U.S. striker Folarin Balogun was supposed to be sidelined against Belgium — until Trump intervened. Your complete guide to the World Cup’s biggest controversy.

When the U.S. men’s national soccer team confronts Belgium Monday night in the FIFA World Cup Round of 16 knockout match, striker Folarin “Flo” Balogun — the squad’s top scorer and 2026 breakout star — will (almost certainly) be leading the line for them.

And critics say — in a controversial development that has consumed the global soccer community — that Team USA will have President Trump to thank for Balogun’s surprise return.

Balogun was supposed to be barred from the Belgium match after receiving a straight red card last Wednesday in the 64th minute of America’s Round of 32 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. But on Sunday, FIFA suddenly announced that Balogun’s one-game ban had now been “suspended,” leaving him free to participate. 

“In line with Article 27 of the FIFA disciplinary code, the implementation of the match suspension is suspended for a probationary period of one year,” the governing body said in a statement. “If Folarin Balogun commits another infringement of a similar nature and gravity during the probationary period, the suspension shall be revoked and the sanction enforced without prejudice to any additional sanction imposed for the new infringement.” 

The New York Times soon reported that Trump had “called Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, in the hours after the United States men’s soccer team played Wednesday and asked him to review [Balogun’s] suspension,” citing “four people familiar with the conversation.” Other outlets confirmed that Trump had intervened. 

“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” the president initially wrote on social media. 

On Monday, Trump went further, confirming his involvement. “So yeah, I did. I spoke to Gianni,” he told reporters. “All I did, I asked for a review, because I didn’t think it was a foul.” 

Not everyone was pleased, however. “As far as I recall, I think this is the first time in World Cup history that a decision like this has been made,” Belgium head coach Rudi Garcia fumed on Sunday. “I didn’t know that at the World Cup, July 5 is actually April 1. It’s April Fools.” 

Belgium’s soccer federation also appealed the decision. 

Here’s everything you need to know about the Balogun drama — including why it’s threatening to overshadow Monday’s must-win match. 

Who is Folarin Balogun? 

The United States has long struggled to find a prolific, consistent striker to lead its attack. Balogun, 25, has ably filled the role at this summer’s World Cup, scoring twice in the opener against Paraguay and once before getting sent off against Bosnia. He also forced an own goal against Australia. Fans have gone gaga for him. 

Balogun’s path to Team USA was circuitous. His parents are Nigerian. They live in London. But they visited New York when Balogun’s mother was seven months pregnant, and airline staff blocked her from boarding her flight home due to the advanced state of her pregnancy. Balogun was subsequently born in Brooklyn, N.Y. — a birthright citizen. He returned at the age of 2 months to London, where he eventually joined the academy of the prestigious Premier League club Arsenal. Arsenal sold Balogun to Monaco for $43 million in 2023. Around the same time, he decided to play for the U.S. instead of England in international competitions like the World Cup.

Why was Balogun set to sit out against Belgium?

World Cup rules are clear about this: If you receive a “straight” red card in one game — a punishment typically reserved for dangerous challenges, violent conduct, aggressive dissent or the denial of an obvious goal-scoring opportunity — then you leave the field immediately; your team finishes the game with 10 players instead of 11; and you miss (at least) the next game as well.

If you receive two yellow cards, that’s different: They technically equal a red, but you can return for the following match. 

Balogun got a straight red card last Wednesday after he and Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemovic collided while challenging for a loose ball. Here’s what the collision looked like: 

Do you see how Balogun’s cleat rakes down Muharemovic’s leg as he tries to find his footing? And how it eventually lands on Muharemovic’s ankle, crunching it awkwardly into the turf? Brazilian referee Raphael Claus (eventually) saw that too. He accused Balogun of endangering his opponent with “serious foul play” and awarded him a red card as a result.

Did Balogun deserve a red card?

