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The Day Trump and the Epstein Class Nearly Broke the FIFA World Cup

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The US government’s contempt for the international rule of law now even extends to the world of football. 

At the very beginning of this edition of the FIFA World Cup, we asked how much damage the Trump administration could do to the world’s biggest sports event. The best available answer, it seems, is the old classic: how long is a piece of string? There are, after all, still just under two weeks left of the tournament to play and the damage inflicted is already significant. Some of it may be irreversible.

So far, US authorities, with the blessing of FIFA, have barred the Iranian national team from staying overnight on US soil on their match days, putting the side at an enormous disadvantage to its rivals. The Iranian team went out in the final game of the group stages after having a contentious last-minute goal disallowed for offside. It has also refused entry to a Somali referee as well as untold numbers of football fans.

A couple of weeks ago, we posted a piece warning of the creeping Americanisation of world football, which has been going on for well over a decade but is rapidly accelerating during this edition of the World Cup.

The “beautiful game” has undergone sweeping changes, most of them unwelcome, mostly in the name of profit maximization, since this World Cup began. That this is occurring during a tournament hosted primarily by the US, where money does ALL the talking, is no coincidence.

The three-minute commercial cooling breaks that occur at the 22nd and 67th minute of every half in the 2026 World Cup regardless of meteorological conditions represent a radical reconfiguration of the way the game is played, and one that has left most football coaches, players and fans severely unimpressed.

Interestingly, Diego Maradona warned of this very outcome back in 2018. When FIFA made it official that the 2026 World Cup would be played in the United States, Mexico and Canada, Maradona said in an interview with the journalist Victor Hugo Morales:

«The Americans wanted to make four halves of 25 minutes because of the publicity. We would have to play 100 minutes.”

The reason why FIFA is bending over backwards to accommodate the Trump administration’s every whim is pretty obvious: the organisation’s money-grubbing leadership is desperate to conquer the world’s biggest consumer market for itself and its biggest constituency, global corporations. And it it willing to do just about anything to achieve that, including awarding Trump a Mickey Mouse peace prize.

FIFA even bent its own rules to award the US the co-hosting rights for this year’s World Cup. In 2017, a year before the US, Mexico and Canada were chosen as co-hosts, Infantino warned that the first Trump administration’s travel bans, which then applied to six countries and now apply to 19, were incompatible with FIFA tournament regulations:

“Teams who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup. That is obvious.”

Over the past weekend, however, the Trump administration went where no other World Cup host has gone, at least in recent decades, by demanding that FIFA overturn a one-match suspension for Folarin Balogun, a key player on the US team, following his red card in the round of 32 game against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Said red card was for this dangerous challenge, which Trump claims was not even a foul:

It was US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who first publicly called for the punishment to be revoked. No great surprise there. Two sources familiar with the case confirmed to AFP that President Trump himself had called FIFA chief Gianni Infantino to ask him to review the automatic one-match ban. Which is exactly what FIFA did, though Infantino claims the decision was reached in a fully independent manner.

“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 said.

“During our conversation, I explained that there was an ongoing legal process involving FIFA’s independent judicial bodies and that the case would be decided in due course by the competent bodies,” Infantino said. “That is how FIFA’s system works, and it is a principle that I will always uphold.”

Infantino’s claim was directly contradicted by Trump himself, who praised the FIFA president’s “brilliant” intervention:

That was not a foul. It wasn’t even an infraction… It was two guys running full speed that happened to run into each other.”

“These were two great athletes that got tangled up and this referee, who is a little bit suspect if you check his past… I don’t want to say that, because I don’t like to create controversy, but if you like I’ll provide you with his past… He made a call that nobody could believe.”

“They are not allowed to review in slow motion because it’s so different… Whereas, when you see it in ‘fast-motion’, it looked like two guys collided, which is exactly what happened.”

…

“It’s one thing to penalise someone for the game, but how do you penalise them for a game that hasn’t even been played yet? It’s very unfair. You can’t do that. So yes, I asked for a review by FIFA.”

