FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who has been hopscotching around North America for most of the last month to attend as many World Cup matches as humanly possible (we\u2019ve wondered at times whether he has a teleportation device and\/or a body double), can\u2019t outrun the biggest controversy of the tournament.<\/p>\n
The about-face regarding the suspension resulting from U.S. striker Folarin Balogun\u2019s red card in the Round of 32, apparently instigated by a phone call from President Trump to Infantino, has had consequences well beyond Belgium trolling Trump<\/a> with his trademark two-fisted dance.<\/p>\n Rohith Nair of Reuters reports that FairSquare, a human-rights group, has said it file a complaint with the International Olympic Committee over Infantino\u2019s \u201crepeated breach \u200cof political neutrality rules<\/a>,\u201d specifically as a result of Infantino\u2019s arguable kowtowing to Trump.<\/p>\n Previously, FairSquare filed a complaint with the FIFA Ethics Committee in December 2025, based on multiple instances in which Infantino \u201cexpressed his public support for the actions and policies\u201d of Trump. The group also complained about Infantino awarding Trump the previously nonexistent FIFA Peace Prize.<\/p>\n Separately, at least 35 European lawmakers have asked the national football associations of the various European Union countries to request the FIFA Ethics Committee to investigate whether political pressure<\/a> on Infantino from the top of the U.S. government was a factor in the lifting of the Balogun suspension, along with \u201cother potential breaches of political neutrality\u201d by Infantino \u2014 including the phony-baloney Peace Prize, per the Associated Press.<\/p>\n The situation should be fully investigated. There\u2019s more than enough smoke to justify a full and fair search for any flickers of flame, whether that relates to the Balogun situation or the allegations that Infantino is favoring Argentina<\/a> in the ongoing competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who has been hopscotching around North America for most of the last month to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":752744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-752743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}