FIFA president Gianni Infantino confirmed this week that President Donald Trump called him directly to discuss Folarin Balogun’s controversial red card during the World Cup. But Infantino insists it wasn’t some backroom pressure campaign. It was, he says, just another Tuesday.
“Yes, I regularly discuss matters related to the FIFA World Cup with the President of the United States, and on this matter, I did receive a call from President Donald Trump, just as I receive calls from heads of state, government officials, football stakeholders, and business executives from around the world on many different issues,” Infantino stated, according to The Athletic.
The call came after Balogun, the USMNT’s top attacker, was sent off in what officials initially ruled a violent conduct incident. Trump didn’t mince words about the decision. During a White House press briefing reported by ESPN, he called the VAR intervention “horrible,” arguing that slow-motion replays made a routine collision look far worse than it actually was.
“All I did was ask for a review. I didn’t say you have to do this,” Trump said. He admitted he didn’t fully grasp how serious a soccer ejection was until he realized Balogun would miss the next game. Then he felt like he had to do something.
FIFA pulled a legal lever nobody saw coming
FIFA ultimately froze the ban by invoking Article 27 of its Disciplinary Code. That’s the kind of obscure procedural move that usually stays buried in a rulebook. But when a sitting U.S. president calls about it, suddenly everyone’s an expert on FIFA’s disciplinary statutes.
Government officials later clarified that the call was meant to get a clearer explanation of the ruling and to present additional evidence for an appeal. But Trump wasn’t exactly diplomatic about it in public. A video from Transfer News Live on X showed him taking direct aim at referee Raphael Claus, calling the Brazilian official “very suspect” and hinting at his past.
That past reference? It goes back to 2024, when Claus was targeted by Botafogo’s American owner, John Textor, during a wild AI-fueled Senate investigation into Brazilian match-fixing. The allegations were thrown out. Authorities cleared Claus’s name completely. But Trump brought it back up anyway.
Infantino’s defense of the whole thing reads like a carefully worded attempt to protect FIFA’s independence while acknowledging that yeah, the American president did call him about a specific red card. That’s not nothing. But FIFA’s argument is basically: this happens all the time. World leaders call. Business guys call. It’s all part of the job.
Whether you buy that or not probably depends on how you feel about presidents calling sports governing bodies to get specific players back on the field. But for now, Balogun is eligible to play. And the USMNT can stop holding its breath.
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