FIFAs

Andrew Giuliani, son of ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, tells critics of FIFA’s Gianni Infantino ‘it’s just politics’.

Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and executive director of the White House Task Force for the recently completed World Cup, has voiced his support for embattled FIFA President Gianni Infantino, calling his critics jealous.

Infantino has faced ⁠widespread criticism over his plan to sell a stake in the World Cup to private investors. He quashed the idea in late July amid the outrage, but the plan has nonetheless cost him support for his re-election bid next year.

Among those who have voiced their displeasure with Infantino or announced their refusal to back his re-election are UEFA, CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), plus ‌the football federations of England, Wales, the Republic of Ireland and New Zealand.

Giuliani said politics and pettiness are the true reasons behind the outcry.

“It’s politics. I’ve seen this before,” Giuliani told The Athletic. “I’ve seen it before when they’ve targeted President Trump from a political perspective. I’ve seen it before when they’ve targeted other people.

“People are jealous when people are very ⁠high achievers – and what Gianni Infantino has done for FIFA ⁠is he’s taken them to a whole new level that probably they didn’t think was possible.”

Infantino’s plan was to sell approximately 20% of a proposed new entity, FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), focused on ⁠the commercial and operational facets of the World Cup and other FIFA tournaments.

Among the investors in FFE was to ⁠be Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared ⁠Kushner and part of the group that recently agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers.

“Look, we are all human beings, and I think it’s one of those things where sport has become ‌monetised and commercialised,” Giuliani added.

“I would just say that you have got to look at Gianni’s full body of work and to also realise that he’s always ‌trying ‌to improve his organisation, and I think that’s the thing … I would look at the body of work and say this is the guy I would want leading.”

Oceania have offered support to Gianni Infantino, but New Zealand have gone against their own confederation in FIFA row.

New Zealand has become the latest nation to withdraw its support for FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s re-election bid over his aborted commercial rights stake sale plan, while Oceania’s confederation cautiously backed the ⁠governing body’s leadership.

Infantino has faced open revolt after three confederations – Europe’s UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF (North and Central America and Caribbean) – called for a review of his leadership and attacked his conduct over the plan to bring private investment into FIFA competitions.

Infantino will seek re-election for a fourth term in ⁠charge of the global governing body at the FIFA Congress next year, with the African and South American confederations declaring their continued support.

New Zealand, the only Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) nation to qualify for this year’s World Cup, said on Friday it had withdrawn support for Infantino and that the review of the stake sale proposal should be independent due to a loss of confidence and trust in FIFA’s leadership.

“We’ve called for an independent review specifically because what we don’t ‌want to see is a sort of in-house quick washover of this,” New Zealand Football (NZF) Chief Executive Andrew Pragnell told the Reuters news agency.

“An independent review is something else that has been called for by other confederations that will help restore some of the trust.”

The OFC said in a statement that it welcomed FIFA’s decision to withdraw the proposal and that football in the Oceania region had grown under the current FIFA leadership.

“OFC recognises the progress achieved over the last decade in advancing football development in Oceania under FIFA’s leadership and encourages FIFA to use the review as an opportunity to identify and implement any changes that may be necessary,” it added.

What allies does Infantino have?

Swiss Infantino had proposed carving off ⁠the commercial rights to the World Cup and selling 20 percent to private investors to raise about $4.2bn before ⁠a U-turn following the furore.

The proposal came with a $20m grant for member associations for the next funding cycle, an amount that could have been doubled if they signed the deal.

Following a crisis meeting in Morocco last week, FIFA apologised to its 211 member associations for mistakes in the handling of the proposal and said its leadership had ⁠full support for Infantino.

Despite the opposition of the three confederations, which represent 136 of the 211 member associations who will vote in the FIFA presidential election in March, Infantino still has plenty of allies in the game.

Six ⁠heads of Arab national football associations, including Qatar and 2030 World Cup cohost Morocco, firmly ⁠backed him on Thursday, saying they appreciated his “sustained efforts to advance football globally”.

The Confederation of African Football’s executive committee also unanimously confirmed its support for Infantino, though, there is no guarantee of a bloc vote from all 54 members.

Pragnell said an independent review into the scrapped FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal needed to shed light on decision-making and oversight at FIFA.

It should ‌also identify who was involved in the plan for Thrive Capital, a firm with close familial links to US President Donald Trump, to play a leading role in the venture.

