Just days before a knockout-round elimination game, the future of America’s top scorer was hanging on a disciplinary problem until a call from the Oval Office changed everything.
Folarin Balogun will now be cleared to play Belgium on Monday after FIFA's Disciplinary Committee has frozen his one-match suspension but not enforced it.
The change came after President Trump was said to be talking to FIFA President Gianni Infantino and he told Infantino that the committee would re-examine the matter.
White House World Cup Task Force head Andrew Giuliani and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were also in touch with FIFA behind the scenes. Trump was more pleased, publicly celebrating the good news, declaring on Truth Social that FIFA had “reversed a great injustice.”
To understand why this decision was controversial
Balogun was ejected after the video assistant referee flagged what officials called a “serious foul” cleats dragged down an opponent’s leg and landed squarely on his ankle. That kind of dismissal, for most tournament rules, comes with a ban and no chance to appeal.
The result was never a good one for Americans. Coach Mauricio Pochettino painted it as an accident rather than intent to injury, Balogun said a yellow card “would have been fair” but didn’t come to the conclusion he deserves to be sidelined.
Christian Pulisic said it was not right, given the fact that tougher tackles elsewhere in the tournament were not punished.
What happened next broke with six decades of precedent
FIFA did not revoke the punishment but suspended it for a full year on probation, and Balogun was able to play again for the rest of the tournament. The ban is now suspended if he commits a serious offense before the period ends.
And there is also a quieter thread to this story American officials were able to provide FIFA with “additional evidence” on the basis of the on-field review of the red card which was conducted before the red card was issued, evidence that could have influenced the committee’s decision.
Belgium is not buying the result. Its football federation has been “astonished” and says FIFA has broken its own rules and is looking at “all possible options” to protest and will respond.
Belgian manager Rudi Garcia had no such thing to say of the timing, describing the timing of the incident as a joke on April Fool’s prank and said his complaint was not to be seen as a single match but for the good of football as a whole and was rather concerned with the integrity of football.
FIFA, for its part, has not explained its reasons. But FIFA has had the same leniency in the past it has postponed the suspension of Cristiano Ronaldo in November and postponed the qualifying-round bans for Argentina’s Nicolas Otamendi and Ecuador’s Moises Caicedo, both of whom were denied a place in the World Cup this year.
Some have even compared it to Brazil’s Garrincha, who was sent out of the 1962 semi-final and then allowed to go to the pitch for the final at the end of the game, as players were under pressure and had to take the field.
Even so, the decision on Sunday is still remarkable for the first time since 1962, a player is allowed to play in a World Cup match right after a red card in the last one. The stakes are high enough to make it worth doing so.
A win against Belgium would bring the U.S. men to the quarterfinals and therefore their best modern-day result since 2002. Balogun now has the chance to answer critics on the field but questions about how he got there are not likely to fade anytime soon.
