No, Trump hasn’t ruined the World Cup

The actions of the White House and FIFA have cast a temporary pall over the World Cup. After the USA’s Folarin Balogun was harshly sent off during last Wednesday’s victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina, FIFA decided to ‘suspend’ what should have been an automatic one-match ban for the star striker. It seems a combination of Donald Trump, US Soccer and FIFA president Gianni Infantino worked to ensure America’s most potent footballer would be available after all to face Belgium in Monday’s Round-of-16 knock-out match.

We now know the decision, made by an 18-strong FIFA disciplinary committee, was preceded by several Trump-Infantino phone calls. This has rightly caused a bit of a stink. There has been no prospect of a reprieve for the 12 other players to have seen red at this tournament so far. In the absence of any official appeals procedure, they have all either served or are expected to serve an automatic ban. The only difference between these players and Balogun is that they didn’t have the president of the United States lobbying Infantino for a reprieve – a request with which the FIFA president, a famously ingratiating invertebrate, would have been only too happy to comply. Trump was certainly pleased with the outcome, taking to Truth Social on Sunday to thank FIFA for reversing a ‘grave injustice’.

Fortunately, neither the White House nor FIFA is able to exert much control over what happens once the first whistle is blown. And so, late on Monday, a prematurely written-off Belgian side proceeded to thrash a limp USA 4-1, spurred on, according to one Red Devil, by a ‘sense of injustice’. One sharp shot aside, Balogun was largely irrelevant.

The whole episode has certainly been unedifying. The leader of the most powerful nation on the planet should not be spending his days relitigating dodgy refereeing decisions. And FIFA should certainly not be bending disciplinary rules to suit the whims of politicians.

But even so, some of the reactions have been more over-the-top than Jarrell Quansah’s justly red-carded tackle against Mexico. The Western commentariat, having mainlined anti-Trump hysteria for nigh on a decade now, has been especially exercised. ‘Donald Trump has ruined the World Cup as well as America’, proclaimed one headline. He has ‘tarnished’ the beautiful game, asserted another pundit. A Guardian regular even claimed that the Balogun saga has changed football irrevocably: ‘The game isn’t what it was’, he lamented, ‘before Trump asked the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, to review the suspension of the US’s top scorer, striker Folarin Balogun’.

Anti-Trumpers need to get a grip. Reading and listening to some of the more hyperbolic coverage, you’d think World Cup football was morally pristine in the BD (Before Donald) era. That tournaments were hosted on a fair-minded basis in the most suitably equipped nations, with no need for back-handers or bungs. That there were no unsavoury shenanigans behind the scenes and that disciplinary procedures were administered without fear or favour. And above all, that politics was kept far away from the field of play.

As if. From its inception in 1930, the World Cup has always been political football, kicked around by the powers-that-be. As Mick Hume reminded us on the eve of the 2022 World Cup, Italy’s then leader, Benito Mussolini, used the 1934 World Cup to showcase his fascist project. Fascist anthem ‘Giovinezza’ was even blasted out when Italy (to no one’s great surprise) were crowned winners, as the players celebrated not just with the official Jules Rimet trophy, but also with Il Duce’s own much larger, specially commissioned cup.

And remember England’s glorious 1966 tournament? That was shot through with international, post-colonial politicking. FIFA ruled in advance that African nations were at best only allowed one place in the final 16-team tournament – and only then if an African team beat a team from Asia and Oceania in a play-off. FIFA’s ruling on African representation, combined with its demand that Apartheid South Africa take part in qualifying, prompted African nations to boycott the whole tournament. Talk about tarnished.

Over and over again, the World Cup has been a site of political tension and posturing, from Italy’s fascist carnival to autocratic Qatar’s spectacle of ‘sportswashing’ less than four years ago. To suggest that Trump’s fan-like intervention – wouldn’t we all want to overturn seemingly unjust decisions against our team? – has somehow sullied what was once pure is amnesiac rubbish.

Even FIFA’s overturning of automatic suspensions for in-game infractions is not as ‘unprecedented’ as has been claimed. Portugal’s superstar forward Cristiano Ronaldo, Argentina defender Nicolás Otamendi and Ecuador midfielder Moisés Caicedo have all recently had their three-match bans, incurred during World Cup qualifying, suspended in order to allow them to play in the World Cup proper. In a statement in May, FIFA declared that it wanted to ensure teams ‘can compete with their strongest possible squads on the biggest stage of men’s international football’.

This was the decision that paved the way for Balogun’s reinstatement. Of couse this was unfair, given FIFA’s treatment of other red-carded players this World Cup. But it has not irreparably ruined the tournament, as some now claim. In fact, in some ways, it has burnished rather than tarnished this year’s spectacle. It certainly electrified the Belgium-USA match, giving it a moral charge it hitherto lacked. One wonders if Belgium’s ageing talents would have been able to rouse themselves for this game if it weren’t for FIFA’s crass intervention.

So ignore the anti-Trump doom-mongering. As ever with the World Cup, once the football starts, the politics that’s always surrounded it has to take a back seat. And that’s the real power of the beautiful game.

Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.