Trump’s red card

America’s star football player got a red card for stamping on his opponent’s foot.  The referee didn’t whistle for a foul.  But VAR (video assistant referee) picked it up, and Valerin Balogun was sent off. That meant an automatic suspension for the next match against Belgium. But hours before the match, FIFA announced that Balogun would be able to play.

His one-match suspension had been suspended. Nobody could believe it.  Nobody knew why FIFA had contravened its own regulations. Article 66.4 of the FIFA disciplinary code clearly states that “a sending-off automatically incurs suspension from the subsequent match”.

FIFA had been silent on the issue after announcing Balogun would be available to face Belgium. But the world didn’t have to wait long to find out who was behind it.

President Donald Trump bragged at a press conference that he had personally asked ‘his good friend’ FIFA President Gianni Infantino to review the red card decision.  Trump made at least three calls to FIFA in an effort to get the USA’s striker to be allowed to play.

“I asked for a review by FIFA,” Trump said. “I spoke to a man who’s highly respected and, by the way, whose level of respect has gone up tenfold,” he added, referring to Infantino.

Faced with massive backlash, Trump’s best buddy was compelled to deny that Trump’s intervention led to the reversal of Balogun’s suspension. Infantino denied having anything to do with it and insisted it was FIFA’s independent disciplinary body that made that call.

But Trump wasn’t playing ball.  He contradicted Infantino’s denials categorically, bragging, “I am the one who got them to do it… and that wasn’t a foul, that wasn’t even an infraction”.

Typically, Trump even turned on the Brazilian referee.  He described referee Raphael Claus as “a little bit suspect if you check his past,” without elaborating on what he meant.

FIFA was compelled to issue a statement in defence of the referee since referees are forbidden from speaking to the press during the tournament.  FIFA “recognises Raphael Claus as one of the world’s leading professional referees… throughout his career, he has consistently demonstrated the highest standards of professionalism and integrity”.

Here was the President of the USA, on the 250th anniversary, picking on a referee and publicly disparaging him for doing his job.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said about the red card, “and I’m a person that loves sports and was a good athlete; I understand sports really well”.  Trump is the best at everything; he knows more about anything than anybody else.  He can tell football’s governing body what to do because he is Trump.  And Trump always gets what he wants.  “We’re going to have a full team,” he chuckled.

The Royal Belgian Football Association wasn’t impressed.  It expressed its own “astonishment” at the decision, which its manager called “an April Fool’s Day joke”. Belgium lodged an appeal.  But FIFA swiftly rejected it on the grounds that Belgium, which was about to face the USA, was “not a party to proceedings”.

UEFA, the European Football Association, issued a harsh statement condemning FIFA’s pandering to Trump.  UEFA insisted that FIFA’s decision had “crossed a red line”.

“A minimum automatic suspension of one match following a red card is not a discretionary option and does not require the decision of a competent body to be enacted,” UEFA said. “When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake, and the credibility of a competition is undermined”.

UEFA expressed its “disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision”.

As Infantino and his FIFA officials strenuously denied that it was Trump who forced their U-turn, Senator Ted Cruz was at the White House commending Trump:  “On behalf of all Americans, thank you for getting rid of that ridiculous red card,” he told Trump. “It was spectacular”.

Even the disgraced former FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, couldn’t contain his fury: “Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls,” he wrote on X, “They are overturned by rules, evidence and independent bodies”.

Meanwhile, Trump was thanking FIFA for “reversing a great injustice”.  The White House official X account responded to Trump’s post with “USA-USA-USA”.

FIFA faced global outrage.  It was forced to issue a statement defending its controversial decision, claiming that lifting Balogun’s ban was “nothing new in the modern game”. Yet the last time a red card suspension had been lifted during a World Cup was in 1962.

Garincha, one of Brazil’s stars, had received a red card. President Jorge Alessandri, the President of the host nation Chile, backed a petition for Garrincha to play, and Peru’s President Manuel Prado reportedly phoned the referee to soften his testimony.  The committee let Garincha off with a warning. He went on to play in the final, and  Brazil won the World Cup.

That was 64 years ago.  It’s never happened again since, yet FIFA’s disciplinary committee chair, Mohammad al-Kamali, published a statement claiming that “the overturning of red cards is a common disciplinary measure”.

As the world seethed with anger at the blatant unfairness of Trump’s move, Belgium’s football team  “didn’t want to get too much into it; we wanted to be focused and to play our game”.  And they delivered a blow for justice – not just for Belgium but for the entire world.  In an overpowering display, Belgium beat the USA team 4-1.  As one Belgian newspaper put it the morning after that sweet victory, “there were 7.9 billion Belgians last night”.

The Belgian team’s official social media channels quickly uploaded images of their players celebrating their goals together with a simple blunt message to Trump and his friend Gianni: “Overturn this!”

Belgian midfielder Nicolas Raskin said: “I think there was always a justice somewhere in life”. As the deeply disturbing and bone-chilling details emerge from Hall 22, Malta hopes Raskin is right.