Maybe the Dark Lord should have left FIFA alone?

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Belgium Ends Team USA’s World Cup Run After Political Firestorm

Folarin Balogun returned to the lineup after an intervention by President Trump. But he couldn’t carry the Americans to their first quarterfinal since 2002 as the U.S. slumped to a 4-1 defeat.

By Joshua Robinson and Andrew Beaton, WSJ

Updated July 6, 2026 10:05 pm ET

President Trump’s intervention with FIFA boss Gianni Infantino led to the lifting of U.S. striker Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension.

SEATTLE—The U.S. national team came into this World Cup with every conceivable home advantage. The Americans enjoyed automatic qualification as co-hosts. They encountered raucous, star-spangled crowds wherever they went. And, when necessary, they could count on a game-changing assist from the Oval Office.

Even after presidential intervention helped the team’s top scorer back into the lineup, however, the U.S. couldn’t overcome its latest challenge on the field: the country of Belgium, the fifth-ranked team in Europe.

On Monday evening, the Belgian Red Devils swept into Seattle and brought the American World Cup campaign to an untimely end with a 4-1 defeat in the round of 16. The U.S. had been playing to reach its first World Cup quarterfinal since 2002. But that detail was easily forgotten over the previous 24 hours as a stunning series of events placed the U.S. at the center of a global soccer firestorm.

American striker Folarin Balogun had seen his suspension for an earlier red card lifted on Sunday, after President Trump spoke with FIFA boss Gianni Infantino, prompting outrage and astonishment from a Belgian team that argued the U.S. was being given preferential treatment.

FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, denied a Belgian appeal on Monday morning. And by kickoff later that afternoon, Balogun was walking out of the tunnel alongside his teammates. U.S. supporters gave him the loudest reception of any player when he was introduced while the Belgian fans booed. Some even waved red cards in the air.

Unfortunately for the Americans, that was one of the rare occasions that Balogun electrified the crowd. He had no goals, and just three shots. His greatest contribution was drawing the foul that led to Malik Tillman’s free kick goal to make it 1-1 in the first half.

That proved to be the last gasp for the American attack. Two minutes after they tied the game, Charles De Ketelaere headed home his second goal of the match to put the Belgians back on top.

U.S. head coach Mauricio Pochettino was so frustrated that he kicked away a stack of bottles on the sideline. Just five days earlier, he had ended a five-year American streak of futility against European teams by beating Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32. But a second straight win against teams from across the Atlantic was now running away from him.

It escaped for good when the Red Devils, who had started their three biggest stars on the bench, padded their lead in the 57th minute. U.S. goalkeeper Matt Freese badly misplayed a ball outside the box and left Hans Vanaken an open net to shoot into. They laid it on even thicker in stoppage time when yet another defensive breakdown allowed Romelu Lukaku to score one final goal.

Just as problematic as the team’s defensive miscues was how much the Balogun affair had shifted the mood around the U.S. team. In the space of a day, they had gone from likable tournament hosts on a historic World Cup run to the beneficiaries of a cozy relationship between the president and the head of FIFA.

Suddenly, Belgium and the rest of the soccer world were crying foul and accusing FIFA of doing a game-changing favor for the U.S. UEFA, the European soccer body, had said the decision “crossed a red line” and called it “unprecedented, ​incomprehensible and unjustifiable.”

The fallout continued to unravel until just a few hours before the match, when FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee released another statement pushing back on the criticism. It noted that Balogun and U.S. Soccer were fined $40,000 and that in many European leagues “the overturning of red cards is a common disciplinary measure, yet this has never raised concerns about crossing any ‘red line.’”

Infantino also defended the decision by insisting the body was completely independent.

“I read the decisions of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee when they are issued,” Infantino said. “Sometimes I am surprised by them. Sometimes I agree with them, and sometimes I disagree.”

As the rest of the soccer world wrung its hands over the consequences of political interference with what happened on the pitch, the U.S. remained unapologetic.

In the eyes of Pochettino—and of the White House—Balogun’s reinstatement was merely the correction of an earlier injustice. They both believed that Balogun should have never received the red card in the first place and deserved his place in the most significant match the U.S. men had played in a generation.

“In the end, it’s not that we’re victims,” Pochettino had said before the game. “But we’re not the bad guys here.”

As it turned out, they weren’t quarterfinalists either.