In the 64th minute of the United States' World Cup match against Bosnia-Herzegovina on July 2nd, American striker Folarin Balogun — who had already scored in the 2-0 victory — got into it with Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemović and was shown a red card. Standard soccer stuff. Player gets ejected, misses the next match, team moves on a man down.
Except the next match is a Round of 16 knockout game against Belgium. And the President of the United States decided he had some thoughts.
President Donald Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino on Wednesday to ask about the red card. Not to demand anything, mind you. Just to ask. "All I did, I asked for a review, cause I didn't think it was a foul," Trump told reporters on Monday. "I didn't tell them what to do, I can't tell them what to do."
By Sunday, FIFA's disciplinary body had suspended Balogun's ban under Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, converting the punishment to a probationary period of one year. Balogun was cleared to play.
The best part — and this is the detail that makes the whole thing — is Trump's own admission about his soccer expertise. "I didn't know what the hell a red card was," he said. "When I found out, I said, 'You gotta be kidding!'"
That's the forty-seventh president of the United States, a man who has stared down North Korea, restructured global trade policy, and deported millions of illegal immigrants, confessing he had no idea what a red card meant. Found out it would bench an American player in the World Cup knockout round. And picked up the phone.
Naturally, the international soccer establishment wants everyone to know this was all very independent and above board. Infantino released a statement insisting that "FIFA's judicial bodies are independent. They operate autonomously." He did, however, acknowledge the obvious: "Yes, I regularly discuss matters related to the FIFA World Cup with the President."
Belgium, for their part, tried to appeal the decision. Their appeal was dismissed on Monday, the same day the two teams are set to meet in the Round of 16. Trump, ever the gracious competitor, offered Belgium a consolation: "The people in Belgium — if they win the game, they can be very proud."
The usual crowd will spend the next 48 hours screaming about presidential overreach and the sanctity of international sporting bodies. They'll say it's inappropriate for a head of state to call FIFA about a soccer card. They'll invoke norms and precedent and probably Lionel Messi somehow — Trump himself name-dropped Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Harry Kane when discussing the quality of play in this tournament, as reported by Yahoo Sports.
But here's what actually happened: an American player got what looked like a questionable ejection in the biggest soccer tournament on the planet, hosted on American soil. The president made a phone call. A review committee looked at the play again. They agreed the punishment didn't fit.
Every president says they'll fight for Americans. Most of them mean it in the abstract — some future negotiation, some vague policy goal, some campaign promise that dissolves into committee. This one saw an American get a bad call on a Wednesday and had it fixed by Sunday.
He didn't even know what the card was called.
