“The only thing more riling than a referee’s interference in a sports event is a politician’s,” said Sally Jenkins in The Atlantic. The red card issued against US star striker Folarin Balogun for “stepping on an opponent’s ankle” during the World Cup match against Bosnia-Herzegovina, was a “terrible call”. But Fifa’s regulations “couldn’t be clearer”: a red card means “automatic suspension for the next game”.Instead, the tournament organisers “magically lifted” the 25-year-old’s suspension in time for the host team’s last-16 clash against Belgium on Monday, after a phone call by Donald Trump to “his good friend Gianni Infantino, the president of Fifa”.
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