Balogun admits Trump's suspension reversal caused nerves inside US squad before Belgium exit

Folarin Balogun has admitted that Donald Trump’s public intervention to reinstate him for the United States’ last-16 World Cup tie against Belgium unsettled his team-mates and made preparation for the match harder than it should have been.

The Monaco striker received a red card during the USA’s round-of-32 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, a decision that should have ruled him out of the Belgium fixture. FIFA’s disciplinary committee subsequently suspended the one-match ban for a year — a move that came after Trump publicly acknowledged he had personally intervened on behalf of Balogun and the US co-hosts. The United States went on to lose to Belgium in the last 16.

“My initial reaction was I was happy to be back in the team, but when I kind of started to reflect, I knew it was going to cause a lot of controversy, and I could almost see within my team-mates a bit of nerves, because it’s something that is so unique,” Balogun told CBS. “The closer we got to the game I tried to just focus as best as I could, but it was difficult. A lot of outside noise, and that’s hard to avoid.”

The Arsenal academy product maintains that the challenge on Tarik Muharemovic that earned him the red card did not warrant the decision. “It wasn’t even a tackle. I was totally in shock,” he said. “When something’s not intentional it should never be a red card — it was just an unfortunate situation, and I think it put a lot more pressure on us than we needed.”

The affair has since escalated into a formal governance dispute. Human rights organisation FairSquare has lodged a complaint with the International Olympic Committee, alleging that FIFA president Gianni Infantino — an IOC member since 2020 — violated rules on political neutrality through his interactions with Trump. The complaint outlines five explicit breaches of the IOC’s political neutrality rules and cites prima facie evidence of two further serious violations, with the Balogun case listed as the most recent example.

The Times has also reported that disciplinary committee chair Mohammad Al Kamali made the decision to suspend the ban unilaterally, a step described as unprecedented in his published disciplinary history. FIFA has offered no public explanation for the ruling. A separate complaint was filed by FairSquare with FIFA’s own ethics committee in December.