FIFA lifts US star striker Balogun’s red card suspension at World Cup after Trump calls Infantino

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in­ter­vened on be­half of star U.S. for­ward Fo­lar­in Ba­lo­gun, whose red-card sus­pen­sion was lift­ed in a de­ci­sion that al­lows him to play in a World Cup match against Bel­gium on Mon­day.

Ba­lo­gun, the Amer­i­can leader with three goals in the tour­na­ment, re­ceived a red card for step­ping awk­ward­ly on the right an­kle of Tarik Muhare­mović of Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina in a 2-0 round of 32 win on Wednes­day, trig­ger­ing an au­to­mat­ic one-game sus­pen­sion.

FI­FA an­nounced Sun­day that the sus­pen­sion had been lift­ed for the round of 16 match, an ex­tra­or­di­nary move that trig­gered praise from Trump and out­rage from Bel­gium’s team. It ap­peared to be the first time since 1962 that a red card dur­ing a World Cup didn’t re­sult in a sus­pen­sion.

Trump called FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no af­ter the game ask­ing FI­FA re­view the red card, ac­cord­ing to a per­son fa­mil­iar with the call who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause the per­son was not au­tho­rized to speak pub­licly about the mat­ter.

“Thank you to FI­FA for do­ing what was right, and re­vers­ing a great in­jus­tice!” Trump said in a state­ment on so­cial me­dia.

The Roy­al Bel­gian Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (RB­FA) said it was “as­ton­ished,” and Bel­gium coach Ru­di Gar­cia mocked FI­FA’s ac­tion.

“I didn’t know that in the of­fices of FI­FA the fifth of Ju­ly was the first of April in Eu­rope,” Gar­cia said through a trans­la­tor in an April Fools’ Day com­par­i­son. “The Bel­gian fed­er­a­tion does not de­fend it­self, it does not pro­tect the na­tion­al team. She de­fends foot­ball in gen­er­al, she de­fends her in­tegri­ty, her ethics. I think it’s the first time in the his­to­ry of the World Cup that there is this kind of de­ci­sion.”

Gar­cia wouldn’t re­spond when asked about a pos­si­ble ap­peal to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport or whether he thought Trump im­pact­ed FI­FA’s ac­tion.

“In or­der to safe­guard the le­git­i­mate rights of all par­tic­i­pat­ing teams and to pro­tect the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of fair play in our sport, both at this FI­FA World Cup and at fu­ture edi­tions of the tour­na­ment, the RB­FA is in­ves­ti­gat­ing all po­ten­tial op­tions,” the Bel­gian fed­er­a­tion said in a state­ment.

Amer­i­can play­ers learned of Ba­lo­gun’s avail­abil­i­ty when so­cial me­dia posts start­ed pop­ping up dur­ing the 10-minute bus ride Sun­day morn­ing from their ho­tel to train­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s Husky Soc­cer Sta­di­um, where they were greet­ed by Dubs II, the uni­ver­si­ty’s Alaskan Mala­mute.

Ba­lo­gun’s red card had been one of the World Cup’s most con­tro­ver­sial and con­se­quen­tial de­ci­sions. Brazil­ian ref­er­ee Raphael Claus didn’t ini­tial­ly sig­nal a card but showed Ba­lo­gun red af­ter a video re­view.

“If you look at the foul, it was just ze­ro in­tent at all,” U.S. star Chris­t­ian Pulisic said. “I felt like there was much worse ones that went on this tour­na­ment.”

The U.S. Soc­cer Fed­er­a­tion learned of FI­FA’s ac­tion in a mes­sage sent by FI­FA in its por­tal at 10:31 a.m. EDT.

“The im­ple­men­ta­tion of the match sus­pen­sion is sus­pend­ed for a pro­ba­tion­ary pe­ri­od of one year,” FI­FA an­nounced. “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.”

U.S. coach Mauri­cio Pochet­ti­no ap­plaud­ed FI­FA’s move.

“We were pun­ished enough against Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina to play with 10 men (for) 30 min­utes in a de­ci­sion that was com­plete­ly un­fair,” he said.

Pochet­ti­no, who played for Ar­genti­na in the 2002 World Cup, was not sur­prised Trump de­cid­ed to call In­fan­ti­no.

