{"id":1166,"date":"2026-07-15T18:28:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T17:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/?p=1166"},"modified":"2026-07-15T18:31:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T17:31:14","slug":"justice-suspended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/justice-suspended\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Suspended"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Toby Cadman<\/em><\/p>\n

The third and (possibly) final piece in a series on the 2026 World Cup. The football has been extraordinary. The officiating, and the pressure brought to bear upon it, has been something else entirely.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A Red Card and a Telephone Call<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    On 1 July 2026, in Santa Clara, an American striker named Folarin Balogun dragged his boot down an opponent\u2019s leg and was shown a red card. A dismissal in a football match is not, on the face of it, a matter of state. Within days it had become one.<\/p>\n

    The rule Balogun fell foul of is not obscure. A straight red carries an automatic one-match ban, and under FIFA\u2019s own competition regulations that suspension cannot be appealed by the player\u2019s association. [1]<\/a> It is, deliberately, a bright line. Then the telephone rang. President Trump called the FIFA President, Gianni Infantino, and asked that the card be reviewed. The White House task force weighed in, and a United States official later confirmed that the government had supplied FIFA with additional evidence. [2]<\/a> On 5 July 2026, FIFA\u2019s disciplinary committee found the player guilty, imposed the one-match suspension, and then suspended its implementation for a probationary period of one year under article 27 of its disciplinary code, fining the federation forty thousand dollars. [3]<\/a> Balogun took the field against Belgium. That the United States then lost four goals to one, and went out of its own tournament, is an irony that can be set to one side.<\/p>\n

    It is not the result that should give pause. It is the process. UEFA, not an organisation given to hyperbole, said that FIFA had \u201ccrossed a red line\u201d, called the decision unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable, and warned that when the certainty of the rules is no longer guaranteed by their guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake. [4]<\/a> Sepp Blatter, who led FIFA for seventeen years and is not ordinarily a witness for the prosecution, put it more bluntly still: \u201cRed cards are not overturned by political phone calls.\u201d [5]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Belgium, the one party with a direct and obvious interest in seeing the rule applied, asked FIFA for the reasoned decision and an explanation of the procedure. FIFA elected to treat that request as an appeal, appointed a judge, and then declared the appeal inadmissible on the ground that the Belgian federation was not a party and had no standing. [6]<\/a> Pause on that asymmetry. The party with a stake in the rule was manoeuvred into a forum and shut out of it in the same breath. The party with no standing whatsoever in football\u2019s disciplinary architecture, a head of state, appears to have been heard.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Impeaching the Referee<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      There was a further move, and to anyone who practises in contested courts it was the most familiar and the most dangerous of all. Before the reversal, the U.S. President publicly cast doubt on the official who issued the card, suggesting his record was suspect. [7]<\/a> When a case cannot be won on the rule, the move is to impeach the person applying it. Undermining the neutral decision-maker is the oldest tactic in advocacy, and the most corrosive, because it does not merely challenge one ruling. It challenges the idea that rulings are made by anyone impartial at all.<\/p>\n

      III. Atlanta: The Rule Found, the Rule Mislaid<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Six days later, in Atlanta, the point was made again in a different key. Egypt, leading the world champions, saw a goal, hailed by many as among the goals of the tournament, that would have doubled their advantage chalked off after a video review for a foul in the build-up committed almost the length of the pitch away, a shirt pulled and a foot trodden on. They scored again regardless and led by two, but it could have been three. Then, deep into stoppage time, appeals for contact on Mohamed Salah inside the Argentine area went unreviewed, Argentina broke upfield, and Enzo Fernandez scored the winner, ten minutes after Lionel Messi had hauled the reigning champions level. [8]<\/a> The rule was found at one end of the pitch and mislaid at the other. The Egyptian federation said it could not remain silent, and lodged a formal complaint against the referee. [9]<\/a> Egypt\u2019s most revered footballing figure, Mohamed Aboutrika, reached for a sharper phrase. FIFA, he said, no longer offers fair play. It offers \u201ctelephone play\u201d. [10]<\/a><\/p>\n

      Set aside, for a moment, whether any single call was correct. Reasonable people will differ, and the video assistant referee was introduced precisely to end these arguments and has instead multiplied them. The damage is done at the level of perception, and perception, in the administration of any set of rules, is not a soft consideration. Justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done. In the practice of law that is not a decorative maxim. It is the load-bearing wall. A tribunal that reaches the right answer but appears to have been leaned upon has still failed, because its authority rests entirely on the belief that no one is leaning.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. A New Rule, First Used<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Then, in the quarter-final, the pattern acquired a new and instructive variation. Argentina, the reigning champions, were taken to extra time by Switzerland before prevailing three goals to one; but the decisive intervention was not a goal. The referee had cautioned an Argentine midfielder, Leandro Paredes, for a challenge involving the Swiss striker Breel Embolo. The video assistant then intervened under a protocol enlarged only weeks before the tournament, concluded that Paredes had committed no offence, and ruled instead that Embolo had feigned the contact. The caution was lifted from the Argentine and transferred to the Swiss, who had already been booked once, and who was accordingly sent from the field. It was the first dismissal in the history of the World Cup under FIFA\u2019s new \u201cmistaken identity\u201d rule, and it left Switzerland to play out the tie a man short against the tournament\u2019s favourites. [11]<\/a><\/p>\n