At an event on Monday, Senator Ted Cruz even thanked Trump for getting rid of that “ridiculous red card”. It should perhaps come as no surprise that the Trump administration should embrace outright cheating in a sporting event when Trump himself (allegedly) often cheats in golf, as Larry David insinuates in this hilarious take down of the 47th president of the US from his new sketch comedy series, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness:

The man who apparently led US efforts to overturn Balogun’s suspension was Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, who was seen sitting next to Infantino during the US’ match against Bosnia and Herzegovina. As Anya Parampil points out below, Lutnik is a key member of the Epstein Class — the same Epstein class whose dodgy deal-making and repulsive racketeering is now the US’ governing philosophy, as Anand Giridharadas recently wrote in the New York Times.

The main takeaway from Monday’s events is that the US government’s contempt for the international rule of law now even extends to the world of football.

Belgian and European authorities were understandably up in arms about FIFA’s almost unprecedented reversal on Balogun’s suspension. Europe’s football governing body, UEFA, warned that FIFA had “crossed a red line” with its decision to bow to the wishes of Donald Trump and suspend the implementation of Balogun’s one-match suspension by a year.

From The Guardian:

In an unprecedented intervention in the middle of a tournament, Uefa accused Fifa of crossing “a red line” by making an “incomprehensible and unjustifiable” decision to rescind Balogun’s automatic one-match ban, which it claimed undermined “the integrity of the game and the credibility of the competition”.

As reported by the Guardian on Sunday, Trump repeatedly lobbied for Balogun’s suspension to be lifted, with sources disclosing that the US president made three calls to Fifa urging an intervention after the 25-year-old was sent off in the USA’s last-32 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina last Wednesday. The New York Times has reported that lawyers who have previously worked for Trump were engaged by US Soccer to challenge Fifa’s disciplinary regulations, with their correspondence said to invoke the rights of the United States as a nation and threaten a further appeal to the court of arbitration for sports (Cas).

Fifa had previously said that US Soccer had no right of appeal, but announced on Sunday that Balogun’s ban had been lifted for a 12-month probationary period, another unprecedented decision during a tournament which was explained by a brief reference to Article 27 of Fifa’s disciplinary code, which gives its judicial committee the authority to “fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure.”

In all fairness, FIFA crossed the red line a long, long time ago, as The Guardian’s Marina Hyde points out:

A red line? A red line?! Call me cartography-obsessed, but I feel like we crossed that line a few moral galaxies ago. Maybe when Infantino was butching it out in the photocall at Trump’s Gaza Peace Summit For Ghoulishly Rapacious Businessmen (not its official title). Certainly when Gianni inaugurated the auto-satirical Fifa peace prize and awarded it to Trump just a couple of months before the president decided to truly live according to its values and launch a war on Iran.

The Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) was even more miffed at FIFA’s decision, with national team manager Rudi Garcia likening it to an April Fools’ Day joke.

Weirdly, Trump and his MAGA supporters are not the only ones in the US who support the suspension of Balogun’s one-match match ban. Even prominent anti-Trumpers like Cenk Ugyur are treating the decision as if it is the only fair option available, rather than what it actually is: the government of the host country rigging the governing processes of world football’s governing body.

Meanwhile, FOX News hosts even suggested that Trump should use a display of force by the US military to intimidate the US’ Belgian opponents.

The good news is that Trump’s intervention in the World Cup has backfired massively. Not only did Team USA lose to Belgium despite having their best player on the pitch, they were mercilessly thrashed 4-1. Worse still, the second and fourth goals were a result of slapstick incompetence on the part of Team USA’s goalkeeper, Matt Freese, who, rather ironically, froze mid-action for the second goal, and defenders.

As the Barca analyst Appie Culé writes, “Belgium went into the game as if they were facing not just a football team, but confronting a disgraceful idea: that the United States is entitled to privileges no other nation would ever receive. That’s why the 4–1 scoreline was more than just a result—it was a deserved humiliation for a team that hid behind politics, and a slap in the face for FIFA after bowing to Trump’s arrogant political influence.”

Even more important, Trump’s intervention has placed huge pressure on FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who now faces calls from around the world for his resignation.

Predictably, there have been some pretty good memes along the way…

Even the scandal-tarnished former FIFA President Sepp Blatter launched a blistering attack against his successor, arguing that “football must never become a playground for political power”, which is a bit rich: football has always been a playground for political power.

