{"id":110738,"date":"2026-07-08T12:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T16:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=110738"},"modified":"2026-07-08T17:33:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:33:06","slug":"opinion-taylor-mckee-discusses-how-trumps-call-to-fifa-tested-the-limits-of-rules%e2%80%91based-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2026\/07\/opinion-taylor-mckee-discusses-how-trumps-call-to-fifa-tested-the-limits-of-rules%e2%80%91based-order\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Taylor McKee discusses how Trump’s call to FIFA tested the limits of rules\u2011based order"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Taylor McKee, Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Brock University<\/em>, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAll I did was ask for a review because I didn\u2019t think it was a foul,\u201d United States President Donald Trump said this week\u00a0in front of reporters in the Oval Office. He was explaining why he had personally called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to ask that a red card issued to American forward Folarin Balogun be reconsidered.<\/p>\n

Balogun had been issued the red card during the team\u2019s round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 1. The Americans won that match 2-0, but a red card normally carries an automatic one-match suspension.<\/p>\n

Four days later, FIFA announced it had placed Balogun on one year\u2019s probation instead,\u00a0citing Article 27 of its disciplinary code, which gives FIFA\u2019s judicial bodies discretion to hold off on enforcing sanctions. FIFA also fined U.S. Soccer US$40,000, and the red card stayed on Balogun\u2019s record.<\/p>\n

Infantino confirmed he had spoken with Trump, but said he told the president the matter was subject to \u201can ongoing legal process involving FIFA\u2019s independent judicial bodies.\u201d Trump, for his part, said he did not tell Infantino what to do.<\/p>\n

The reversal allowed Balogun to play against Belgium in the round of 16 match. Belgium\u00a0defeated the U.S. 4-1, and Balogun and his team bowed out of the World Cup at the same stage as they did in 1994, 2010, 2014 and 2022.<\/p>\n

The controversy is a small but revealing example of a much larger debate about the perceived\u00a0rules-based international order.<\/p>\n

FIFA\u2019s own rules allowed the exception<\/strong><\/p>\n

FIFA\u2019s competition regulations\u00a0state plainly that a red card triggers an automatic suspension for a team\u2019s next match. Yet after the call from Trump,\u00a0FIFA suspended enforcement of that sanction for Balogun.<\/p>\n

The Royal Belgian Football Association tried and failed to appeal the decision, and the Union of European Football Associations, European soccer\u2019s governing body,\u00a0said FIFA had \u201ccrossed a red line.\u201d<\/p>\n

FIFA maintains a broader non-interference principle, which is meant to shield national federations and disciplinary decisions from outside political pressure.<\/p>\n

Legal experts Lesedi Mphahlele and Sello Ramanyana, writing for South Africa\u2019s Fairbridges Attorneys, note that FIFA has suspended entire member federations in the past for allowing government interference in football matters. But when the call comes from inside the White House, the rules appear more flexible.<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be the first time political pressure has shaped a FIFA disciplinary outcome. In 1962,\u00a0Brazil\u2019s prime minister sent FIFA a telegram appealing a suspension on forward Man\u00e9 Garrincha, arguing he shouldn\u2019t be penalized; FIFA lifted the ban in time for Garrincha to play in the final.<\/p>\n

What procedure obscures<\/strong><\/p>\n

FIFA said Article 27 allowed it to suspend the punishment. But sports organizations often lean on procedural language exactly when a decision also raises questions about power. The public is asked to treat the outcome as technical and routine, and to set aside the unusual path by which the case arrived there.<\/p>\n

Infantino has said he regularly speaks with heads of state, government officials and football stakeholders about matters related to the tournament, and has defended maintaining close contact with the leaders of host nations as part of the job.<\/p>\n

Infantino\u2019s framing is easiest to maintain because the U.S. lost. Had the American team won, questions would have ensued about whether Balogun\u2019s presence on the field had unfairly tipped the match in the Americans\u2019 favour, and whether Belgium had been cheated out of a win.<\/p>\n

Those questions would have kept the pressure on FIFA\u2019s decision, because the outcome itself would have been in doubt. The 4-1 loss removed that pressure. Balogun played, and the U.S. lost regardless, so there was no tainted result left to argue about.<\/p>\n

The limits of the rules-based order<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then-President Joe Biden warned in 2022, after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine,\u00a0that the international rules-based order was in jeopardy. The Balogun case is a smaller test of the same idea.<\/p>\n

Rules, whether they govern\u00a0trade,\u00a0international diplomacy\u00a0or sport, work by binding everyone the same way, regardless of standing. They discipline players, structure competitions and produce the language of fairness.<\/p>\n

Legal scholars argue the assumption doesn\u2019t hold evenly. The\u00a0British Institute of International and Comparative Law\u00a0asks directly whether the rules-based order contains \u201crule-makers and rule-takers,\u201d and warns that governments can use the language of rules selectively as political circumstances change.<\/p>\n

Law professor John Dugard goes even further by connecting this to American practices, arguing that the rules-based order can become a\u00a0broad and politically malleable alternative to international law, especially when the U.S. wants language flexible enough to accommodate its own interests.<\/p>\n

So what are we left with? Powerful entities will attempt to force regulators stretch, bend and broadly interpret rule-sets, and\u00a0will no doubt do so more often in the future, knowing that as long as the right leverage is applied, outcomes are not fixed.<\/p>\n

In the world of international soccer, permitting this type of intervention is not a slippery slope, it is a steep cliff. Sport is inherently rife with controversy and, often times, injustice.<\/p>\n

Equally intrinsic to sport is the acceptance of unexpected factors like injuries, adverse weather, and bad calls. But a self-absorbed worldview makes it difficult to see the significance of these external realities, since the costs borne by others remain entirely on the periphery.<\/p>\n

As the Balogun decision revealed, the rules might discipline ordinary participants and structure the language of fairness. But as a single phone call from the Oval Office to FIFA headquarters showed, they do not always constrain those with sufficient power to reshape their meaning.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taylor McKee, Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Brock University, recently published a piece in The Conversation about Trump’s call to FIFA President Gianni Infantino requesting that a red card issued to American player Folarin Balogun be reconsidered. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110735,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110738"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110743,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110738\/revisions\/110743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}