Published Jul 8, 2026, 3:56 PM ET · Updated 4 months ago · 1 source

White House’s World Cup head defends Trump lobbying Fifa over red card

guardian
guardian
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White House’s World Cup head defends Trump lobbying Fifa over red card

Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House’s World Cup taskforce, has defended Donald Trump’s lobbying of Fifa to lift the suspension of US player Folarin Balogun for Monday’s game against Belgium. The US president claimed that Brazilian referee Raphael Claus, who showed Balogun a red card in the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, was “a little bit suspect, if you check his past”. This was apparently a reference to a match-fixing investigation by Brazil’s senate in 2024 that examined how refere