Bert Patenaude scored a World Cup brace for the United States at Uruguay 1930. Almost a century later, in the summer of 2026, Folarin Balogun repeated the feat against Paraguay in the opening match of the World Cup his country was hosting. Four-one. The Arsenal forward took the host nation on his shoulders and carried them as leaders of Group D. Everything was perfect until, in the round of thirty-two against Bosnia, he caught Tarik Muharemović on the ankle and the VAR turned a fifty-fifty challenge into a straight red. Automatic suspension for the match against Belgium. Rules from the Disciplinary Code and the tournament regulations that had gone undisputed for decades.
Then the phone rang in Gianni Infantino's office. Three times. On the other end, Donald Trump, president of the co-host nation, calling the sending-off horrible and the referee Raphael Claus suspicious. Days later, a terse statement on FIFA's website froze Balogun's ban with a one-year probationary period, invoking the Disciplinary Code. The rule punishing a straight red card was rewritten mid-knockout stage by a head of state with a phone. That is the football of 2026, and it bears no resemblance to Mussolini's version, even though it is after the same thing.
The argument underpinning all of this is simple and uncomfortable. FIFA has not stopped being a political instrument; it has changed hands and changed methods. Where once there were militias, stadiums turned into detention camps and threatened referees, there is now telephone lobbying, the diversion of private data and invented medals to please the White House. Cleaner on the surface. Just as dirty underneath.
What makes the Balogun case singular is not the presidential pressure, which is as old as the tournament itself. It is the mechanism. According to the British press, the freezing of the ban was carried out unilaterally by the chairman of the Disciplinary Committee, bypassing consultation with the other members of the body and de facto violating the quorum required to issue a binding ruling. One man, alone, rewriting the regulations in the middle of a World Cup. It was the first time since the 1962 World Cup in Chile that a player with a straight red card had not served his suspension in the following match. Infantino defended himself by invoking the judicial independence of the body — precisely what the case demonstrated did not exist.
UEFA accused FIFA of crossing a red line and breaking the certainty of the rules. Gary Neville called it ridiculous. Klopp was unfiltered in his criticism. And Belgium, against whom Balogun would now be allowed to play, appealed and ran into a procedural wall when the Appeals Committee declared the case inadmissible on the grounds that the Belgian federation was not a formal party to the proceedings. Then came the sporting revenge. The Belgians won 4-1 in Seattle, Lukaku mimicked Trump's dance moves in his celebration and the Royal Belgian Football Association published an Overturn this that was worth more than any official statement. Balogun himself admitted on CBS that the circus had piled unbearable pressure on him in the dressing room before the match. Starting lineup, anonymous performance, eliminated. Fined for invading the pitch to celebrate in Bosnia, according to FIFA itself. It cost a great deal to be the president's favourite.
The disciplinary file is just the tip. Beneath it lies a pattern that FairSquare brought before the IOC Ethics Commission in July 2026. Infantino has been an IOC member since 2020 and is therefore bound by the political neutrality requirements of the Olympic Charter. The complaint lists favours. At the end of 2025 FIFA conjured a peace prize out of thin air and presented it to Trump in Washington, one day after the president had brokered the signing of a treaty between Congo and Rwanda, without the FIFA Council having approved the award. Infantino promised there that Trump would always have the support of the entire football community. Add to that Infantino's public backing for Trump's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in the autumn of 2025, messages of support after the January 2025 inauguration, and that FIFA Congress session in May 2025 which he arrived at late having been on tour with Trump across the Middle East, with UEFA delegates walking out in protest.
The most revealing aspect of the new method lies in the data. The complaint describes how an official fan website for the 2026 World Cup, promoted by the Government, allegedly transferred the email addresses and phone numbers of those who registered for events on the National Mall to a data firm linked to the Trump campaign. The stadium is no longer a detention centre. It is an electoral database. The fan ceases to be a hostage and becomes raw material.
And this is where the double standard appears, which is what turns the anomaly into a system. FIFA prides itself on a principle of non-interference by third parties enshrined in its statutes. Invoking that principle, it suspended the Kenya Football Federation in February 2022 because its ministry audited suspicions of public funds embezzlement. It suspended Zimbabwe the same month following allegations of sexual harassment of female referees and fraud. It suspended India in August 2022 because its Supreme Court removed a president for irregularities. Pakistan in 2017 over a judicial intervention in its accounts. Nigeria in 2014, with fewer than ten days to reverse a civil court ruling under threat of exclusion. A local judge seeking to scrutinise stolen funds triggers the international football exile of an entire country. Three phone calls from the president of the host superpower to unfreeze a red card did not merit so much as a warning. The rule punishes the corruption of the weak and absolves the pressure of the strong.
The historical lineage is vertiginous for what changes and for what does not. Mussolini spent millions of lire on fascist stadiums for the World Cups of the nineteen thirties, recruited oriundi such as Luis Monti under threat of death and personally selected the referees. Franco withdrew Spain from the 1960 European Championship rather than see the Soviet flag at the Bernabéu. Pinochet let Chile play alone against an empty goal in 1973 while thousands of political prisoners languished beneath the stands of the very stadium that FIFA inspected and declared to be in normal conditions. Sheikh Fahad Al-Sabah walked onto the pitch in 1982 to annul a legitimate French goal under threat of withdrawing Kuwait, and the Soviet referee Stupar changed his verdict. The coercion was physical, visible, brutal.
The honest objection exists and must be stated. Balogun gained nothing. His team lost 4-1 and he played poorly. The interference did not buy results, only a symbolic dispensation that ended in farce. Comparing a phone call to a concentration camp seems indecent, and it is on the scale of horror. But the comparison does not measure cruelty; it measures institutional dependence. The FIFA of 1973 lied about normal conditions to please a military junta. The FIFA of 2026 rewrote a rule to please a president. Different violence, the same servitude.
Football has also been the opposite. Drogba on his knees before the cameras in 2005, forcing a ceasefire in Côte d'Ivoire. Iranian players refusing to sing the national anthem at Qatar 2022. Mbappé calling on people to vote against the far right in 2024. When the gesture comes from below, UEFA calls it a breach of neutrality protocol. When the pressure comes from above and brings a market with it, FIFA calls it diplomacy. Neutrality was never a rule. It was a switch that only gets flipped against those who cannot pay the bill.