“I came from a cul­ture, Ar­genti­na or Eu­rope, that foot­ball, soc­cer is a re­li­gion, more than the re­li­gion,” he said. “If we go keep go­ing, push­ing on, maybe one step more to­mor­row you will see that the sport is mag­ic, that the sport is amaz­ing, is so pow­er­ful, unite peo­ple, unite a coun­try like us.”

Eng­land coach Thomas Tuchel won­dered whether more de­ci­sions go­ing for­ward could be chal­lenged, whether yel­low cards could be over­turned for Eng­land’s De­clan Rice and France’s Michael Olise.

“We can now de­bate end­less­ly: I think it’s not a yel­low card,” he said. “Where does this end? Where does it stop?”

Ba­lo­gun’s three goals in­clud­ed a go-ahead strike against Bosnia. He matched Lan­don Dono­van in 2010 for the sec­ond-most goals by an Amer­i­can in a World Cup, be­hind on­ly Bert Pate­naude’s four in the ini­tial tour­na­ment in 1930.

A 25-year-old who plays for Mona­co, Ba­lo­gun scored 13 Ligue 1 goals last sea­son and has 12 goals in 30 in­ter­na­tion­al ap­pear­ances. He was born in Brook­lyn to Niger­ian par­ents who were liv­ing in Lon­don and in 2023 opt­ed to change his na­tion­al team af­fil­i­a­tion from Eng­land, which he had rep­re­sent­ed at the un­der-21 lev­el.

“He strikes fear in­to a lot of de­fend­ers,” Richards said.

The host U.S. is seek­ing to reach the quar­ter­fi­nals for the first time since 2002. The Amer­i­cans lost in the round of 16 to Ghana in 2010, Bel­gium in 2014 and the Nether­lands in 2022. They failed to ad­vance from the group stage in 2006 and didn’t qual­i­fy for the 2018 tour­na­ment.

The USSF didn’t make Ba­lo­gun avail­able for com­ment Sun­day, but Ba­lo­gun post­ed on so­cial me­dia a pic­ture of him­self in front of U.S. fans and over­laid with mu­sic of Michael Jack­son’s pop sin­gle “Bad.”

On Fri­day, Ba­lo­gun said he thought a yel­low card in­stead of red “would have been fair.”

FI­FA said its de­ci­sion re­lied on Ar­ti­cle 27 of dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee rules.

“The ju­di­cial body may de­cide to ful­ly or par­tial­ly sus­pend the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sure,” the rule states. “By sus­pend­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the sanc­tion, the ju­di­cial body sub­jects the per­son sanc­tioned to a pro­ba­tion­ary pe­ri­od of one to four years.”

FI­FA in No­vem­ber de­ferred the fi­nal two games of a three-match ban for Por­tu­gal’s Cris­tiano Ronal­do for a red card against Ire­land in a World Cup qual­i­fi­er, al­low­ing him to play at the start of the World Cup.

Ar­gen­tine de­fend­er Nicolás Ota­men­di and Ecuado­ran mid­field­er Moisés Caice­do in April had one-game bans de­ferred for red cards in qual­i­fiers, al­so al­low­ing them to be avail­able for World Cup open­ers.

Brazil­ian mid­field­er Gar­rin­cha re­ceived a red card in the 83rd minute of the 1962 semi­fi­nal against host Chile for kick­ing an op­po­nent but was al­lowed to play in the fi­nal against Czecho­slo­va­kia af­ter a lob­by­ing cam­paign that in­clud­ed sup­port from Chile Pres­i­dent Jorge Alessan­dri. Brazil won the fi­nal for its sec­ond straight ti­tle.

“What about the next red card? What hap­pens then?” Nor­way coach Ståle Sol­bakken said. “Is there go­ing to be some com­mit­tee some­where that is go­ing to take that card away? It’s a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad de­ci­sion that will hurt the World Cup.” —SEAT­TLE (AP)

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Sto­ry by RONALD BLUM and MICHELLE L. PRICE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Michelle Price re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

AP Soc­cer Writer James Rob­son in At­lanta and AP Sports Writ­ers An­drew Des­tin in Seat­tle, Jim Ver­tuno in Austin, Texas, and Stephen Whyno in East Ruther­ford, New Jer­sey, con­tributed to this re­port.