President Donald Trump boasted about his controversial phone call to FIFA’s president, saying his effort to overturn a U.S. player’s World Cup suspension had “worked out much better” in the end.
He highlighted the episode while speaking at Trump Tower in New York City during a reception with FIFA chief Gianni Infantino, held ahead of Sunday’s World Cup final between Spain and Argentina.
While recounting the highlights of the weeks-long tournament, Trump singled out what he called “probably the most unforgettable moment”: the red card shown to U.S. striker Folarin Balogun, who received a one-match ban during the U.S.-Bosnia match on July 1.
In the aftermath, Trump personally called Infantino to press for the suspension to be lifted — a move FIFA ultimately made, triggering a political backlash and accusations that the president had crossed a line.
“I was forced to call Gianni and just make a recommendation,” the 80-year-old president said on Friday. “I said, ‘Gianni, I’d like to make a recommendation: Let the guy in the game!’ No I didn’t say that. I said I’d like to wage a complaint. And actually…I had no idea what was gonna happen.”
Balogun returned to the field on July 6, though the U.S. ultimately lost to Belgium 1–4, ending the host nation’s run in the quadrennial tournament.
Still, Trump cast the episode as a net positive. “It’s so much better the way it worked out because there’s no controversy,” he said, standing beside Infantino on Friday. “They won the game, and our team had all of its players.”
“Think of it. If he didn’t allow him and they lost, they’d say we would have won the game if we had our best player,” the Republican president added. “So, Gianni made yet another of his many good decisions.”
That assessment was not widely shared.
The European Union of Football Associations condemned FIFA’s reversal as “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable.” Belgium coach Rudi Garcia said he initially thought the decision was a joke, while the Belgian Federation indicated it would be “investigating all potential options.”
Others warned the move placed the U.S. in an untenable position.
“This is a lose-lose situation for Team USA now,” geopolitics expert Cyrus Janssen wrote on X. “We beat Belgium and the victory will be tainted as we needed our President to cheat to help us win. If we lose than [sic] even our President cheating couldn’t help us win.”
Amid mounting criticism, Infantino released a statement on July 6 emphasizing that FIFA’s disciplinary process operates independently.
“I have seen the public comments regarding the decision of the independent FIFA Disciplinary Committee related to the suspension of Folarin Balogun, and I would like to reiterate a fundamental principle of FIFA’s governance,” he wrote.
“FIFA’s judicial bodies are independent. They operate autonomously, apply the FIFA Disciplinary Code, and decide cases based on the applicable regulations and the specific facts before them,” he added.
Infantino is now facing a formal complaint lodged with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which alleges breaches of political neutrality rules.
After the U.S. exit, Balogun himself acknowledged Trump’s “unique” intervention was controversial.
“My initial reaction was I was happy to be back in the team, but when I kind of started to reflect, I knew it was going to cause a lot of controversy, and I could almost see within my team-mates a bit of nerves, because it’s something that is so unique,” he told CBS News this week.
Elsewhere in his remarks on Friday, Trump suggested that the U.S. could host a future World Cup “without Mexico and Canada” and revisited his longstanding and unsubstantiated claims about election fraud.
The president is set to attend the final on Sunday at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and will personally hand over the trophy to the winning team.
