{"id":779970,"date":"2026-07-23T14:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T14:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/779970\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T14:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T14:24:08","slug":"folarin-balogun-norway-consider-formal-complaint-to-fifa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/779970\/","title":{"rendered":"Folarin Balogun: Norway consider formal complaint to Fifa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Norwegian Football Federation is considering filing a formal complaint to Fifa&#8217;s ethics committee about the decision to suspend Folarin Balogun&#8217;s automatic one-match ban during the World Cup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">United States forward Balogun was expected to miss his side&#8217;s last-16 tie against Belgium after being shown a straight red card during their 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But, after an intervention from US President Donald Trump, the one-match ban <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cewqq5q8v41o\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">was suspended for 12 months<\/a>. No reason was given, beyond citing a rule that allows punishments to be suspended.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Balogun started the match, which Belgium won 4-1.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a statement provided to the BBC, NFF president Lise Klaveness said the federation had reacted with &#8220;strong concern&#8221; and a decision on whether or not to make a complaint would be made at its next board meeting. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The federation has already filed a complaint about Fifa&#8217;s first Peace Prize being awarded to President Trump. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It is appropriate to include the Balogun case in the inquiry to Fifa&#8217;s ethics committee that we made before the World Cup regarding Fifa&#8217;s so-called peace prize award during the draw in Washington before Christmas last year,&#8221; Klaveness said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The statement followed reports the International Olympic Committee (IOC) could also investigate Fifa president Gianni Infantino.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Infantino has been an IOC member since 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Section two of the Olympic charter states: &#8220;Members of the IOC will not accept from governments, organisations, or other parties, any mandate or instructions liable to interfere with the freedom of their action and vote.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In response to a BBC request, the IOC issued a statement saying: &#8220;Complaints to the IOC ethics commission are confidential. The IOC will therefore not make any public announcement about whether a complaint has been submitted or not by an external party. The IOC will only communicate sanctions should the ethics commission decide to impose some.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Norwegian Football Federation is considering filing a formal complaint to Fifa&#8217;s ethics committee about the decision to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-779970","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\/779970","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=779970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}