Norway’s top soccer leader is pushing back hard after FIFA’s handling of Folarin Balogun’s red card became tangled up with Donald Trump’s influence. Lisa Klaveness says the whole thing looks wrong, says the process was flawed, and says she plans to raise a formal ethics complaint. The issue sits right at the messy intersection of officiating, governance, and the kind of political noise that can make a global tournament feel a lot less clean.
Klaveness said the red card should never have been overturned the way it was, arguing that outside pressure appeared to shape the outcome. She stressed that if the sport starts bending its own rules for any reason, the damage can spread fast. In her view, football only works when the standards are applied the same way for everyone, no matter how loud the voices around the decision get.
“First of all, it should not have happened. It is very important now to have honest communication around it. We all know that this verdict was influenced from external forces and did not have the proper process,” Klaveness said.
“When you bend a rule like this, you’re on a slippery slope that will put the whole game at risk. It is a worry for the game when you compromise fundamental rules of the game.”
She went even further, calling the FIFA suspension reversal “serious” and “worrying,” and saying the matter deserves a formal look from her own board. That is not the language of someone shrugging it off. It sounds more like a warning shot, with Klaveness clearly treating the episode as a governance problem, not just a bad day at the office.
“This case was so serious and so worrying that I hope that it might contribute to bring people out a little bit and don’t fear to bring up cases,” she said.
“I will bring it to a board meeting and discuss with my board, and then we do it. To me, it should be in the same sphere of ethical complaint.”
The situation got extra attention because Trump publicly said he reached out to FIFA President Gianni Infantino and asked for a review of Balogun’s red card. That call led to FIFA suspending the one-game ban, which kept the U.S. star available for the knockout round against Belgium. For Trump, the case was simple: he believed the call on the field was wrong and said the game should be decided with the best players on the pitch.
“All I did was I asked for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul,” the president said. “And, again, I’m good at this stuff. I didn’t think it was a foul. I thought it was two great athletes who crashed into each other and got entangled. That was not a guy punching somebody in the face or anything that would be different.
“I think it’s a terrible … if they wouldn’t allow a top player, maybe the best, maybe among the best on the team, to play. I think it would have had a big stain. I relayed it. I didn’t tell him what to do. I don’t believe he made the decision. 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.”
Trump also blasted the original red card as a bad call and said the referee’s judgment was far off the mark. He argued that a tournament of this size should not be distorted by one questionable decision, especially when the stakes are so high. It is the kind of take that fires up supporters who want fairness, but it also adds fuel to the criticism that politics had crept too far into a sporting matter.
“If you would have taken him out, I think it would have really stained this incredible championship,” Trump continued. “We gotta have our best players and Belgium. Belgium’s got a great team, by the way.
“We have our best players, and they have to have their best. If we win or we lose, it’s fair. Otherwise, let’s say we lost to them, then we lost the game. It would be a terrible thing. I think they made a really brilliant decision.
“I think the referee’s call was horrible, and nobody talks about that. They talk about the red card like it’s fine. The referee’s decision to red card, I didn’t know what the hell a red card was, and when I found out I said, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ … I said, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of power, that’s terrible.’ And then I looked at his past, and it wasn’t so great.”
Balogun was eligible to play after the review, but the U.S. still got hammered 4-1 by Belgium and went home in the Round of 16. That outcome did not calm the debate one bit, because the argument now stretches beyond one match and into how much influence should ever reach a FIFA decision. Even with the game over, the tension around the ruling is still hanging in the air.