One need only recall how Russia was banned from competing in both UEFA and FIFA competitions within just days of the launch of its Special Military Operation in Ukraine. By contrast, Israel continues to compete in all tournaments despite waging wars on multiple fronts and committing a genocide in Gaza and Southern Lebanon.

But overt political interference in World Cup matches by the host country has not been seen for decades. Perhaps most famously, Mussolini exerted direct pressure on FIFA referees and officials during the 1934 World Cup, held in Italy and eventually won by Italy, as the Spanish historian Nacho Montes de Oca recounts in a twitter thread (machine translation):

During the 1934 World Cup, held in Italy, Benito Mussolini personally intervened in the choice of the referees who would officiate the matches of the Italian national team. According to the chronicles of the time, the dictator dined formally with them the night before the meetings to make it clear what was expected of their performance.

In the quarter-final match against Spain, Belgian referee Louis Baert allowed wild play by the Italians, especially against the leading Spanish figures. Goalkeeper Ricardo Zamora ended up with broken ribs. In the subsequent tiebreaker, referee René Mercet disallowed two legitimate goals to Spain; his performance was so questioned that the Swiss Federation itself ended up suspending him for life.

In the semi-final against Austria, referee Ivan Eklind validated an Italian goal in a play in which several players pushed the Austrian goalkeeper into the net. Minutes later, the same referee intercepted with his head a pass that could lead to a clear counterattack by Austria. After that match, Mussolini again appointed Eklind to direct the final against Czechoslovakia.

The most controversial play of the final occurred when Luis Monti brought down Czech striker Oldřich Nejedlý inside the Italian area. The foul seemed like an obvious penalty, but Eklind ignored it and let the game continue. Before the starting whistle, the referee stood in front of the presidential box and made the fascist salute addressed to Benito Mussolini. Italy won the match 4-2.

I don’t know why this series of data came to mind on a subject that is not mine, as is the case of sports.

In other words, Trump is in august company. The last time FIFA refused to impose a suspension on a player during a World Cup was in Brazil 1962, when Brazilian legend Mané Garrincha was sent off in the dying minutes of Brazil’s 4-2 semi-final win against Chile. That should have ruled him out of participating in the final but FIFA ended up letting him off.

One major difference between now and then is that today a red card gets you an automatic ban of at least one-match — unless, of course, your president is Donald J Trump. As the British-American broadcaster Roger Bennett notes in the interview below with CBS, FIFA’s decision to overturn Balogun’s red card has “destroy[ed] the integrity of the competition”:

The money quote:

The crazy thing is the US team has been doing so well. Our boys have been doing us proud… without any of this interference. And now, in the eyes of the world, no matter what happens, every goal, every game they win, maybe tonight and afterwards, will have a stigma attached, will have an asterisk.

This, by the way, will last beyond the World Cup for both the team and this poor player, Balogun, who is a great young striker.

Meanwhile, much of the rest of the world is enjoying a brief moment of much-deserved schadenfreude at the US’s humiliating exit, perhaps best summed up in the following tweet:

 

This cathartic moment is unlikely to last long, however, with both Trump and Infantino free to continue poisoning the tournament they are co-hosting.

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48 comments

  1. NN Cassandra

    Well, the football Gods cleared their throats and ensured US lose four to one. I wonder how Infantino is going to overturn that.

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  2. Yushan

    Normally I would have been indifferent to who wins (“may the best team win”), but this time I was really cheering the Belgian team and thought it was fantastic to see them humiliate the USA with 4-1!!!
    The Belgians said after the match that they were extra energised because of the injustice.

    I do feel bad for the US team though, and especially Folarin Balogun. It is not their fault that they got caught up in this affair, and the whole affair may have contributed to their bad performance on the field. They are victims of a mad president and a corrupt FIFA. I read that Balogun went to the Belgian team after the match to talk about it. Of course the Belgians told him that it was not his fault and nobody blames him for the affair. No bad blood.

    Now I want the scalp of Infantino.

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    1. Rui

      So you are telling me they didn’t use the unfair advantage and Balogun didn’t play against Belgium? Because otherwise team USA got exactly what they deserved.

