Skip to content
Welcome, thoughtbot's Giant Robots listeners!Start here
2026 FIFA World Cup
10JUL

72 MEPs target FIFA's Balogun reversal

2 min read
09:31UTC

72 members of the European Parliament wrote to all 27 European football associations demanding an investigation into FIFA's reversal of Folarin Balogun's ban.

← Back to France end Morocco's run and Africa'sJump to analysis ↓
SportDeveloping
Key takeaway

72 MEPs asked Europe's football associations to investigate FIFA's reversal of Folarin Balogun's ban.

72 members of the European Parliament wrote to the heads of all 27 European football associations on Tuesday 14 July, calling for an investigation into the reversal by FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) of Folarin Balogun's suspension.⁠1 The European Parliament is the directly elected legislature of the European Union, and its members hold no authority over football's governing body, so the letter is a political demand rather than a legal one.

Balogun is an England-eligible forward whose red-card ban FIFA lifted after a reported telephone call from President Trump to FIFA president Gianni Infantino. The reversal cleared him to play against Belgium and drew an immediate line of protest, with UEFA calling it "incomprehensible" and Belgium's own appeal ruled inadmissible. The MEPs are now widening that protest from football's internal channels into the political institutions of the bloc whose associations run most of the game's biggest leagues.

The letter runs alongside a second governance track. The campaign group FairSquare has pledged to refer Infantino to the International Olympic Committee's ethics commission, a body FIFA does not control. Neither route can overturn the Balogun decision, but together they keep a case FIFA has declined to explain in front of institutions it cannot appoint or instruct.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Seventy-two members of the European Parliament (MEPs, the elected representatives who sit in the EU's law-making body) wrote to the heads of every European football association, asking them to investigate why FIFA reversed a suspension for player Folarin Balogun after a phone call from Donald Trump to FIFA president Gianni Infantino. This is separate from an earlier complaint to the International Olympic Committee, which oversees Infantino personally because he is a member of that committee, meaning there are now two separate investigations into the same decision moving on different tracks. It is not yet clear whether either will lead to FIFA changing its ruling.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

FIFA's Congress operates on a one-country, one-vote basis across 211 member associations, meaning Europe's federations, even acting together, cannot outvote the rest of FIFA's membership on their own.

That voting structure is the reason MEPs are lobbying national federations to raise the issue collectively rather than pursuing a motion at FIFA's own Congress, where a European bloc alone could not guarantee the numbers to succeed.

Sources:PolitiFact
Mentions:European Parliament →Folarin Balogun →FIFA →Gianni Infantino →Donald Trump →International Olympic Committee →FairSquare →European Union →Belgium →UEFA →England →
First Reported In

Update #41 · Argentina reach final amid Falklands row

PolitiFact· 16 Jul 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
Caused by
FIFA clears Balogun for Belgium tie
FIFA's reversal of Balogun's ban is the subject of the MEPs' letter to European football associations.
Occurred 6 Jul 2026
Read story →
FairSquare takes Infantino fight to IOC
FairSquare's pledge to refer Infantino to the IOC runs alongside the European Parliament's separate governance track.
Occurred 8 Jul 2026
Read story →
This Event
72 MEPs target FIFA's Balogun reversal
The Balogun reversal has moved from football's own bodies into European Parliament politics.
Led to
Trump lingers on the trophy podium
72 MEPs' letter over the Balogun reversal is the parliamentary pressure still unresolved as Trump presented the trophy.
Occurred 18 Jul 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
CFR's analysis identified 18.75% of the 48-team field facing access barriers — the only available quantification after the State Department admitted it has none. The explicit contrast with South Africa 2010's visa waiver for all ticket holders positions the US as a regressive host by historical standards.
New York commuters / Assemblyman Bhalla
New York commuters / Assemblyman Bhalla
Bhalla framed Penn Station's closures as a class issue: 'For the 99 percent that can't afford to attend the games, it would be nice to at least know how you're going to get home from work.' Eight closures lock 650,000 daily commuters out for tournament traffic, with one on a Monday rush hour.
French Football Federation
French Football Federation
The FFF called an 11:00 CEST press conference for 28 July, at its Paris headquarters, following an extraordinary executive committee meeting, at which Zinedine Zidane is expected to be presented as head coach succeeding Didier Deschamps. As of this writing no communique confirms the appointment, contract length or start date.
Morocco
Morocco
Morocco is pushing for the 2030 final at its Grand Stade Hassan II in Casablanca, a planned 115,000-seat venue that would be the world's largest football stadium on completion. The venue is contested by a Spanish petition for the Santiago Bernabeu, and FIFA has fixed neither the venue nor the tournament's proposed 64-team format.
FIFA
FIFA
FIFA's first tournament report, published 27 July, itemises nearly 300,000 accredited personnel, 73,700 security staff and 300,000 square metres of custom-grown turf, with no revenue or cost figure attached. As a Swiss association answering to its own Congress rather than a treasury, FIFA has followed the same operational-before-financial sequence it used after Qatar 2022.
Javier Tebas / La Liga
Javier Tebas / La Liga
La Liga president Javier Tebas said on 21 July that FIFA's system is rotten from the root and that Gianni Infantino's time as president has, in his words, concluded. Tebas has no vote in FIFA's process, so days after the IOC declined jurisdiction over a separate ethics complaint, he used the only instrument he has.