“I think the scope needs to be considered really carefully, but what’s most important is that all confederations should agree ‌on ‌the scope, and it needs to get under way with urgency,” Pragnell told Reuters.

AFC member Australia has also called for an independent review alongside the Asian bloc, without publicly expressing a position on Infantino’s leadership.

“Based on what we’ve seen, including [Australia’s] commitment to the AFC statement, we’re strongly aligned,” Pragnell said.

Uefa is in something of a pickle as it tries to get rid of Infantino.

The easiest route to success was the slow turning of the vice throughout this week, hoping to exert enough pressure to force him to quit.

Yet the Swiss appears to have no intention of walking away.

European football looks like an outlier, struggling to gain enough support to topple him.

On Thursday, Lamin Kaba Bajo, the president of the Gambia Football Federation, praised Infantino’s “courage” and for the U-turn, and said he was “willing to give him my support more than ever”.

Only Jordan, one of the few countries which did not back Infantino before last week, has publicly stated it will not vote for his re-election in March.

Concacaf is the only other confederation to issue a public statement after the proposal was aborted but, unlike Uefa, it did not go as far as to say it had lost confidence in the Fifa president.

Conmebol, the South American confederation, said on Thursday it would not support “any action or procedure that disregards” Fifa’s mechanisms before the presidential election.

Ideally, Uefa would force an emergency meeting of the Fifa Council, to provide what it would consider to be a true chance to hold Infantino to account.

But getting the necessary 19 of 36 confederation and football association heads to support it has proven to be exceptionally difficult.

Uefa has also kept on the table the option of a vote of no confidence, which it can trigger via an extraordinary congress any time it wishes.

However, it would need a majority of Fifa’s 211 member associations – 106 votes – to pass the motion. It would be a de facto presidential election without a second candidate.

If Uefa does not think it can get to 106, which looks a stretch, then there is little point in triggering the vote.

The other option is to try to find a unity candidate to stand against Infantino in the election next March. The favourite would be Concacaf president Victor Montagliani.

Any option which takes time gives Infantino space to build bridges, and with Fifa due to announce new funding to member associations by the end of the year he could dangle another carrot for his re-election.

Unless Uefa sticks by the nuclear option – and goes through with its threat of a boycott.

This has issues, and it is not a lever you can pull very often, otherwise it gives the impression of riding roughshod over the rest of the world.

It is one thing use it to jettison the FFE proposal, another entirely to effectively dethrone the president with it.

Uefa’s stance will soon be tested, with the Fifa Women’s U20s World Cup kicking off in Poland on 5 September. Six European countries are due to take part, including England.

FIFA’s Gianni Infantino has scrapped his controversial plan to sell a stake in the World Cup to private investors after global outrage. The FIFA president is up for re-election next year, so why is no one running against him? Soraya Lennie unpacks the details.

Gianni Infantino looked every bit the “King of Football”, as US President Donald Trump likes to call him, when the two allies sat together watching the World Cup final less than two weeks ago.

Sure, there were some boos inside MetLife Stadium near New York when the two men walked across the turf to present the trophy and medals to Spain and Argentina players on July 19.

Still, that 104th and final game capped the biggest-ever tournament seen as a vindication for the FIFA president – a consensus success on the field and a financial bonanza for global football. Infantino could look ahead to his likely re-election coronation next March.

The sunny scene must now feel an age ago since Infantino caused a seismic rift in global football.

The intensifying fallout has threatened the 56-year-old Infantino’s job after he seemed untouchable until this week.

Did Infantino have any choice but to abandon FIFA World Cup investment plan?

Infantino’s misstep was inviting private investors, led by Joshua Kushner, to buy a stake in future profits from World Cups and all FIFA events. The ensuing backlash – which included pledges by European nations to boycott FIFA events and claims from senior staff that Infantino deceived everyone – led Infantino to announce Friday that he was abandoning the plan.

“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” he said in a statement.

Infantino left New York City last week with letters pledging election support from about 200 of FIFA’s 211 national member federations who vote for their leader every four years.

Now, even after scrapping his divisive investment project, his support remains unclear at best.

What would the private investment plan have done to for FIFA?

Infantino’s proposal would have created a subsidiary – known as FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) – for the money-making parts of the not-for-profit football body’s work: running tournaments like the World Cup, selling broadcasting and sponsorship, tickets and hospitality.

Private equity and petrostate sovereign wealth money has been normalised in European club football, yet it still seems unthinkable to many observers in the context of the World Cup. Football’s ultimate prize is seen as being about glory, not money, and fans have long believed it belongs to them.

