{"id":75778,"date":"2026-07-05T19:54:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T00:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/05\/explained-folarin-baloguns-world-cup-red-card-reversal-trumps-phone-calls-and-fifas-rationale\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T19:54:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T00:54:52","slug":"explained-folarin-baloguns-world-cup-red-card-reversal-trumps-phone-calls-and-fifas-rationale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/05\/explained-folarin-baloguns-world-cup-red-card-reversal-trumps-phone-calls-and-fifas-rationale\/","title":{"rendered":"Explained: Folarin Balogun\u2019s World Cup red-card reversal, Trump\u2019s phone calls and Fifa\u2019s rationale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The surprise move deeming the US striker eligible to play came after the American president reached out to the governing body to appeal for the change<\/p>\n<p>Donald Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/jul\/02\/donald-trump-world-cup-fifa\">has been conspicuous by his absence<\/a> so far at the World Cup, but unusually he may have been making his presence felt behind the scenes with some quiet diplomacy.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to failing to attend a game, despite the USA\u2019s impressive progress to the last 16, Trump had not mentioned the tournament on social media since offering some bland recognition of record attendance figures on 28 June. All that changed on Sunday when he took to Truth Social to thank Fifa for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/jul\/05\/folarin-balogun-red-card-suspension-lifted-usmnt-belgium-world-cup\">its highly unusual decision<\/a> to overturnsuspend striker Folarin Balogun\u2019s suspensionban from Monday\u2019s last-16 tie against Belgium.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/jul\/06\/folarin-balogun-red-card-reversal-trump-calls-fifa-explainer\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The surprise move deeming the US striker eligible to play came after the American president reached out to the governing body to appeal for the change Donald Trump has been conspicuous by his absence so far at the World Cup, but unusually he may have been making his presence felt behind the scenes with some &#8230; <a title=\"Explained: Folarin Balogun\u2019s World Cup red-card reversal, Trump\u2019s phone calls and Fifa\u2019s rationale\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/05\/explained-folarin-baloguns-world-cup-red-card-reversal-trumps-phone-calls-and-fifas-rationale\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Explained: Folarin Balogun\u2019s World Cup red-card reversal, Trump\u2019s phone calls and Fifa\u2019s rationale\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}