FIFA Sources Allege Infantino Wiped Balogun Red-Card Ban After Trump Call; Council Meets Thursday

FIFA president Gianni Infantino faces the most hostile room of his tenure on Thursday, Oct. 15, and a new allegation about the U.S. World Cup team just made it worse.

Four sources briefed on the matter told the New York Post that Infantino agreed during a July 1 phone call with President Donald Trump to quash the suspension of U.S. forward Folarin Balogun. "He told President Trump that he would take care of it. One call and it was done," one of the sources said. The sources claim the move breached FIFA's own disciplinary code.

The Post's account rests on anonymous sourcing. No document produced so far shows what was said on the call.

What happened on the pitch

Balogun was sent off against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Under FIFA's standing rules, an automatic one-game ban would have kept him out of the round-of-16 match against Belgium.

He played anyway. FIFA's disciplinary panel took what the Post's sources describe as the unprecedented step of suspending the ban. The U.S. lost 4-1.

Infantino has previously said he had no involvement in the decision.

The rule change

The Post says it obtained leaked FIFA documents. Late Tuesday, Oct. 13, about 36 hours before Thursday's meeting, FIFA leadership circulated a draft amendment to the disciplinary code. It would bar FIFA's legal panels from suspending automatic one-game bans that follow red cards.

FIFA's accompanying memo says the change is needed for stability and to protect the integrity of competitions.

A briefing circulated ahead of the meeting says: "There was never a doubt nor lack of clarity on how the automatic suspension following a red card is to be served. This is a way for FIFA to cure the handling of the Balogun case during the World Cup." The Post also cites FIFA circulars from 2002, 2003 and 2005 that it says show the one-game rule has stood for two decades. The only exception it cites is a referee carding the wrong player.

Critics inside European federations call the timing an admission and a retroactive cover for the Balogun decision, according to the Post.

The defense

The defense comes from inside the same reporting. One soccer insider told the Post that any president or prime minister hosting a World Cup would want to ask for a favor in this situation. In that person's words, "the corruption is purely Infantino's because he had to say: We can't change the rules, Mr President."

That framing puts the responsibility on FIFA's president, not on Trump for asking. FIFA's stated rationale for the rewrite is a separate matter. The organization says the draft is about competition integrity, not about one player. Infantino's denial of involvement stands on the record.

No charge or formal finding has been made against Infantino over the Balogun case. The only formal process the sources describe is an ethics complaint.

A crowded list of grievances

Norwegian federation president Lise Klaveness filed an ethics complaint last week. It accuses Infantino of breaking FIFA's political neutrality rules. She cites both the Balogun reprieve and his creation of an inaugural FIFA peace prize awarded to Trump.

Those two items sit beside an older fight. This summer Infantino pursued the Fifa Forward Enterprise proposal, a plan to sell off FIFA's commercial rights that involved Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital. The Post says Infantino struck the deal in secret. The plan has since been scrapped. One account puts its value at $20 billion and says UEFA threatened to boycott FIFA tournaments over it.

Infantino rejected repeated calls for an extraordinary council meeting during the summer. Thursday's session at FIFA headquarters in Zurich is his first meeting with his critics since the proposals emerged. One attendee predicted it could be "explosive."

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, Concacaf president Victor Montagliani and Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa will attend. All three have called for Infantino to resign. They plan to demand an independent review of FIFA's governance.

What comes next

The council will take up the sell-off plan, the Balogun matter and the peace prize on Thursday. The draft disciplinary amendment is also in front of it.

Infantino is seeking a fourth term in FIFA's presidential election this March. Whether the council agrees to an independent governance review, and whether the Klaveness complaint goes to FIFA's ethics machinery, will show how much support he still has going into that vote.