Haojin Zhou, Loughborough University; Borja García, Loughborough University, and Mathew Dowling, Loughborough University

As President Donald Trump presented the World Cup trophy to Spain at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the man in charge of world football’s governing body, Fifa, seemed untouched by the competition’s controversies.

In a break with protocol, the final was staged with a glitzy Super Bowl-style half-time show – at 27 minutes and 22 seconds, it was the longest in World Cup history.

The show included a performances from K-Pop super-group BTS, Robbie Williams in a bedazzled blue tracksuit and Madonna, who entered the stadium in a car driven by Brazilian greats Ronaldinho and Ronaldo. After the final whistle, the winning team, was issued with NFL-style winners’ rings. Trump, meanwhile, lingered awkwardly in frame as Spain lifted the trophy – despite Infantino’s apparent attempts to usher him away.

All this less than a fortnight after Fifa caused controversy around the world by suspending Folarin Balogun’s red-card ban under pressure from the White House.

But the world of football has shown how little the affair has cost the man at the top.

Trump lingered on stage, despite being ushered away by Infantino, as Spain lifted the trophy.

More than 200 of Fifa’s 211 member associations have already endorsed Gianni Infantino for a fourth term as president.

A few European federations are holding out, Germany the most prominent among them, but Infantino is the only candidate, the vote is not until next March, and the result is not seriously in doubt.

The associations lining up behind him are the ones best placed to hold him to account. Some reports say they were leaned on from inside Fifa to declare early, the kind of pressure Fifa’s own ethics code is supposed to forbid.

Crossing a line

European foootball’s governing body, Uefa, called the decision to suspend Balogun’s ban “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable”, saying Fifa had “crossed a red line”.

Even Sepp Blatter waded in: “Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls,” posted the former Fifa president, whose own reign ended amid a corruption scandal and who remains banned from football by Fifa.

When Sepp Blatter can claim the moral high ground, there’s a problem.

Fifa’s disciplinary committee insisted that reviewing the consequences of red cards was “nothing new in the modern game”. That’s true: the same article 27 was used in November 2025 to trim Cristiano Ronaldo’s three-match qualifying ban, clearing him for Portugal’s World Cup opener.

Yet this was reportedly the first time since 1962 that a player sent off at a World Cup finals avoided suspension. Moreover, the legal grounds for the decision have not been made public, which restricts any attempt at bringing FIFA’s disciplinary body to account.

The Royal Belgian Football Association said it was “astonished”, accusing Fifa of contradicting its own rules. Fifa rejected its challenge to Balogun’s eligibility, ruling the federation had no standing to appeal.

The gap is clearest in how the rules are applied. Fifa has opened an investigation into two Argentina players for holding up a “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” (“the Malvinas are Argentina’s”) banner after beating England.

It is enforcing its ban on political statements to the letter – in the same fortnight it stands accused of setting those rules aside for a phone call from the US president.

What does this mean for football?

The Balogun episode looks like football’s governing body bending its own rules under political pressure.

News agency AP has traced the increasingly visible Trump–Infantino relationship, including the Fifa peace prize awarded to Trump last December.

Nor is Trump a special case. Courting powerful political leaders has been Infantino’s strategy for a decade – one the rights group FairSquare traces back to the 2018 World Cup in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, via Qatar 2022, to Saudi Arabia’s uncontested award of the 2034 tournament.

The Balogun case raises the question whether Fifa must bend its own rules, structures and standards in exchange for the political patronage that keeps the machine growing.

FairSquare has already asked Fifa’s ethics committee to investigate whether Infantino breached Fifa’s political neutrality rules. Some 50 members of the European Parliament, joined by the Norwegian football federation, have backed the complaint.

Implications for the Olympics?

The pressure is now moving beyond football. Reuters reports that FairSquare has since filed a complaint to the IOC, where Infantino has been a member since 2020, arguing that his conduct should also be tested under Olympic ethics rules.

That spillover matters. The same US political climate will frame Los Angeles 2028, and the IOC now faces the next version of the same question: whether neutrality is still a governing principle, or just the language global sport uses while it moves closer to power.

Under Infantino, the direction of dependence has shifted. A decade of expansion – a revamped 48-team World Cup and now a 64-team edition floated for 2030 – has been financed by ever-closer partnership with powerful host states. Fifa’s legal and compliance division now operates from Miami, servicing the very judicial bodies in this dispute.

Fifa may look like any multinational – Amazon or HSBC relocate to wherever conditions suit – but it is not a company. It is a Swiss not-for-profit organisation whose statutes proclaim political neutrality. A corporation that follows power is doing business; a regulator that follows power is dismantling what makes it a regulator.

Fifa has spent the tournament tightening its grip on everything it can monetise, and loosening the one thing it cannot afford to lose: the belief that its rules mean the same thing whoever is asking.

Yet the electorate that decides his future has already spoken. The man heading up one of the most controversial World Cups in memory endures.

Haojin Zhou, Doctoral Researcher in Sport Policy and Governance, Loughborough University; Borja García, Reader in Sport Policy and Governance, Loughborough University, and Mathew Dowling, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, Loughborough University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.