FIFA proposed raising $4.2bn from investors buying a stake of about 20 percent in FFE, based on an equity valuation of $20bn. The “anchor investor” would have been Thrive Eternal, launched by Joshua Kushner, whose brother Jared Kushner is a son-in-law of Trump.

FIFA’s 211 member federations – already effectively the owners of the governing body as a nonprofit association under Swiss law – were offered $20m each. The deadline to accept was September 19.

The members already are due $10m each from FIFA over the next four years, funded largely by its record $15bn revenue over 2023-26 tied to the World Cup that just ended.

FIFA says under FFE, that would have doubled to $20m each, then rise to $22m each through 2034, and $24m to 2038.

That’s a huge sum for tiny football federations in places like Andorra, Montserrat and Papua New Guinea. Deep-pocketed football powers like England, Spain or France have other priorities.

Who were the main opponents of Infantino’s plan for FIFA and World Cups?

Some FIFA vice presidents, some of its top executives, all the European football federations, the football bodies of Asia and North America, Britain’s prime minister, the global group of national leagues, a lot of fans worldwide.

Essentially, everyone.

Infantino was looking increasingly friendless on Friday. His senior adviser, former Goldman Sachs banker Carlos Cordeiro, resigned and called it a bad deal. FIFA chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, gave a stinging statement to The Associated Press news agency in defence of colleagues that all but invited his boss to fire him.

A key move Thursday was European football body UEFA pledging to boycott all FIFA competitions until Infantino dropped the plan.

Europe’s teams routinely dominate and win FIFA trophies like the men’s World Cup and Club World Cup, which are its biggest revenue earners.

They collectively feared that private investors would seek – and demand – value from more games and bigger competitions that threaten the balance of global football.

That could jeopardise attention and revenues for club football, including the UEFA Champions League.

Fixture calendars are already congested, elite players are at their limits, broadcast and sponsor money is not unlimited.

All are angry that Infantino seems not to have consulted anyone while planning the project over the last year, when he was so focused on spending time in Trump’s orbit. Even Trump said Friday he had not spoken with the FIFA chief on his plan to sell stakes in the tournament.

Did Infantino have any support for his plans for FIFA and World Cups?

Infantino’s traditional support base in Africa, which has 54 of the 211 voting members, had been neutral about the offers of game-changing money for many of them.

The 10-nation South American group CONMEBOL said on Friday it had received the proposal and would evaluate the issue “with the rigour it demands”. CONMEBOL is led by FIFA’s vice president, Alejandro Dominguez of Paraguay, who is relying on Infantino expanding the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams.

That would give more games to minority cohosts Argentina, Paraguay and inaugural 1930 World Cup host Uruguay, who currently are set to get just one game each of the 104. The rest are in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

What happens now for Infantino in his role as FIFA president?

The UEFA-led resistance succeeded in stopping the sell-off plan. Will that satisfy Infantino’s opponents to allow him to remain in office?

Does Infantino have the credibility to stay in office after interventions Friday by Lamour and Cordeiro that surely would make most presidencies untenable?

November 18 is the deadline for candidates to enter the next presidential contest, exactly four months ahead of the March 19 vote in Rabat, Morocco, where FIFA has its African headquarters.

Infantino was re-elected unopposed in 2019 in Paris and 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda. FIFA statutes allow him one more four-year term in office.

The FFE spinoff seemed a way to create a commissioner-like role for Infantino beyond 2031, likely paying much more than his current annual salary and bonus deal of more than $6m.

It would take 106 votes to ensure a majority in a contested election. Continents surely do not vote uniformly en bloc, but most of Europe’s 55, plus CONCACAF’s 35 and Asia’s 46 would be a solid base.

Speculation on a likely direct challenger typically lands on Paris Saint-Germain’s Qatari president Nasser Al-Khelaifi and the Canadian FIFA vice president, Victor Montagliani.

Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, the AFC’s longtime president from Bahrain, narrowly lost the FIFA presidential election to Infantino in 2016, so may decide to run again.

All such talk seemed fanciful until this week, despite long-term unease with Infantino’s style and previous attempts to force through unpopular projects.

The talk has never seemed more likely to become action.

In order to afford a last-minute ticket to the World Cup final at New York New Jersey Stadium — widely billed as the single most expensive sporting event ever played in the United States — you might have to be a millionaire, as the cost for a coveted seat at the venue crossed the $2m mark less than 24 hours before kickoff.

