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THE OVERTURNING, AT the request of President Trump, of the red card given to US player Folarin Balogun at the World Cup was bad for football, for sport and ultimately for the US soccer team. Like many sports fans around the world, I was delighted and relieved that Belgium beat the United States in the early hours this morning.
Trump’s intervention on the red card and Fifa’s acquiescence, under its nauseating President, Gianni Infantino, brought their double act of shamelessness and sycophancy to a new high.
The two men have previous form. Most notably, Infantino responded to the US President’s absurd craving for the Nobel Peace Prize by creating an infantile Fifa Peace Prize specially for him.
Trump’s bizarre assault on the rules of sport was entirely in character – a perfect reflection of his hostility to the rule of law more generally. It is therefore of wider international significance.
But to start with the football. The facts are crystal clear. Balogun, who has been the stand-out player for the US soccer team at the World Cup, was sent off during the US match against Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The sending off was controversial, as sending offs frequently are. Although Balogun’s contact with the Bosnian player was brutal, arguably it was not deliberate.
The only thing that matters, however, is that the referee on the night, having carefully consulted the TV monitor, gave Balogun a straight red card.
That should have been the end of the matter.
Everyone in the football world, including Balogun himself, accepted that it was. As a result of his sending off, he was to be subject to an automatic one-match ban.
Many players have been given red cards at this World Cup but, even if some of those cards have been disputed, the football world accepts without question that they cannot be relitigated, any more than the result of a match can subsequently be reconsidered and overturned.
The decision to “suspend” Balogun’s red card for a year, so that the one-match ban would have no effect at the World Cup, was universally recognised as a disgrace. Every honest football fan knows that the only explanation for the decision lay at the depressing intersection of the menace of Trump and the fawning of Infantino.
Uefa, the governing body of football in Europe, condemned Fifa’s decision as “incomprehensible and unjustifiable”. Football, it pointed out, “relies on rules, which are the basis for fair, honest and transparent competition”. It confirmed that, in this case, the rules were not “open to interpretation”.
That brings us to the world beyond football. Trump has been pursuing a comprehensive assault on the rule of law both domestically and internationally. He doesn’t believe in globally agreed rules or in the “fair, honest and transparent” relationships on which much of the world order has largely depended over many years.
At home, he has politicised the Department of justice and fired many of its officials, targeted law firms that represent clients who oppose him, and publicly attacked US judges. Abroad he has waged an illegal war on Iran, attacked Venezuela without any legal basis, threatened to seize a part of Denmark and applied unilateral tariffs. One of the main reasons he despises the EU is that it is a beacon for the rule of law.
These are all arguably more serious offences than undermining the rules of a football competition. However, unprecedented billions of people around the world are watching the World Cup and, as they do so, they are accepting and internalising the importance of rules: of the regulations off the pitch, of the laws on the pitch and of the referees and other officials who must interpret and implement them.
Some decisions will naturally be contested, but people understand and accept the system. Trump and Infantino alone have called into question this important example of global education and consensus.
The World Cup is proving in other ways also why soccer is appropriately called “The Beautiful Game”. For example, the competition is showing itself to be a glorious celebration of diversity, as reflected in the origin and make-up of the teams and in the friendship between fans from around the world.
On this aspect, it is Trump who represents a blot on the celebration. His policies, effectively unchallenged by his “yes man” Infantino, prevented an accredited Somali football referee from entering the US and undermined the involvement of the Iranian team.
Remarkably, Balogun himself acquired the right to play for the US through the “birthright citizenship” rule that Trump has sought to eradicate.
It was fanciful to fear that Trump and Infantino might take their behaviour a step further by seeking to reverse a Belgian victory on the playing field. However, there was room for a niggling doubt. Trump demonstrated after the 2020 US Presidential election that overturning objective and fair outcomes is one of his specialities.
Sadly, the US soccer team itself was damaged by Trump’s intervention. They knew that whatever they might go on to achieve at the World Cup would now be tainted. They knew that, despite winning the hearts of many with the attractiveness and gusto of their football in earlier rounds, the bulk of football fans around the world would now necessarily be rooting for Belgium, for the sport of football.
Their President’s brazen behaviour almost certainly affected the US team’s psychology and enthusiasm for today’s match; their performance against Belgium was by a long way their poorest in the World Cup.
People around the world have understood Trump’s behaviour for what it was, shameless in itself and a metaphor for his Presidency.
Ironically, his global onslaught on the rule of law has suffered a setback. Billions of football fans – from Asia to Europe to North Africa, in their mud huts and penthouses and favelas – have been reminded that there are bigger issues at stake than who wins a football match.
Bobby McDonagh is a former Irish Ambassador to the EU, UK and Italy. He is an executive coach and commentator on subjects around the EU and Brexit.
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