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    2. Tom Hall

      “Now I want the scalp of Infantino.” Have you looked at the man? He’s all scalp. I hope you bring a hatbox.

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  3. Carolinian

    They say Donny also cheats at golf. As Mel Brooks says in History of the World: “it’s good to be the king.”

    Reply ↓
    1. aj

      That’s not just a “they say” thing. There’s video proof if you search for it. Multiple videos. I mean, I cheat at golf too when I’m just playing for fun. But I also do go around bragging about how good I am.

      Reply ↓
      1. Nick Corbishley Post author

        I actually meant to feature a clip of Larry David’s hilarious roasting of Trump, which he ends by accusing the president of cheating in golf. It’s now included.

        Reply ↓
        1. KLG

          All golf courses have DJT types, but they are not generally the owners. David Owen wrote the definitive story on The Donald’s golf imaginary, where something like a reverse heat index is the paradigm: Actual score 85 or higher while the reported score is 72 (even par on most courses). No one pays them any mind, but when one is playing in a tournament their opponents watch him like a hawk. And it’s always a “him.”

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    3. The Joker

      Just like Auric Goldfinger, another ginger megalomaniac lard arse with dreams of world domination.

      Let’s hope you-know-who gets sucked out of a window on air force one.

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  5. The Rev Kev

    I was listening to a reporter from the White House press pool and the guy was saying that Infantino is a regular visitor to the White house and whenever he turns up, he bring Donny a present. That is beyond compromised but the American take over of FIFA dates back to when Obama was President. But not only was the US defeated but so was Mexico and Canada meaning all three co-hosts are out of the series. Belgium has a reputation the past few games of being very slow starters for the first half of the game meaning that they have to play catch up in the second half. This time they were all fired up and came roaring out of the starting block and were simply the better team on the day.

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    1. Old Builder

      Murdering countless millions is one thing, but with this red card nonsense the US has gone a bridge too far!
      At least the Belgians served justice in a purely symbolic way with zero meaningful repercussions. That will help me continue to sleepwalk through life.

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  7. dingusansich

    “Allegedly” is polite and speaks well of the speaker. But before you use it next time, you might want to peruse an informative and amusing, in its appalling way, book on the subject and Trump and cheating: Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.

    As for the collaterally damaged Folarin Balogun, there’s a book title for that too.

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  9. Bob White

    There was another one of these actions by FIFA with this world cup, just last year… it did not work out well for Portugal either.

    >>>
    When Cristiano Ronaldo was sent off for hitting an opponent with an elbow in a World Cup qualifier against the Republic of Ireland last November, it was an offense that triggered an automatic three-match suspension.

    But guess what? By citing Article 27, a catch-all clause that allows FIFA to “fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure,” FIFA reduced Ronaldo’s ban to one game — in a meaningless qualifier against Armenia — with the remaining two games suspended for 12 months. That enabled him to play at the start of the World Cup.
    >>>

    (from: https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49278521/nobody-benefits-fifa-letting-balogun-hook-not-even-usmnt)

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    2. Rui

      Believe me, we in Portugal would have wanted him suspended the whole tournament so we could play as a team instead of Ronaldo goal assistants. We got the result we deserved.

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  10. Maxwell Johnston

    I hereby offer up a lukewarm defense of Gianni Infantino:

    Football (or soccer) is a business, a subset of the entertainment industry, competing with other sports, cinema, TV, social media, etc for consumer eyeballs and money. Infantino’s job is to sell the product. Generating controversy is a clever way to attract attention to his sport (in football as in Hollywood, there is no such thing as bad publicity). This red card stunt was arguably a stroke of genius on Infantino’s part; not only did he curry favor with the mercurial president of the country hosting the World Cup, he also managed to create a huge buzz around the Belgium-USA match (imagine how many otherwise indifferent fans tuned into the game, rooting feverishly against the Yankees) with zero risk to affecting the outcome of the game itself (there was no way the USA team was going to beat the vastly superior Belgian squad, regardless of whether or not the redcarded guy played).

    I’m amused by all the indignation that’s been aroused (with even the ethically challenged Sepp Blatter piling on!). It’s just a game: big boys being paid absurd amounts of money to kick a ball around. If the owners of the game want to tweak the rules to liven things up, so be it. It’s just bread and circuses, none of it matters.