As Lionel Messi’s Argentina face Spain and their teenage superstar Lamine Yamal, ticket prices have soared on the resale market.

By Friday, nearly all tickets appeared to be sold, with a few listed on FIFA’s sales platform at about $32,000 apiece.

On Saturday, there were no last-minute tickets available on the site. However, FIFA’s resale platform had tickets available from a little less than $10,000 to as high as $2.3m.

The final caps a World Cup where fans were willing to shell out more than ever for a seat at the quadrennial showpiece, as ticket buyers confounded even the greatest cynics in the face of sky-high prices.

It is a fitting end to a tournament that has tested the limits of what fans will spend, with FIFA’s gamble paying off after concerns over visa restrictions and domestic unrest in the US.

“What FIFA did a very good job of was determining what demand would be because people [were] paying these absurd prices for just about all the 104 matches,” said Scott Friedman, a ticketing expert who previously worked for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“A year ago, we didn’t think people would be travelling with Trump’s ICE stuff and all this other conspiracy stuff. But it’s the most popular tournament in the world by far globally, and FIFA, to their credit, they set the prices high, and people ended up paying them.”

According to the Reuters news agency, an analysis of FIFA attendance data found that more than half the 72 group matches were attended to capacity, with most others only a few hundred fans short of a full house. About 99.7 percent of available seats were filled during the preliminary stage matches, FIFA said.

The data erased early concerns that FIFA’s infamously steep prices would put off fans, after swaths of empty seats were seen around the Guadalajara Stadium for the June 11 match between South Korea and Czechia.

Higher prices, higher demand

As the tournament expanded to its largest-ever field, however, with 48 teams involved, so too did interest among fans.

Prices were set initially at $575 a ticket for group games — more than double the most expensive group ticket available during the 2022 tournament — but FIFA’s dynamic pricing system meant that many ticket holders paid far more.

Hundreds of tickets were still available for the final on Wednesday, priced at little more than $7,000 on FIFA’s platform, a surprising fact that prompted speculation over whether FIFA had finally gone too far with its prices.

But the batch of seats available was likely the result of a process known as “slow ticketing”, Friedman explained, a common practice in mega-events in which organisers restrict inventory to motivate buyers.

“They can act like they already sold their seats and kind of just dribble them in accordingly to obviously increase market demand,” said Friedman, who runs the Ticket Talk Network, dedicated to exploring how seats for sports mega-events are bought and sold.

“Like, ‘Oh, there’s only so-and-so amount of tickets left available in the section, I better buy now,’”

‘No one really knows how this works’

An opaque “dynamic pricing” process has also proven a boon for FIFA, as the sport continues its uneasy evolution from a working-class game to a pastime of the wealthy.

FIFA introduced dynamic pricing for the first time at this tournament, allowing ticket prices to fluctuate based on real-time demand and other factors.

“One reason for the frustration over the last few months is that no one really knows how this works,” said Adam Elmachtoub, an associate professor of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia University.

“People are willing to accept dynamic pricing — we deal with it for airfare, we deal with it even [for] buying clothes — but I think when it’s such a high-profile event, transparency will help a lot.”

FIFA introduced a small number of lower-cost tickets in response to backlash over prices, as politicians including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani lobbied for locals to have access to affordable seats.

A high-quality tournament also spurred demand, with the four top-ranked nations in the semifinals for the first time since rankings were introduced, and Sunday’s final will feature the 39-year-old Messi in what is probably his final World Cup match.

“The notion of what is fair pricing here is complex because entertainment is not like a necessity,” said Elmachtoub.

Fan appetite holds up

Lax rules around the resale market in the US have only served to accelerate the pocket-emptying around the tournament, with second-hand ticket sellers largely empowered to set their own prices.

The rules in the US stand in contrast to cohosts Mexico, where resellers are prohibited from listing their tickets above what they spent — and much of the rest of the world.

A flood of final-week listings brought prices down on resale platform SeatGeek, with the average ticket for the final listed for more than $11,000 as of Friday. Still, that figure easily made the final the most expensive event that the platform had sold, 8 percent above the 2024 Super Bowl, SeatGeek said.

“What we’re seeing with this year’s World Cup is that demand fluctuates with every round and every match-up reveal,” said Chris Leyden, senior director for marketing at SeatGeek.

“The appetite for this tournament has held up remarkably well from the group stage through the knockouts.”

