Trump says World Cup referee’s red card call was ‘horrible’ but insists he left outcome to FIFA

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Mon­day took cred­it for get­ting FI­FA to re­view a red card is­sued against the Unit­ed States’ star for­ward Fo­lar­in Ba­lo­gun at the World Cup but said he did not de­mand an out­come.

“All I did was ask for a re­view,” Trump said when asked about it dur­ing an un­re­lat­ed Oval Of­fice event. “I didn’t say, ‘You have to do this.’”

Trump con­firmed that he called FI­FA Pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no and asked for a sec­ond look at the pun­ish­ment against Ba­lo­gun in the Unit­ed States’ 2-0 win against Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina last week in San­ta Clara, Cal­i­for­nia, near San Fran­cis­co. But he said FI­FA made the fi­nal call to lift Ba­lo­gun’s manda­to­ry one-game ban for a foul tack­le, al­low­ing him to play in Mon­day’s round of 16 match with Bel­gium in Seat­tle.

FI­FA’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend the one-game ban was cel­e­brat­ed by many in the Unit­ed States but brought con­dem­na­tion in the in­ter­na­tion­al sports world, where some called it an out­ra­geous in­tru­sion. The Bel­gian soc­cer fed­er­a­tion is chal­leng­ing Ba­lo­gun’s el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for Mon­day’s match, and the UE­FA soc­cer body in Eu­rope called FI­FA’s move “in­com­pre­hen­si­ble and un­jus­ti­fi­able.”

Trump crit­i­cizes the ref­er­ee’s red card call

In re­marks on Mon­day, Trump called the ref­er­ee’s de­ci­sion a “hor­ri­ble” call. He added that it would have been a stain on the tour­na­ment if Ba­lo­gun, the U.S.’ lead­ing scor­er at this year’s World Cup with three goals, was held out against Bel­gium and the U.S. lost. He praised FI­FA for mak­ing what he de­scribed as a bril­liant de­ci­sion in sus­pend­ing the pun­ish­ment.

“I didn’t think it was a foul,” Trump said. “I thought it was two great ath­letes that crashed in­to each oth­er and got en­tan­gled.”

The Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent, who said he un­der­stands sports “re­al­ly well,” ac­knowl­edged that he did not ini­tial­ly know what a red card is or the con­se­quences it brings. When he learned it would lead to a one-game sus­pen­sion for Ba­lo­gun, he said, he de­cid­ed to step in. He al­so took is­sue with the use of video re­view to is­sue the red card, ar­gu­ing that slowed-down re­views can make plays look more ag­gres­sive.

“Bel­gium has got a great team,” Trump said. “We have to have our best play­ers, and they have to have their best. And if we win or we lose, it’s fair.”

FI­FA pres­i­dent de­fends the de­ci­sion process

Soon af­ter Trump ad­dressed the con­tro­ver­sy, In­fan­ti­no is­sued a state­ment de­tail­ing his call with Trump and de­fend­ing the in­de­pen­dence of the FI­FA Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee.

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

Trump’s Oval Of­fice event fo­cused on new in­vest­ment ac­counts for U.S. chil­dren, and he im­me­di­ate­ly sought to de­flect at­ten­tion away from the World Cup con­tro­ver­sy. “They don’t want to know any­thing about soc­cer slash foot­ball,” he said of re­porters gath­ered in the Oval Of­fice. “For­tu­nate­ly, they won’t be ask­ing any ques­tions on that. No­body cares about that, right?”

Re­pub­li­can Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who joined Trump at the event, turned at­ten­tion back to the red card. “On be­half of all Amer­i­cans, thank you for get­ting rid of that ridicu­lous red card,” Cruz said dur­ing his re­marks. “It was spec­tac­u­lar.”

Pressed on the ex­tent of his role, Trump said that he made his case to In­fan­ti­no but that “I didn’t tell him what to do, I can’t tell him what to do.”

Sep­a­rate­ly on Mon­day, Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio said it was the right de­ci­sion to lift the pun­ish­ment for Ba­lo­gun.

In rare com­ments dur­ing a pho­to op ahead of his meet­ing with Chile’s for­eign min­is­ter, Ru­bio ques­tioned why Bel­gium would want to win a match “if every­one will ar­gue you didn’t re­al­ly win it be­cause their best, or their lead­ing, scor­er was not on the pitch.”

He joked that it was be­com­ing an “in­ter­na­tion­al in­ci­dent” ahead of a NA­TO sum­mit in Turkey this week.

How did Ba­lo­gun get the red card?

The foul against Ba­lo­gun was called af­ter he plant­ed his cleat­ed foot on the an­kle of Bosn­ian de­fend­er Tarik Muhare­movic dur­ing their round of 32 match. Brazil­ian ref­er­ee Raphael Claus didn’t ini­tial­ly sig­nal a card, but a slow-mo­tion re­view re­sult­ed in the red card.

Ba­lo­gun lat­er said he thought a yel­low card, a for­mal warn­ing, would have been fair.

FI­FA’s de­ci­sion drew quick re­buke on Sun­day from Bel­gium coach Ru­di Gar­cia, who said it sound­ed like an April Fools’ Day joke. Mean­while U.S. coach Mauri­cio Pochet­ti­no ap­plaud­ed FI­FA’s move, say­ing his team was pun­ished enough by los­ing Ba­lo­gun for the re­main­der of last week’s game.

As the dra­ma played out on the pitch last week, it was im­me­di­ate­ly clear from the per­spec­tive of Com­merce Sec­re­tary Howard Lut­nick, White House FI­FA Task Force leader An­drew Giu­liani and Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials that the process used to is­sue the red card to Ba­lo­gun was im­prop­er.

Dis­cus­sions over the red card and what to do about it dom­i­nat­ed the flight from San­ta Clara back to Wash­ing­ton. The con­sen­sus of the group, ac­cord­ing to a se­nior U.S. of­fi­cial with knowl­edge of the talks, was sim­ply: that the slo-mo re­play was im­prop­er, so shouldn’t the red card be nul­li­fied?

The next day, Trump of­fi­cials con­tin­ued to dig in­to the rules, con­sult lawyers and speak with U.S. Soc­cer about the mat­ter, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial, who in­sist­ed on anonymi­ty to dis­cuss pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions.

Trump was al­so briefed on up­dates as he pre­pared to speak with In­fan­ti­no, whom the U.S. pres­i­dent has talked with mul­ti­ple times a week since the World Cup, which is be­ing host­ed by the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Mex­i­co, be­gan June 11. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by COLLIN BINK­LEY and SE­UNG MIN KIM | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Se­ung Min Kim re­port­ed from Ankara, Turkey. As­so­ci­at­ed Press pho­tog­ra­ph­er Man­ny Cene­ta con­tributed from Wash­ing­ton.