According to football fans, an uglier side of World Cup was on display just hours before USA against Belgium game – the sort of cynical manipulation of its Fifa administrators, aided and abetted by the US president Donald Trump.
Last Wednesday, the USA’s star striker Folarin Balogun was sent off for an illegal challenge, and suspended for the next game. While the victorious USA quibbled about the harshness of the decision – Balogun’s foul appeared to be clumsy rather than malicious, the finality of the referee’s decision was accepted.
That did not reckon, though, with Donald Trump’s disregard for the purity of fair play and the sanctity of the rules.
Having previously shown little interest in the competition, he got on the phone to Fifa, calling them three times to demand Balogun’s reinstatement. Astonishingly, he succeeded. The organiser does have discretion, but it is little used and normally such entreaties would fall on deaf ears.
Speaking at the White House on Monday morning ahead of the US’s last-16 clash with Belgium, the president celebrated his own involvement: “I saw the play, and I’m a person that loves sports… That wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction.
“This referee, who is a little bit suspect if you check his past. He made a call that nobody could believe. He’s our best player, or one of our best players. And he gave him a red card. I didn’t know what that meant… Yes, I asked for a review by Fifa.”
He added: “If [Belgium] beat us then they can be really proud. The other way – if they beat us, I say it was rigged just like the election was rigged in 2020.”
It was once unknown for a ruler to be so personally involved, but then this is Mr Trump. When he seizes an opportunity for political capital, he takes it. He also enjoys a close, some might say unhealthy, relationship with Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino.
A low point was reached when Mr Infantino bizarrely presented a preening Mr Trump with a “World Peace” prize, after he had been overlooked for the Nobel. Now comes Fifa’s bending of the knee over Falogun and a descent still further.
In a sport given to hyperbole, the European authority UEFA is right to assert that in readmitting Balogun, Fifa is “crossing a red line”. Mr Infantino himself put out a statement on Monday afternoon admitting he had spoken to Mr Trump, but insisted that the decision to rescind the suspension was “independent”.
The whole world of football is holding their breath waiting for President Donald Trump to call FIFA boss Gianni Infantino to ask him to change the results of the game in which USA got their ass kicked badly by Belgium.
Trump will tell Intantino that Pulisic scored two goals and his boy Folarin Balogun scored another two goals so the final football between USA and Belgium should be USA 5 goals and Belgium 4 goals. Infantino is looking into that right now.
The World Cup has been looking good with players like Jude Bellingham putting their names to the game and it is good to let that go on without idiot pressure from Donald Trump.
And the shit on World Cup 2026 Continues.
Egypt coach Hossam Hassan wasn’t afraid to articulate it, if in more extreme terms than most.
Furious at so many of the decisions in his side’s otherwise defiant defeat to Argentina, Hassan said they “suffered an injustice”.
Egypt boss Hossam Hassan was left furious after defeat to Argentina (Getty)
“It’s all about money,” Hassan claimed. “They want Messi to stay in the tournament. In football, many things happen off the pitch because of interests. What happened was unfair. Egypt deserved to qualify. We were the better team.
“We have been treated unfairly today. We have suffered injustice. It is my own way of speaking up and standing up. I am not going to watch another match in this tournament.”
Mostafa Ziko’s disallowed goal was so unsettling because the initial foul was innocuous and so far away, but also because the decision went against the spirit in which this tournament has been refereed. It has been light touch in almost everything else.
Egypt were left frustrated by the officials in defeat to Argentina.
And the shit continues with Messi and Argentina given a free win against Egypt.
FIFA World Cup 2026, Egypt robbed Argentina survived, but football has always had room for two truths
Egypt will look back at this night as what could have been and what transpired. History, however, will repeatedly remind them of the result: they crashed out of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with the feeling that they were denied a historic quarter-final spot that went to defending champions Argentina, led by none other than Lionel Messi.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
