Senior Multimedia Reporter
Former FIFA vice president Jack Warner is calling on member countries to vote current president Gianni Infantino out of office, following his apparent decision to influence the FIFA Disciplinary Committee to lift a red card suspension against United States striker Folarin Balogun following a direct intervention from US President Donald Trump.
Speaking after the decision, which allowed Balogun to play in the United States’ Round-of-16 match against Belgium yesterday, shocked the footballing world, Warner said it appeared football had been infiltrated by politics and money.
“This is madness. And this has to stop somewhere, and for it to be stopped, Infantino has to be voted out of office. That is how it seems to me,” Warner explained.
He said he was disturbed at what was clearly a political influence on the game, noting FIFA statutes spoke directly to this.
“The fact is that it is the first time a politician could instruct FIFA to remove a red card,” Warner said.
“FIFA is not run by politicians. In fact, FIFA has a rule that you must not go to court, or you must not, of course, involve politicians in your business. So, I am amazed, I am shocked. But then again, this is not the same FIFA I left or the same FIFA I knew. So, at the end of the day, I want to see how the referee performs tonight (last night) to see if the referee will also be instructed by the US on how to referee the game.”
The issue erupted after the FIFA Disciplinary Committee lifted the one-match suspension Balogun received in the game against Bosnia and Herzegovina during their round-of-32 FIFA World Cup clash at the Bay Area Stadium in San Francisco on July 1.
A red card mandates that a player must automatically serve a one-match suspension at a minimum, according to Article 66.4 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code.
The card was expected to stop Balogun from participating in yesterday’s round-of-16 clash against Belgium at the Seattle Stadium.
But in an unexpected twist, Trump reportedly telephoned Infantino from the White House on Sunday to urge him to review Balogun’s red card. That call led to an overturning of the one-match suspension that allowed Balogun to represent the co-hosts in the match.
FIFA’s reason for its decision to reverse the suspension was based on Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, which states that the FIFA Disciplinary Committee may decide to suspend the enforcement of a previously imposed disciplinary sanction, a contradiction of FIFA’s disciplinary code in Article 66.4.
However, a statement from UEFA immediately said FIFA had crossed the red line in its decision, while the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) has vowed to explore all options available in order to safeguard the legitimate rights of all participating teams and to protect the fundamental principles of fair play in the sport at the current World Cup and other tournaments.
Warner said he believed the tournament was also tarnished even before it started by the ticket pricing issue and how the media rights were handled.
“I mean, this is madness, and this is all because of money. When FIFA begins to let money be its God, and you don’t have any free-air TV for people to look at the World Cup again. When FIFA could only charge for the game on Saturday, next Saturday in Miami, the cheapest ticket is US$4,500.”
Warner said the way forward for FIFA is what everybody is wondering now.
“Actually, it is the only question everybody wants to ask, because you have 14 red cards given so far in the World Cup and one was given against England, so let us see if those red cards will also be lifted.
Warner was forced to resign from FIFA in 2011 after being implicated in a corruption scandal, before being charged in the United States with “wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering four years later. However, he is yet to face those charges having had his extradition case to the US dropped by the State.
But Warner was not the only T&T national with ties to FFIA troubled by the decision.
Former FIFA referees Osmond Downer and Ramesh Ramdhan were also left shaking their heads, noting that such an action had never happened before.
Downer, now a vice president for the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (T&TFA) executive, believes the only solution to move forward is to amend the FIFA constitution by including “Notwithstanding Article 66.4 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee may decide to suspend the enforcement of a previously imposed disciplinary sanction in Article 27.”
A man known as a constitutional expert when dealing with the rules and laws of the game, he told Guardian Media Sports that the phrase seems to be the only way of moving forward, as FIFA can be bombarded by requests to reverse red cards and their penalties in the future.
Trump’s intervention has not been the only one during the current tournament.
During a dogged 3-2 triumph by England over Mexico at the Azteca Stadium on Sunday, English defender Jarell Quansah was red carded for a clumsy tackle on a Mexican player. This prompted Englishman Noah Law, a Labour Member of Parliament for St Austell and Newquay, to dispatch a letter to Infantino calling for Quansah’s card to be reversed.
In his letter, Law stated, “While I believe that it was right for Quansah to have received this red card, and that refereeing rules must be applied consistently, I believe it would be right to delay his suspension until after the completion of this World Cup.”
Ramdhan said he was shocked to have learned of the development.
“That is certainly unconventional, and there are many harsh red cards. It wasn’t a red card, I agree. It wasn’t done with the malice that a red card comes with. So, it was an erroneous red card, but in the history of the game, no red card has been rescinded after a match,” he said.
“And like I say, I don’t know what they claim in some article, some kind of thing, has nothing to do with the match, and what’s supposed to follow a suspension, which is at least one game. The other game, you’ll miss a game.”
He added, “There’s nothing else I can see legitimately that could cause a red card to be overturned after a game.
“Maybe the suspension could be reviewed, but the player has to miss the next game his team, his country, is playing. So, what has happened here is clearly out of the ordinary. And of course, when you read further, there’s an article that came out on it, and when you read the article, you saw where the US president had a discussion with the FIFA president, asking him to at least review the red card and the suspension, and, of course, it came after. It’s outside influence.”
Ramdhan, who was general secretary of the previous TTFA regime under president William Wallace, said further, “This was a judgement that was reviewed by VAR and upheld, or forced VAR to look at it, and VAR is there for checks and balances, and make sure you get the right decisions. And if VAR made a decision, do you mean the referee was wrong, and VAR was wrong? If so, you need to relook your VAR team so that they could arrive at proper decisions that wouldn’t be controversial because that is the reason for the VAR in the first place, to make sure you arrive at the right decision.
“So that didn’t happen, and FIFA now has taken an administrative decision to rescind the red card, which is, like I say, unheard of. It never happened, so it just set a precedent that will be hard to follow and not to follow moving forward.”