Claus’s call was immediately controversial. For one thing, he didn’t actually whistle for a foul on the field; instead, his video assistant referee (VAR) summoned him to review the collision on the monitor, then repeatedly showed him a slow-motion replay from the most damning angle. Usually, VAR doesn’t intervene unless the ref has made a “clear and obvious error.”

In this case, fans, former players and even ex-refs floated various arguments for why Claus’s initial non-call was correct or why a yellow would be more appropriate. The least compelling — popular among Americans who expect serious fouls to be “intentional” — is that Balogun didn’t try to step on Muharemovic.

“That wasn’t even an infraction,” Trump said on Monday. “That was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other. You can’t take your foot and properly place it on somebody else’s foot. … That was not a guy punching somebody in the face.” 

The problem with this argument is that FIFA red-card rules don’t say anything about “intent.” They focus on recklessness instead — the idea that even if you’re going for the ball and not your opponent’s leg you can still act in a way that is irresponsible and forceful enough to (unintentionally) injure him. 

Some also claimed that the legendary Lionel Messi had committed an even worse cleat-on-leg foul in Argentina’s opener against Algeria — which wasn’t called at all. But inconsistent refereeing from one match to another is routine in soccer.

The more compelling argument against Balogun’s red card is that VAR overreacted. In real time, it was clear that Balogun and Muharemovic were jockeying for position and that neither player was tackling the other. If the ref doesn’t call a foul on the field, some analysts said, then VAR isn’t supposed to intervene.

“Historically, the law was invoked by referees when players went flying into tackles at high speed and out of control, without a moment’s thought for the consequences,” former Premier League referee Graham Scott wrote in the Athletic. “Since we have had video review, the focus has shifted to the point of contact. Slow-motion replays and still images distort the offending player’s actions, with innocuous tackles looking more serious.”

Writing for ESPN, Scott’s former colleague Andy Davies agreed. “VAR made their recommendation to the referee based on slow-motion and still replays, which is not aligned with VAR protocols, as these should be used for only point-of-contact purposes in a red card tackle situation,” Davies said. “Once at the screen, however, it would have been a surprise if the referee did not send off Balogun considering the pictures he was presented by VAR.”

So what does Trump have to do with this? 

At first, FIFA told reporters that Claus’s decision could not be appealed, pointing to Article 66.4 of its regulations: “A sending-off automatically incurs suspension from the subsequent match. The FIFA judicial bodies may impose additional match suspensions and other disciplinary measures.”

But it turns out that wasn’t the whole story. 

On Wednesday evening, Andrew Giuliani — son of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s World Cup liaison — “alerted” the president to Balogun’s red card, Politico reported; the same night, “Giuliani, [Commerce Secretary Howard] Lutnick and U.S. Soccer officials began activating on plans to challenge” the one-match suspension. This involved “submissions” to FIFA from U.S. Soccer lawyers arguing “that the VAR presentation to the on-field referee relied excessively on freeze-frames and slow-motion images” (according to the Athletic), as well as a “three-page document” prepared by White House lawyers suggesting that “FIFA’s regulations on disciplinary action were sufficiently vague to create grounds for an appeal” (according to the New York Times).

The next day, Trump spoke to Infantino. “I’m good at this stuff,” the president told reporters on Monday. “I didn’t say, ‘You have to do this.'” 

Regardless of what Trump said or didn’t say, FIFA’s head of legal affairs soon “advised Infantino on the available procedural options,” according to Politico. Then he and “other FIFA officials worked to determine whether the circumstances of Balogun’s tackle met the narrow standards that would allow the disciplinary decision to be revisited.”

By Sunday, FIFA had decided in America’s favor, citing “Article 27” of its regulations — the part that allows its “judicial bodies to suspend the implementation of all or part ⁠of a disciplinary sanction” but “does not mention the ​circumstances ⁠in which a judicial body ‌may decide to suspend a sanction.”

FIFA has yet to explain the reasoning behind the Balogun decision. On Monday, Infantino insisted that FIFA’s 18-person disciplinary committee had acted “autonomously.” 

“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 in a statement. “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. That is how FIFA’s system works, and it is a principle that I will always uphold.”

