U.S. World Cup star's suspension lifted after Trump's call to FIFA president

Amna Nawaz:

All right, let's turn our attention now to President Trump's involvement in another international affair. That's the World Cup.

The U.S. takes on Belgium tonight with star striker Flo Balogun on the pitch. Balogun was given a red card in last week's game against Bosnia and Herzegovina, meaning he would miss tonight's game. Then Trump intervened, and FIFA reversed Balogun's suspension, leading to controversy and outrage.

For more, we turn now to our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, as well as Leander Schaerlaeckens, who's been covering the cup for ESPN and The Guardian, is the author of the book "The Long Game: U.S. Men's Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top or Thereabouts."

Leander, I will turn to you first, because you have covered soccer for a while.

For context here,how unusual is it for a red card suspension to be handed out during a World Cup match and then reversed mid-tournament? How often does that happen?

Leander Schaerlaeckens, The Guardian:

The rules are very clear here. You get a red card, you're suspended for the next game. In fact, the last time I was on your very show, I was asked, is there any chance he will play in the next game? And I said no, because there wasn't.

This has happened before in the World Cup. In 1962, a Brazilian player called Garrincha was kind of spared his automatic suspension. It hasn't happened since then. There's a little bit of a recent precedence, where Cristiano Ronaldo was supposed to miss the first two games of this World Cup because of a suspension.

But then he went to the White House along with his Saudi employer, Mohammed bin Salman, and suddenly that suspension went away and he was ready to go in the opening games of this World Cup. But this is not supposed to happen. There is a huge uproar around the world about this, and rightly so, because what's happened here is that a wrong has been righted in the soccer sense, because it shouldn't have been a red card.

And the U.S. played down a man for half-an-hour and was going to miss its best striker for this Belgium game. But in fixing that wrong, a greater wrong has now been inflicted, and the Belgians understandably are upset.

Amna Nawaz:

So, Liz, how did this happen? The president has come out and said he did make a call, he did intervene. What do we know about what he said?

Liz Landers:

President Trump and the administration apparently sprang into action after this happened last week. And the president talked about this in a lot of detail today in the Oval Office. He said that he saw the play during the game last week and he thought it wasn't a foul, and instead it was just, as he said, two great athletes that got tangled up.

He called the player a very vital player when someone explained to him what the red card meant, and thought that the red card was very unfair. So he said in the Oval Office today that he did call FIFA President Gianni Infantino, and here's how he described that phone conversation.

President Donald Trump:

I think it would have had a big stain. And I relayed just that feeling. I didn't tell him what to do. I can't tell him what to do, but -- and I don't believe he made the decision. I think it was a committee that made the decision. And they made the right decision.

Liz Landers:

The president said that he did ask Infantino to review the red card and to review what had happened during the game.

And within about an hour-and-a-half of the president making these comments today, we got a statement from the FIFA president, and he said in part in this statement -- quote -- "During our conversation, I explained that there was an ongoing legal process involving FIFA's independent judicial bodies, and that the case would be decided in due course by the competent bodies. That is how FIFA's system works, and it is a principle that I will always uphold."

So, defending the autonomy of the organization there. But these two men have a very close relationship. FIFA took up offices in the Trump Tower. Infantino attended President Trump's inauguration. And, of course, people may remember last year in December, during the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center here in Washington, Gianni Infantino presented President Trump with the first ever FIFA Peace Prize.

Amna Nawaz:

Can I just follow up with a little bit of irony in all of this as well? This is the president intervening on Flo Balogun's behalf.

Balogun can only play for Team USA because of birthright citizenship. His Nigerian mother was too pregnant to fly back from the U.S. when she was visiting. That's why he's a U.S. citizen. He was raised in the U.K. Was the president asked about this, something he's worked to undo?

Liz Landers:

The president has not been asked about this, and he's not addressed this irony either.

He challenged birthright citizenship day one back in office here with that executive order, which the Supreme Court just ruled last week against him and said that the 14th Amendment does give people the right to citizenship if you are born here in the U.S., so basically defending Balogun's status as an American citizen, in addition to everyone else who has birthright citizenship here.

The president expressed his disappointment in that decision, but then went on last week to say that he still wants to challenge birthright citizenship, Amna. So now we see the president advocating on behalf of this one player when it benefits Team USA and him.

Amna Nawaz:

So, Leander, back to the World Cup of it all, now we know Belgium is obviously furious. The latest news seems to suggest that FIFA has rejected their appeal. What do you expect to happen next? Will there be more appeals? And what does all this mean for the U.S. match tonight?

Leander Schaerlaeckens:

Well, so first of all, Belgium was basically told, you can appeal this decision, even though they were never given an explanation or were told what the appeal process would look like, whereupon they basically lodged a blind appeal.

And then FIFA ruled very, very quickly and said, no, you have no standing in this case. Therefore, your appeal is denied, or it wasn't even considered in the first place. This was already a tough game for the U.S. They played Belgium in March. They lost 5-2 in a friendly game. They were eliminated by Belgium in the 2014 World Cup at the same stage in the Round of 16.

The U.S. had a lot more momentum going into this game, but it also feels like this kind of has reenergized the Belgians, and it feels like there is a lot of kind of goodwill that was building around this U.S. team at this World Cup, which is the point of hosting a World Cup ultimately, has kind of just disintegrated.

And there's this huge asterisk behind them if they manage to win this game. So it's all just got all these extra layers now of geopolitics and of scandals because the rest of the soccer world outside of FIFA, the Belgian Federation, the Bosnian Federation, which was the team that Balogun got the red card against, UEFA, which is the European confederation, they're all upset, and this isn't going to go away just after this game.

Amna Nawaz:

All right, Leander Schaerlaeckens, Liz Landers, thank you to you both.

Liz Landers:

Of course.