        Set aside, once more, whether the striker dived; on that, as ever, reasonable people will divide. Attend instead to the shape of the thing. A rule is enlarged on the eve of a competition; it is deployed for the very first time in a knockout tie; and its first casualty is the opponent of the reigning champions, in a match those champions won. Switzerland\u2019s coach called the decision unacceptable and said it had destroyed his side\u2019s game, and one need not accept that verdict in full to understand why it was reached and why it was believed. [12]<\/a> This was the second occasion within a fortnight on which a contested video decision ran in favour of the same team, and of the same player\u2019s continued presence in the tournament. Once is misfortune; twice invites a question; and an institution already seen to bend a rule for a head of state cannot expect the benefit of the doubt when it invents one, and uses it, to the advantage of the side it is thought to favour. The appearance, here as before, is the injury.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. What Rugby Understands<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Football need not look far for a better model. Rugby union has employed a television match official for a quarter of a century, and the sport has not been convulsed by it. [13]<\/a> If anything, it has been notably strengthened. The reasons are cultural as much as technical. The referee\u2019s microphone is open, so spectators hear the question asked, the evidence weighed and the reason given; the review is conducted in daylight rather than relayed, mute and mysterious, from a room no one can see. World Rugby’s protocol is explicit that the official remains the lead decision-maker and is never subservient to the technology, which may intervene only where an error is clear and obvious. Under the laws of the game the referee is the sole judge of fact and of law. [14]<\/a><\/p>\n

          Most importantly of all, the rugby referee is revered as an authority rather than accosted as a target. Players address the official as sir. Only the captain may question a decision. Dissent is punished rather than indulged, and those who abuse match officials are met with long bans rather than sympathetic column inches. Take for example, the photos making the rounds of Messi pointing his finger at the Portuguese referee during the quarter final match.\u00a0 Regardless of the frustration the player might have felt, in rugby it would not have been allowed, irrespective of the player\u2019s fame status.\u00a0 A rugby referee can disallow a try in a World Cup final, as one did in 2007, without the losing nation concluding that the game is rigged. The comparison is instructive because the technology is essentially the same; only the culture surrounding it differs. Football, by contrast, has spent a generation surrounding and undermining its officials, and it now reaps the harvest of that cultivation: a competition in which every contentious call is presumed corrupt, because the sport has taught its audience to presume exactly that. Tellingly, football\u2019s own response to the crisis of these past weeks was to station a second video official in each of the remaining stadiums \u2014 more eyes behind the same closed door, when the want was never of manpower but of daylight. [15]<\/a> This is not a matter of taste or tradition. It goes to whether the rules mean anything at all, and it desperately needs to change.<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Prizes, Presidents and a Farewell<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            Behind these individual decisions lies a problem of institutional posture. Football\u2019s governing body has spent this tournament pandering to power and to celebrity in equal measure. It invented a Peace Prize that appeared tailored to its recipient and draped it around the neck of the president of one of the host nations, [16]<\/a> a decision now the subject of an ethics complaint and a letter of protest from some fifty members of the European Parliament. [17]<\/a> It has arranged for that same president to help present the trophy at the final, having previously accepted his hospitality and extended its own. [18]<\/a> And when a red card stood between him and the fixture he wished to watch, it found, within four days, a provision that made the card disappear.<\/p>\n

            The other indulgence is gentler, and for that reason more insidious. Lionel Messi, at thirty-nine, is playing football that no scriptwriter would dare invent, and the sport plainly wishes him a farewell worthy of the man. But a governing body that wishes for an outcome is a governing body with an interest in it, and an adjudicator with an interest is no adjudicator at all. It is not necessary to believe that any referee was instructed. It is enough that Egypt\u2019s coach could stand before the cameras and say aloud, without being thought eccentric, that the decisions may have served a commercial purpose, and that what the competition wanted was to keep the champions, and Messi, in it. [19]<\/a> When a losing coach can say that and be met not with ridicule but with recognition, the injury is already done. One may admire Messi without limit and still refuse to watch a World Cup bent, however gently, to secure his glorious send-off. When the custodians of a sport are seen to be managing its outcomes to flatter a head of state and to honour a legend, they are no longer guarding the game. They are staging it.<\/p>\n