    ‘The reason why FIFA is bending over backwards to accommodate the Trump administration’s every whim is pretty obvious: the organisation’s money-grubbing leadership is desperate to conquer the world’s biggest consumer market…’ —

    This is a pipe dream. The big three USA sports–NFL, NBA, MLB–are so deeply entrenched in USA culture that football/soccer will never approach them in popularity. The USA is not like the rest of the world (the fact that so many Yankees still don’t understand the significance of a red card is brutal proof of such), and it’s high time for FIFA to give up finally on the USA and re-focus its efforts on other markets with better growth prospects. China and Africa, for starters.

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    1. F. Foundling

      When unethical behaviour in general and unfairness specifically are normalised in trivial issues like this, that normalises them (even more) in major issues as well.

      Re the business effect – I think the US government’s intervention in this matter would have attracted attention regardless of FIFA’s response to it.

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    2. ChrisPacific

      All that is true (although I disagree with the last paragraph – you have only to contrast this World Cup with the last one the US hosted in 1994 to see how much progress the sport has made in the US). But it’s still the game we all know and love and played as children, performed at the very highest levels. For all their (many) faults, World Cups have always showcased the game first and foremost. The best stories have always been played out on the field.

      That’s still true of this one for most teams, but the US team lost their chance at it with Trump’s intervention. I had been kind-of supporting them until now, partly out of nostalgia for the 1994 team, and partly because I was impressed at all the different manifestations of how far they’d come since then. That all went away after the decision. I think the US coach still had a chance to save it, by voluntarily benching Balogun for the game, but after hearing his comments on the matter it was clear he wasn’t going to do that. So I wanted them out, and I cheered when Belgium ran up the score on them. Sorry to the US team – there was a lot to like about your play in this tournament, but under the circumstances I’m glad you are gone.

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    3. John Kane

      I tend to think that Trump’s actions reinforces to the entire world the total unreliability of the USA. If the head of the US Gov’t is ready to cheat in a World Cup just how much an anyone around the world trust the US anywhere?

      This is something literally billions of people in every ,or almost every country in the world will have seen and heard discussed. Even the genocide in Gaza or the Ukrainian–Russia conflict are unlikely to get the same level of attention. They are “wars in a distant country”, etc.

      Almost everyone in the world can relate to this because almost everyone in the world, even someone with almost no interest in sports, would be happy to see their country’s team do well in the World Cup and it’s pretty easy to understand what happened. Ten–year–old girls and boys around the world who play football will understand this.

      I’d say Trump has done more to destroy US prestige/soft power in this stupid, trivial, act than if he had started another war.starting a war.

      Reply ↓
  13. Safety First

    Ok, the thing with including so many Twitter video embeds…

    As of at least a day or two ago, every time I follow a link to a Twitter video, I cannot actually play it. Instead, I get the Twitter “Log in/Sign Up” window. I am assuming this a Twitter-wide policy of some description, which, if so, is rather unlikely to be rescinded. [In case it’s not, and it’s just something incredibly weird on my end, ignore the rest of the post.]

    Text I can still read, at least for now.

    So just wanted to drop an FYI. I have no idea how many people here refuse to sign up for Twitter, as I’ve always had, but if there’s more than a few, maybe Twitter video embeds is not the way to go in the future…

    Reply ↓
    1. Nick Corbishley Post author

      Thanks for the heads-up, Safety First. I normally don’t include so many video embeds and it looks like I’ll be including fewer in the future…

      Reply ↓
    2. motorslug

      SF and others: You have to click on the ‘pic’ or ‘https’ link highlighted, not the one with the date, which usually follows the actual person who posted. They both used to work to the same end but I noticed last week they no longer did and I got that join x crap when clicking the date.

      Personally, I think soccer is boring AF and never watched a match (Balls Up did get that right – it’s only a game) but it just goes to show how truly pathetic this country’s ‘leaders’ are that even with cheating, they still can’t win.

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    3. cfraenkel

      FYI – you can just change the “x.com/…” in the url to “xcancel.com/….”. For now, anyway. Until Musk has another hissy fit and messes with it.

