FIFA has spent the past month selling this World Cup as a festival of scale, spectacle and technological certainty. Yet, with one extraordinary decision over Folarin Balogun’s red card, it has managed to make the tournament feel lawless.
By suspending Balogun’s one-match ban on the eve of the United States’ last-16 meeting with Belgium, FIFA has, in one stroke, undermined the referee, diminished the authority of VAR and left all of us wondering what a red card at a World Cup is actually worth.
Balogun was sent off after a video review for stepping on Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemovic’s foot in the round of 32. In football’s ordinary logic, that should have been the end of it: a straight red, an automatic one-match suspension and a price paid for whatever the referee had judged on the field. Instead, FIFA invoked Article 27 of its disciplinary code to suspend the ban for a year, meaning Balogun would only serve the ban if he commits a similar offence again.
The same article was invoked to suspend Cristiano Ronaldo’s three-match ban for an elbow to the face during the European qualifiers. The ban would have prevented the Portuguese star from participating in the initial World Cup games.
Belgium coach Rudi Garcia resorted to sarcasm to describe the absurdity of the occasion: “I didn’t know that at the FIFA World Cup, the 5th of July is now the 1st of April.” More importantly, he added, “We’re not defending the national team or the federation, we are defending football.” He has received support from almost every quarter, with Norway coach Ståle Solbakken calling it “a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad decision” and warning that “if he scores there will always be a question, and Belgium can legitimately be furious.”
If a red card shown on the field and upheld through VAR can be effectively neutralised before the next match, then what exactly is the referee’s authority worth? Raphael Claus may have made a debatable decision, but if FIFA is prepared to revise the consequences of that decision at will, referees cease to be final arbiters and become temporary actors in a process controlled elsewhere.
That “elsewhere” is what makes this so dangerous. Donald Trump, as President of the United States, is free to say “I didn’t think it was a foul” or that FIFA made “a really brilliant decision”. Presidents can cheerlead for their teams. But if FIFA arrived at this outcome because the host nation’s President “did ask for a review”, it would represent an astonishing low for the governing body. Gianni Infantino can insist that the disciplinary body is independent, and FIFA can cite procedure, but independence is not proven by merely stating the word.
What remains is a precedent with no obvious limit. If this red card can be suspended, why not the next one? Balogun ultimately had little impact against Belgium, but that is beside the point. The danger lies not in what he did on the pitch, but in the fact that he was allowed onto it at all. FIFA has taken the clearest sanction in football and turned it into something elastic, political and contingent. For a tournament that claims to run on rules, it now feels more like the Wild West, where the law holds only until someone powerful decides otherwise.
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Published on Jul 07, 2026