officials.<\/p>\n

Conmebol, the South American football confederation, issued a statement to back its referee, Raphael Claus, after US president Donald Trump called the Brazilian “a bit suspect”.<\/p>\n

But it did not criticise Fifa or Trump, who revealed he asked for the ban to be reviewed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Claus was the referee who showed Balogun the red card against Bosnia-Herzegovia following a video assistant referee review. <\/p>\n

Tebas said that the Balogun decision was the “tip of the iceberg” following a series of events which had been “eroding the credibility of Fifa and football in general for many years”.<\/p>\n

The 63-year-old accused Fifa of being a closed shop in which decisions have been made before any vote takes place and without consultation with domestic leagues.<\/p>\n

“And the worst of all is that much of the football world is aware of it, but too many prefer to maintain a complicit silence,” Tebas said on X. <\/p>\n

“Because staying quiet is more comfortable than defending independence, transparency, and good governance.<\/p>\n

“World football deserves institutions that are accountable, respect the rules, and govern with transparency – not through unilateral, discretionary, arbitrary decisions that erode the trust of fans, clubs, leagues, and players.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"La Liga president Javier Tebas has criticised the “complicit silence” which surrounds Fifa after United States striker Folarin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-678620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}