FIFA

On 6 July, FIFA's Appeal Committee suspended Folarin Balogun's red-card ban, allowing the USA forward to play Belgium. Reports said Donald Trump had called Gianni Infantino, but neither FIFA nor The White House confirmed that account. Belgium's subsequent appeal was ruled inadmissible, leaving FIFA's procedure under direct scrutiny.

On 24 July, the International Olympic Committee's Ethics Commission declined to hear a complaint concerning Infantino because it fell outside its jurisdiction. The ruling did not address the allegations. For FIFA, the case returned attention to its own ethics process, which FairSquare said had not answered the original complaint for seven months.

On 27 July, FIFA published an operational report for the 2026 World Cup covering nearly 300,000 accredited personnel, 73,700 security staff and more than nine million Fan Festival visitors. It gave neither a tournament cost nor a revenue figure, despite FIFA's central role in staging and commercialising the competition.

FIFA's financial disclosures matter because the World Cup funds much of its global programme and distributes payments to national associations and clubs. On 20 July, figures for attendance, projected revenue and the prize pool circulated through wire coverage rather than a FIFA statement, while the revenue estimate remained anticipated rather than closed.