World Cup for ‘a happy few’

Human rights experts warned, however, that the tournament remained out of reach for far too many fans.

At what FIFA President Gianni Infantino had promised would be the most inclusive World Cup, supporters from multiple countries were unable to obtain visas, according to the Sport & Rights Alliance.

“It’s been a World Cup for a happy few,” Ronan Evain, executive director of Football Supporters Europe, told reporters.

“Those in Europe, Norwegians, Scottish, who have enough purchasing power to travel to the US, don’t need a visa to enter the country and can afford the extortionate ticket prices.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump did not like what he saw. So, once again, he picked up the phone.

Trump said Monday that he called FIFA President Gianni Infantino after he disagreed with the World Cup referee who gave a red card to U.S. men’s soccer team star Folarin Balogun. The discipline, which Trump called “very unfair” and a “stain” on the World Cup, would have barred Balogun from playing in Monday’s elimination game against Belgium.

“I asked for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul,” Trump told reporters during an event in the Oval Office. “I am good at this stuff. I didn’t think it was a foul. I thought it was two great athletes that crashed into each other and got entangled.”

Trump said he initially didn’t know “what the hell a red card was” or what it meant. “When I found out, I said, ‘You gotta be kidding!’” he said.

Trump’s involvement in soccer’s disciplinary process created an international uproar.

UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, said FIFA “crossed a red line” with the reversal. Belgium’s football association appealed the ruling, which FIFA denied during a hearing Monday. Belgian coach Rudi Garcia mocked the decision as an April Fools’ joke.

“This decision clearly raises many questions,” Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot said in a statement Monday, according to the New York Times.

“If a phone call really is what explains this incomprehensible decision, it would amount to undermining the most basic rules of soccer and sports,” added Prévot, a former soccer referee.

Trump’s close relationship with Infantino also has drawn new scrutiny.

In December, Infantino presented Trump with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, an award the governing body created after Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize. That decision is now the subject of an ethics complaint, backed by members of the European Parliament, who argue it compromised FIFA’s political neutrality.

Trump said he did not ask Infantino to reverse the call. But that was the outcome reached by FIFA’s disciplinary committee, which, in 64 years, has reversed a red-card penalty only once during a World Cup tournament.

The episode serves as a reminder of a pattern of behavior the president has exhibited when he doesn’t get his way, regardless of the rules of the game. For Trump, a deal-maker who has described the world as “a casino,” often pushes the boundaries of long-standing norms.

After FIFA reversed course, Trump called the decision “brilliant” and said Belgium can now “be really proud” if they were to beat the U.S. team on Monday night.

“The other way, if they beat us, we’ll say, or I’ll say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020, but I won’t get into that,” Trump said.

Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” said Trump’s action are “perfectly consistent with how Trump has behaved on the world stage.”

“He has no interest in or no respect for any kind of international rules or norms,” he said.

Levitsky said the events illustrate the Trump administration’s worldview, one that, he argues, revolves around the ethos that “if we’re strong enough, we can leverage our way to whatever the hell we want.”

As examples, he pointed to the administration’s military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and efforts to acquire Greenland, both of which have led to diplomatic tensions.

Trump also has a history of using phone calls to pressure officials to reach an outcome he wants.

In a 2019 call, he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rival, a moment that became the catalyst of his first impeachment. And after losing the 2020 election, he pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” the margin he needed to flip the state, a move that ultimately led to a criminal indictment.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino presents President Trump with the FIFA Peace Prize in December.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Trump defended his call with Infantino to reporters and appeared to downplay how much it may have contributed to the red card penalty being reversed.

“I can’t tell [Infantino] what to do, and I don’t believe he made the decision,” Trump said. “I think it was a committee that made the decision, and they made the right decision, because No. 1, it wasn’t a foul, and you want to see a game with your best players.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who was in the Oval Office when Trump acknowledged the call with Infantino, made reference to the Peace Prize as he thanked Trump for “getting rid of the ridiculous red card” ahead of the knockout game.

“There was a reason the FIFA trophy sat here for as long as it did,” Cruz told Trump.

Infantino, for his part, issued a statement Monday insisting that the decision came from FIFA’s independent disciplinary committee and that he told Trump the case would be decided by the body. Bill White, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, also defended Trump, saying he “would never interfere with the inner workings of FIFA.”

Norman Eisen, co-founder of Democracy Defenders Action, said Trump’s decision to get involved in soccer’s disciplinary process is a “classic example of achieving a right outcome through wrong means.” He added that he believes the Trump administration and FIFA showed to be “two of the most corrupt entities around.”

