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President Donald Trump said Monday he asked FIFA to review the decision to give U.S. men’s soccer team star Folarin Balogun a red card during last week’s win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the World Cup knockout stage.
Balogun was given a red card after a VAR review to look at a play in which Balogun stepped on the ankle of a defender. He would have been suspended for the team’s match against Belgium but FIFA decided to suspend the one-game ban. A source told Fox News that Trump asked FIFA President Gianni Infantino to have the organization review it.
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Trump addressed the controversy in the Oval Office.
“All I did was, I asked for a review, because I didn’t think it was a foul,” the president said. “And again, I’m good at this stuff. I didn’t think it was a foul. I thought it was two great athletes who crashed into each other and got entangled. That was not a guy punching somebody in the face or anything that would be different.
“I think it’s a terrible … if they wouldn’t allow a top player, maybe the best, maybe among the best on the team, to play, I think it would have had a big stain. I relayed it. I didn’t tell him what to do. I don’t believe he made the decision. I think it was a committee that made the decision and they made the right decision because, No. 1, it wasn’t a foul and you want to see a game with your best players.”
Trump said the feeling would be the same if Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Harry Kane would have been given a red card in a similar way.
He also took issue with the call itself.
“If you would have taken him out, I think it would have really stained this incredible championship,” Trump continued. “We gotta have our best players and Belgium, Belgium’s got a great team by the way. We have our best players and they have to have their best. If we win or we lose, it’s fair. Otherwise, let’s say we lost to them, then we lost the game. It would be a terrible thing. I think they made a really brilliant decision.
“I think the referee’s call was horrible and nobody talks about that. They talk about the red card like it’s fine. The referee’s decision to red card, I didn’t know what the hell a red card was and when I found out I said, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ … I said, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of power, that’s terrible.’ And then I looked at his past and it wasn’t so great.”
Belgium said it “sent a letter to FIFA requesting a copy of the decision, an explanation of the process that had been followed, and setting out its position regarding the applicable regulations.”
“As its only response, FIFA sent a letter to the RBFA stating that it considered this correspondence to constitute an appeal, that a judge had been appointed, and that the RBFA had only a few hours to complete that appeal. No information whatsoever was provided by FIFA,” the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) said.
“For an appeal to be admissible, FIFA’s own regulations state that the reasoned decision must first have been communicated to the appellant. While the RBFA was merely seeking legitimate explanations, FIFA itself created an appeal and immediately ensured that it would be declared inadmissible.”
The RBFA added that FIFA has not responded to its requests.
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“Regardless of the sporting outcome of this match, the RBFA is deeply concerned by the course of events and will continue to fight in the coming hours, days and months in defence of the fundamental principles of ethics, fair competition, and the interests of football as a whole.”
The U.S. and Belgium play in the Round of 16 on Monday night at 8 p.m. ET.
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