WASHINGTON: The beautiful game has met an ugly precedent. MAGA supremo Donald Trump, who has long believed that every contest — whether it is elections, tv ratings, golf games, beauty pageants or trade negotiations — is existential, has now added football matches to the same universe of perpetual competition. Following an extraordinary intervention from Trump, FIFA has suspended the automatic one-match ban on US striker Folarin Balogun that followed his red-card foul in the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Under the direction of its President Gianni Infantino, a known Trump suck-up, FIFA invoked an obscure provision — Article 27 of its disciplinary provision, which basically allows it to freeze Balogun’s one-match suspension for a year — to kiss up to Trump, who never accepts losing as a legitimate outcome in any contest. For the MAGA boss, losing it is usually evidence that someone else cheated, the referee was incompetent, or the rules require immediate revision — all of which he enforced on a feckless FIFA. In remarks on Monday morning, Trump not only confirmed he made a phone call to Infantino to seek a review, but also cast aspersions on the referee (Brazilian Raphael Claus) who red-carded Balogun while bending the rules of football to American advantage. “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 …” Trump said, revealing hitherto unknown expertise in calling football fouls. “That’s one thing to penalize somebody for the game. But how do you penalize them for a game that hasn’t been played yet? It’s very unfair. You can’t do that,” Trump added, claiming that the level of respect for Infantino “has gone up tenfold” after the revocation.As usual, that was far from true. The football world is in ferment ahead of the U.S game against Belgium, with many past players and administrators crying foul over the Trump call. “Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls. They are overturned by rules, evidence and independent bodies. If a US President intervenes with the FIFA President — and a player is suddenly cleared before a World Cup knockout match — the question is unavoidable: Quo vadis, FIFA?” asked Sepp Blatter, Infantino’s predecessor.The geopolitical irony of the fiasco is difficult to ignore. The United States’ next opponent is Belgium, a NATO ally from Europe that Trump has spent years scolding over defence spending while simultaneously questioning the alliance’s value. Now European officials find themselves protesting not just military burden-sharing but also disciplinary issues.There is also a delicious irony sitting underneath all of this: Balogun is a walking, scoring rebuttal to the administration’s own immigration theology. He was born in Brooklyn while his Nigerian mother, seven months pregnant, was visiting the US — the textbook case of the “anchor baby” MAGA rhetoric treats as a five-alarm national emergency, one the administration is currently trying to litigate out of the Constitution altogether.The same birthright citizenship and immigration routes that some Trump allies have questioned now supplies Team USA – and many European sides – with their finest players. Indeed, Balogun represents not only the U.S but also reflects the globalised identity of modern football: Nigerian heritage, English football education, American birth — exactly the sort of cosmopolitan story that sits awkwardly beside Trump’s often dismissive rhetoric about African nations and migrants, even as nativists enthusiastically embrace goals by immigrants. This week, many immigrant and immigrant-descendent players are discovering that while they have the ability to bend the balls, there’s someone else who has the power to bend the rules.