      Reply ↓
  14. The Rev Kev

    I heard in a video today that Infantino tried to engineer a meeting where the Israeli and Palestinian reps would meet and shake hands but that never happened. The guy is a weasel and should be evicted before he causes any more damage to FIFA.

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  15. curlydan

    The Belgians did have a psychological edge while the US looked confused throughout the early parts of the game. Maybe because the US probably practiced most of the week without Balogun then had to switch back to the old Balogun formation. But yes, everything the Trump admin touches turns to $#!+.

    But Belgium also knew the U.S.’s weaknesses. A shaky wing, Sergino Dest, known best for his dribbling prowess who never could defend well. A relatively inexperienced goalie, Matt Freese, who was vastly inferior to the Belgian’s Champions League Winner goalie Courtois. In the end, we lose to a superior European team who dissected and attacked our weaknesses–just like 4 years ago when we crashed out against the Netherlands. It just hurts more since it happened on home soil.

    A key weakness of American soccer is the system. The most talented youth players are encouraged–almost forced–to pay $5K+ per year to join pricey traveling clubs dangling the carrot of a possible college scholarship when college soccer is inferior to pro ball. And its best league, MLS, has no promotion/relegation like the rest of the world but does have a $500M+ “entry fee”. And what owner would ever agree to “relegation” when he’s paid $500M+ just to be in the league. What we get largely are wealthier athletes playing in closed system. We are not ruthless or desperate enough for soccer power.

    If you want to know how to produce super-stardom, listen to Thierry Henry describe soccer in the Paris suburbs (aka the hood) that produced 54 players in this World Cup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrUVzX6iGxA

    Reply ↓
    1. lone plateau

      The MLS teams in the USA also have either no or a very minimal academy system. They depend on youth soccer teams to develop players. Landon Donovan was on Chad Ochocinco’s podcast and mentioned that a survey done in 2016 (he assumed it was worse today) showed that only 2% of the players in elite youth programs in the USA came from households with less than $50,000 yearly income. (and I believe the number was 60% from households over $100,000/yr.) He mentioned that his single mother raising 3 kids made only $34,000/yr. and the only reason he was able to play youth soccer was someone sponsoring his $400/yr. fee back in the day. As my friend who still plays league soccer in her 60s puts it “It remains a privileged sport, and that has got to change.”

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  17. Mikel

    I used to work for Fox Sports and still know people there. One is convinced that the players like the hydration breaks.
    Just thought some would get a chuckle from that anecdote…

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    1. curlydan

      For sure. Think how much the English liked the hydration break on a cool, rain-soaked night in Mexico City. I suspect the Mexican team might have suffered a few more defeats over the last 50-60 years had 3 minute pauses occurred in each half.

      And the coaches probably love it, too! They get to coach more.

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  18. .Tom

    Just in! With Hegseth, Vance, and Rubio standing behind, Trump spoke to the press at the WH:

    “Belgium is two, maybe three months away from developing a nuclear weapon.”

    Reply ↓
  20. Di Modica's Dumb Steer

    I used to really hate FIFA and all the sketchy shit they did, but then I saw a movie that really added some nuance.

    United Passions
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2814362/

    If you can look past the score, you’ll find a steaming pile of horseshit so bad that you’ll be begging for Tommy Wiseau to spice things up.

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  21. QuicksilverMessenger

    All this is a sideshow of course to the main event for FIFA and Infantino: the “steering” (rigging in plain speak) of the tournament, just like 2022, for Messi and Argentina

    Reply ↓
    1. Nick Corbishley Post author

      It certainly seems that way, especially after seeing the refereeing during Argentina’s game with Egypt.

      Reply ↓
  23. GS

    That Cenk takes the idiot stance is no surprise. Falls right into the MAGA playbook. Do a group wrong and then demonize them as crybabies for having to awkwardly stand up for themselves. In this case I doubt Belgium cared that much but with the world outcry it fell on them to speak up and try to appeal.

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  24. vidimi

    I’m pretty sure that this world cup was at least part of the reason why Trump wanted a pause in the hostilities with Iran. When the world cup is over, I’d be surprised if they didn’t resume.

    Reply ↓

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