            VII. The Reckoning<\/strong><\/p>\n

            A competition, like a court, is worth only as much as the trust that its results were honestly arrived at. Those who spend their working lives before tribunals whose legitimacy is contested know what happens when the parties before them come to believe that the bench answers to something other than the law: to a government, a donor, a diplomatic mission, a telephone call. Participation curdles into grievance. The losing side stops accepting defeat and starts alleging capture. An institution can survive a bad decision. What it cannot survive is the settled conviction that its decisions are available to the powerful and the beloved on terms unavailable to everyone else.<\/p>\n

            In fairness to Mr Infantino, he says he told the President that FIFA\u2019s judicial bodies are independent, and that he fields calls from heads of state as a matter of routine. That may well be exactly what was said. The difficulty is that independence is not a statement one issues; it is a practice, and it is judged by outcomes. When the call is followed, within days, by precisely the result the caller wanted, the disclaimer does the institution no good at all. The appearance is the injury.<\/p>\n

            As the tournament narrows to its last four, France and Spain in Dallas on 14 July 2026; England and Argentina in Atlanta the following day, the reigning champions are still standing, and the questions raised here have ceased to be academic.<\/p>\n

            [20]<\/a> They arrive now at the sharp end of the competition, where every marginal decision will be magnified and every close call long remembered, and where the suspicion that the game is being steered rather than governed will attach to whatever unfolds. That is the price an adjudicator pays for a compromised appearance: not merely doubt about the decisions already taken, but doubt cast forward over every decision still to come.<\/p>\n

            Suspend a red card by telephone; mislay a rule when the favourite is behind; hand a president a prize and then the trophy to present; and the effect is not merely a changed scoreline. It is a lesson, taught to several billion watching people, that the rules bend for the powerful and the beloved. That is the very last lesson the beautiful game should wish to teach, and it will be remembered long after the final whistle on 19 July 2026. It has to change, and it has to change now.<\/p>\n

            [1]<\/a> FIFA World Cup 26 Regulations: a player sent off as a result of a direct or indirect red card is automatically suspended from his team’s subsequent match. The sanction operates automatically and is not subject to appeal by the player’s association.<\/p>\n

            [2]<\/a> The call was first reported by Ben Jacobs and subsequently by the New York Times, 5 July 2026. President Trump confirmed the call to reporters on 6 July 2026, stating that he had asked for a review because in his view the incident was not a foul. A United States official confirmed to MS NOW that the ‘U.S. government’ had provided ‘additional evidence’ used in the process. President Infantino confirmed the conversation in his statement of 6 July 2026, maintaining that FIFA’s judicial bodies are independent.<\/p>\n

            [3]<\/a> Statement of the Chairperson of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee, 6 July 2026. The Committee found the player guilty of two infringements, imposed a one-match suspension, then applied art. 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code to suspend implementation of that sanction for a probationary period of one year. A fine of USD 40,000 was imposed, apportioned between arts. 14 and 66 FDC, the United States Soccer Federation being declared jointly liable under art. 6.5 FDC. The fine related principally to the player re-entering the field of play after his dismissal.<\/p>\n

            [4]<\/a> UEFA, ‘Statement on the Balogun case’, 6 July 2026, uefa.com. UEFA stated that the decision crossed a red line, expressed disbelief at a decision it described as unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable, and warned that where the certainty of the rules is no longer guaranteed by their guardians the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of the competition undermined.<\/p>\n

            [5]<\/a> Joseph S. Blatter, FIFA President 1998-2015, post on X, 6 July 2026.<\/p>\n

            [6]<\/a> Royal Belgian Football Association statements, 5 and 6 July 2026. The RBFA requested a copy of the reasoned decision and an explanation of the process followed. FIFA treated that correspondence as an appeal, appointed a judge, and then ruled the appeal inadmissible on the ground that the RBFA was not a party to the proceedings and had no standing. FIFA confirmed that the chairperson of its Appeal Committee, a United States national, took no part in that ruling.<\/p>\n

            [7]<\/a> President Trump’s remarks to reporters at the White House, 6 July 2026, in which he confirmed that he had asked FIFA to review the case, disputed that the incident was a foul, and criticised the referee. The suggestion that the official’s record was poor was widely reported, and was itself condemned as abuse directed at match officials.<\/p>\n

