On 1 July 2026 Folarin Balogun is sent off during USA v Bosnia with a straight red card.
Landing on Muharemovic, he inadvertently treads on the Bosnian defender’s ankle. An accidental challenge, but a very ugly one to watch. And so the referee, called to the VAR monitor, has no choice but to confirm the dismissal. The suspension follows automatically. Those are the rules.
Four days later, however, Donald Trump makes an announcement on his social network, Truth. FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee has remedied ‘the injustice suffered’, suspending the ban on Balogun and applying Article 27 of the Disciplinary Code. The United States’ number 20 will be free to play against Belgium in the round of 16.
According to the New York Times, Trump himself reportedly called Infantino to press for the decision.
An episode without precedent in World Cup history, yet one that transcends the purely legal or sporting dimension. It is, in fact, a matter of governance: the example of an institution applying its own rules selectively, under external pressure.
In short, a problem of institutional architecture that goes well beyond the result of a match.
The weight of pressure
One interesting fact worth highlighting is that Balogun’s ban was not overturned but suspended for a one-year probationary period: should Balogun commit another offence of a similar nature and seriousness, the suspension may be revoked and the sanction applied. All of this at the expense of Article 66.4 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code and Article 10.5 of the World Cup Regulations.
A general rule has ended up neutralising the effect of the specific one.
The Ronaldo precedent, cited by FIFA itself as the basis for Article 27, concerned a three-match ban reduced to one. The Balogun case is the first time in World Cup history that Article 27 has been applied to an automatic one-match ban. Although the rule applied is the same, the circumstances (and the stakes) are entirely different.
A clear sporting short circuit, whose political dimension offers a troubling perspective on FIFA’s governance (which, despite denying that Trump’s phone call had any influence, cannot entirely dismantle the narrative that has been taking shape in recent hours).
The consequence of inconsistency
A rule applied selectively has the same effect as a rule that does not exist. The institutional architecture thus stops working as a system and starts working as discretion.
An institution such as FIFA, by contrast (which coordinates 211 federations), must exercise its authority rigorously: with absolute consistency and above politics, free from any form of dependence. By taking an atypical decision concerning the host nation, it risks not only altering the weight of a match but also losing control of the situation (publicly and internally).
And when so many different entities have to be managed, governance is everything. FIFA presides over world football with a mandate that includes protecting the integrity of competition: except that, when the most contested decision of the biggest tournament in its history is taken in five days, following a phone call from a head of state, theory and practice part ways.
And that separation has consequences for trust in the entire system.
A lesson for everyone
Very often, major organisations find themselves gradually losing credibility, and this is down to the decisions they take, which run counter to what they have declared.
Organisations that govern high-stakes processes under considerable pressure (in football as in any other sector), have a duty to safeguard their credibility even before their results. Because only an institution that respects its own decisions (and is therefore respected for its consistency) survives the most delicate choices.
The World Cup in the USA was already drawing criticism from several directions, given the various upheavals of recent months (the four quarters, the trophy left with Trump, the comments about non-participating nations such as Italy). After what happened yesterday, Infantino’s governance can only falter further.
New Connections (FAQ)
FIFA has applied Article 27 before. Why is this time different?
Because the most frequently cited precedent, the Ronaldo case, concerned a discretionary three-match ban, not an automatic one-match ban explicitly provided for in the competition regulations and reiterated in a circular sent to all participating federations. The distinction is not technical. It is structural: applying discretion to an automatic sanction alters the very principle on which automaticity rests, which is precisely the certainty of punishment regardless of circumstances.
Can Belgium appeal and obtain anything concrete?
The Belgian federation has stated that it is examining all available legal options. Formally, FIFA applied an article of its own code, so any appeal faces the difficulty of challenging a decision that has regulatory cover, however contradictory it may be with other provisions of the same code. The most concrete risk for Belgium is that any legal route concludes after the match, when the immediate sporting damage has already been done. A precedent set in this way, however, remains within the regulatory system and can be invoked in future by anyone in similar circumstances.
Do episodes like this genuinely change the reputation of an institution such as FIFA, or do they pass without lasting consequences?
It depends on what happens next. FIFA has already weathered far more serious reputational crises, including the 2015 corruption scandal, with dozens of arrests and convictions. It survived those crises because no one built an alternative structure with comparable legitimacy to govern global football. This is precisely the fragility of monopoly institutions: their position depends not on the quality of their governance, but on the absence of credible alternatives. Lasting consequences arrive when the erosion of credibility reaches a critical mass that makes building an alternative viable. We are not at that point yet.