Why is the Balogun decision so controversial? 

Two reasons. The first is that it’s (almost) unprecedented. In 1962, Brazil’s star attacker Garrincha was red-carded in the semifinal, but Brazilian officials — including Prime Minister Tancredo Neves — successfully petitioned to have him reinstated for the final (which Brazil won). 

Yet since then, similar reprieves have been exceedingly rare; it’s far more common for FIFA to extend rather than suspend the standard one-match ban. The closest recent precedent involved Portugal’s famous striker Cristiano Ronaldo, who was allowed to play in the first two games of this year’s World Cup even though he was supposed to be sidelined for a red card he received in qualification. 

The second reason for pushback is politics. According to FIFA’s statutes, its participants must abide by political neutrality, and political interference is not permitted in its processes. But soccer’s international governing body has succumbed to numerous corruption scandals over the years, and critics have accused its current president, Infantino, of cozying up to Trump by awarding him the newly invented FIFA Peace Prize and renting office space in his namesake Manhattan tower, among other things.

As a result, much of the global soccer community is now railing against the Balogun reversal. The European soccer body UEFA — which has often clashed with Infantino — slammed it as “an incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision” that “crossed a red line.”

“Sometimes rules are open to interpretation,” UEFA said in a statement. “In this case, not. 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.”

“It’s a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad decision that will hurt the World Cup,” Norway coach Ståle Solbakken said Sunday after his team beat Brazil to reach the quarterfinals.

“Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls,” Infantino’s predecessor Sepp Blatter, who was forced from office in 2015 amid corruption scandals, wrote Monday on social media. “They are overturned by rules, evidence and independent bodies.”

Even some U.S. supporters are saying Balogun should not play against Belgium. 

“This just doesn’t feel right,” Jay Hart of Yahoo Sports wrote on Monday. “If Balogun plays against Belgium, we know how this is going to shake out: Win or lose, the rest of the world will scream that the U.S. got special treatment. That FIFA caved to the might of the American machine. That the U.S. waged a political war off the field because without it we couldn’t win on the field.”

Hart continued: “This team — this run the Americans are on — doesn’t deserve that. And if this group is as good as we think it is, it can overcome playing without its best striker.”

So will Balogun play against Belgium? 

Last week, Balogun reacted stoically to his one-match ban.

“If you played the game, you would understand there are scenarios that you simply can’t avoid and [that] has to be taken into context when it’s being reviewed,” Balogun said at the time. “There’s nowhere else to put your leg. It’s going to be unavoidable. … For me personally, I think a yellow card would have been fair. [But] it’s something that’s happened, so we have to move forward and I have to accept it.”

Balogun explained that he “never want[s] to react out of anger and out of emotion” because “there’s still lots of people we’re inspiring, little kids, boys and girls who are watching, and we have to show them the correct way to handle things even when you think it’s unjust.”

Yet on Sunday, U.S. head coach Mauricio Pochettino said that he and his team would “celebrate” FIFA’s decision to suspend Balogun’s red card. 

“We were punished enough to play with 10 men [for] 30 minutes in a decision that was completely unfair,” Pochettino told reporters. “It’s not only because I am the head coach of the U.S. men’s national team; I need to defend my side. It’s only because 99.9% [of the public agrees] there was an unfair red card.”

In a statement on Sunday, U.S. Soccer added that “we accept the decision of the disciplinary committee and are pleased that Folarin Balogun is eligible to compete tomorrow.”

Balogun’s teammates — some of whom thought FIFA’s announcement “was AI at first” — also seemed ready for Balogun to return. 

“It was an extremely harsh card,” Christian Pulisic told Gazzetta. “We haven’t been here to complain or stir up controversy. We’ve tried to act professionally, and I think that when you do that, good things eventually happen.”

On Monday, FIFA denied Belgium’s appeal, ruling that the country’s soccer federation was “not a party to the proceedings and, as such, has no standing to appeal the decision.”