            [8]<\/a> Argentina v Egypt, FIFA World Cup 2026 Round of 16, Atlanta Stadium, 7 July 2026; referee Francois Letexier (France). Egypt led 1-0 when a goal by Mostafa Zico was disallowed following a VAR review which identified a foul by Marwan Attia on Lisandro Martinez, occurring almost the length of the pitch from goal, in which Attia simultaneously held the shirt of, and stood on the foot of, the Argentine defender. Zico scored again in the 67th minute to put Egypt 2-0 ahead. Argentina replied through Cristian Romero (79), Lionel Messi (83) and Enzo Fernandez (93). Immediately before the winning goal, appeals following contact on Mohamed Salah within the Argentine penalty area were not reviewed.<\/p>\n

            [9]<\/a> Egyptian Football Association statement, 8 July 2026, stating that it could not remain silent regarding the refereeing decisions and the failure to make appropriate use of the VAR system. The EFA President is reported to have submitted a formal complaint concerning the referee and his assistants.<\/p>\n

            [10]<\/a> M. Aboutrika, beIN Sports, 7 July 2026, reported in The National, 8 July 2026. Aboutrika also criticised the public suggestion that the referee who issued the card had a poor record, describing it as abuse directed at match officials.<\/p>\n

            [11]<\/a> Argentina 3-1 Switzerland (after extra time), FIFA World Cup 2026 quarter-final; referee Danny Makkelie (Netherlands). Makkelie initially cautioned Argentina\u2019s Leandro Paredes following a challenge involving the Swiss striker Breel Embolo. The video assistant intervened under the expanded \u201cmistaken identity\u201d protocol introduced by the International Football Association Board ahead of the tournament, which permits a caution to be reviewed where the wrong player has been penalised, including for simulation. The officials concluded that Paredes had committed no offence and that Embolo had simulated contact; the caution was transferred to Embolo who, having already been cautioned, was sent off. It was the first red card issued at a World Cup under the new protocol.<\/p>\n

            [12]<\/a> M. Yakin, Switzerland head coach, post-match remarks following the quarter-final against Argentina, July 2026, describing the decision as \u201cunacceptable\u201d and stating that it had \u201cdestroyed\u201d his side\u2019s game. The match officials were widely criticised in the aftermath.<\/p>\n

            [13]<\/a> The television match official was introduced into rugby union in 2001, having first been trialled in South Africa in the mid-1990s. The most celebrated intervention remains the disallowance of a try by England’s Mark Cueto in the final of the 2007 Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n

            [14]<\/a> World Rugby, Television Match Official Protocol, applicable 1 January 2025, which provides that the referee remains the lead decision-maker of the officiating team, that the protocol is not to enable the TMO to drive decision-making, and that it operates within the space defined as ‘clear and obvious’. See also World Rugby, Laws of the Game, Law 6 (Match Officials), under which the referee is the sole judge of fact and of law during a match.<\/p>\n

            [15]<\/a> FIFA announced the deployment of both a primary and a reserve video assistant referee in each remaining stadium from the quarter-final stage onwards, beginning with the France v Morocco quarter-final, following sustained criticism of the officiating earlier in the tournament.<\/p>\n

            [16]<\/a> FIFA, ‘President Donald J. Trump awarded FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World’, 5 December 2025. The inaugural award was presented by President Infantino during the Final Draw for the FIFA World Cup 2026 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington DC.<\/p>\n

            [17]<\/a> An ethics complaint concerning the award was lodged by the non-governmental organisation FairSquare. In late June 2026 some fifty members of the European Parliament wrote to FIFA urging its Ethics Committee to address the complaint and to demonstrate the organisation’s commitment to political neutrality, transparency and accountability.<\/p>\n

            [18]<\/a> President Infantino announced on 23 June 2026 that President Trump would assist in presenting the trophy to the winners of the final, to be played at MetLife Stadium on 19 July 2026. President Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure, made public in the same period, recorded the receipt from President Infantino of ten tickets to the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup final, valued at USD 15,000.<\/p>\n

            [19]<\/a> H. Hassan, interview with beIN Sports, 7 July 2026, reported in The National, 8 July 2026, in which the Egypt coach suggested the officiating may have been influenced by commercial considerations and a desire to keep the reigning champions, and Lionel Messi, in the competition.<\/p>\n

            [20]<\/a> Semi-finals: France v Spain, Dallas, 14 July 2026; England v Argentina, Atlanta, 15 July 2026. The final is to be played at MetLife Stadium, New Jersey, on 19 July 2026. Quarter-final results: France 2-0 Morocco; Spain 2-1 Belgium; England 2-1 Norway (after extra time); Argentina 3-1 Switzerland (after extra time).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            Toby Cadman examines how political pressure, contested officiating and institutional decision-making at the 2026 World Cup have raised wider questions about independence, integrity and public trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[33,26,34,35,36],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-briefings-and-commentary","tag-2026-fifa-world-cup","tag-crisis-management","tag-fifa","tag-sports-governance","tag-toby-cadman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1171,"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions\/1171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thementors.group\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}