“Like many Americans who are following the World Cup and rooting our team on, I thought it was a bad call,” Eisen said. “But I would never have chosen to bring that about in this fashion.”

Levitsky argued that given the popularity of the World Cup, which hundreds of millions of people around the world are tuning into to watch, Trump is opening himself up for more scrutiny on the global scale.

“People across the world who don’t give a damn about politics are following the World Cup, and they’re seeing the United States behave this way, taking what it can take at the expense of others unfairly,” he said. “Of course it is going to hurt the U.S. image abroad.”

Belgium’s football federation (RBFA) says it is “astonished” by FIFA’s controversial decision to suspend the one-match red card ban on USA striker Folarin Balogun and is “investigating all potential options” to uphold integrity in the sport.

The World Cup was plunged into uproar on Sunday after FIFA suspended a red card given to Balogun ahead of the host nation’s clash with Belgium, in a bombshell move welcomed by US President Donald Trump but slammed by Belgian officials.

The extraordinary FIFA ruling means that Balogun is now free to play for the USA against Belgium on Monday in Seattle, with a place in the quarterfinals at stake.

The Royal Belgian Football Association said it is “investigating all potential options” to “safeguard the legitimate rights of all participating teams and to protect the fundamental principles of fair play in our sport”.

“I didn’t know that at the FIFA World Cup, the 5th of July is now the 1st of April, and that it’s April Fool’s Day,” added Belgium coach Rudi Garcia at a news conference.

“A lot of our thoughts and opinions are in the release,” Garcia said.

“We’re not defending the national team or the federation, we are defending football.”

Balogun had been set to miss Monday’s last-16 knockout clash with the Belgians after receiving a straight red card following a video review for stepping on the foot of a Bosnian defender in a round-of-32 clash that the US won 2-0.

Under FIFA rules, a straight red card automatically triggers a one-game ban, which cannot be appealed by the player’s team.

But FIFA said on Sunday that the ban will now be suspended for a year, in a stunning move for which no specific explanation was offered.

It is the first instance of a red-carded player being allowed to play in his team’s subsequent match since the introduction of the yellow and red card rules at the 1970 edition of the World Cup.

‘We are not the bad men’

Top scorer Balogun has been key to the USA’s progress in the tournament, netting three times, and his absence against Belgium would have been a blow to the team in Seattle.

The stakes are huge for the cohosts, whose strong start to the tournament has raised expectations to fever-pitch levels among the American public, and they are targeting a run to at least the quarterfinals. The last time the USA reached the quarters was in 2002.

Balogun himself had said on Friday that the red card ban was “something I have to just accept”.

However, the 25-year-old celebrated FIFA’s U-turn with an Instagram post of himself in the US team jersey and Michael Jackson’s Bad attached as the audio.

USA players and officials welcomed the news, which they received on their way to training on Sunday morning.

“I think a lot of us thought it was AI at first,” defender Chris Richards said. “I think we were really excited because we found out through social media; it was cool. It was a lot of question marks, but just very, very happy and excited overall.”

“It feels right,” forward Christian Pulisic added. “Really excited for him to have this opportunity. To see the smile on his face and to be able to give us a boost tomorrow is great.”

Head coach Mauricio Pochettino said that “it’s a fair decision because it should have never been a red card”, calling the punishment “too big” for an unintentional foul.

“It’s not that we are victims, but we are not the bad men, the mean ones here,” he said.

FIFA decision ‘a bit of a surprise’

In its statement, FIFA pointed to “article 27 of the FIFA disciplinary code”, which allows the suspension to be “suspended for a probationary period of one year”.

Balogun would serve the ban only if he commits another similar foul in the next year, it said.

There is some precedent for the decision.

Portugal superstar Cristiano Ronaldo earned a three-game ban for an elbow during qualifying last year, but had two matches of his ban suspended.

The move, which allowed Ronaldo to play in Portugal’s World Cup opener, drew criticism at the time.

Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois said it was “a bit of a surprise” that Balogun was cleared to play just a day before the match.

“Had it been done earlier, we’d have been able to be mentally more prepared, perhaps,” he said.

FIFA’s decision has stirred up a social media storm, with mixed reactions to the suspension.

DR Congo footballer Yannick Bolasie expressed his dismay at the decision by saying the reaction to FIFA’s U-turn would have been quite different had it been taken in the Africa Cup of Nations.