GENEVA – In the days before England played Belgium at the World Cup, a phone call changed things. Folarin Balogun had been suspended, his two-match red card ban pulling him out of the group stage after a foul in the opener. Then Donald Trump made contact with FIFA, and Balogun played.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino later said no direct communication had occurred between the two. Now a human rights organization wants the International Olympic Committee to judge whether he was telling the truth, and whether his broader relationship with Trump violates the neutrality rules that govern international sports governance.
FairSquare, a UK-based rights organization that focuses on labor abuses in global sport, filed a formal complaint with the IOC on July 9, Al Jazeera reported, alleging Infantino had committed “repeated breach of political neutrality rules” through his support for the American president. The complaint follows a filing FairSquare made with FIFA’s own Ethics Committee in December 2025. That earlier case remains pending after seven months.
The new filing centers on conduct FairSquare argues goes beyond ordinary diplomatic courtesy. At the top of its complaint sits the FIFA Peace Prize awarded to Trump at a Kennedy Center ceremony in December 2025, which Infantino presented personally. The organization alleges the award was given without approval from the FIFA Council, calling it a potential “egregious abuse of power.” FIFA’s Code of Ethics, specifically Article 15, requires officials to maintain political neutrality. Violations carry financial penalties starting at 10,000 Swiss francs and can escalate to a two-year ban from football activities for repeated or serious offenses.
Fifty members of the European Parliament have already asked FIFA’s Ethics Committee to formally assess the situation. Norway’s Football Federation has expressed support for the ethical review. But expressions of support are not findings, and neither FIFA’s committee nor the IOC has ruled on either complaint.
The Balogun episode is the complaint’s sharpest edge. The American striker received a red card in the United States’ opening World Cup match, drawing a suspension that would have ruled him out against Belgium. Trump publicly called for intervention, the ban was overturned, and Balogun played. FIFA and Infantino both denied coordination. FairSquare argues that what happened, regardless of the specific mechanism, constituted political interference in the competition’s disciplinary process, which the Ethics Code explicitly prohibits. England’s Jarell Quansah served his own two-match suspension against Norway without any comparable intervention.
Infantino’s relationship with Trump stretches back to before the tournament. He attended Trump’s inauguration, visited the White House on multiple occasions, and hosted Trump at the FIFA World Cup draw in December 2025. Trump received the FIFA Peace Prize at that event, with Infantino presenting it in front of cameras at the Kennedy Center.
IOC president Kirsty Coventry told reporters she had not yet received FairSquare’s complaint and could not comment on its specifics, but said the organization would examine any formal submission carefully. The IOC’s jurisdiction over FIFA’s internal governance is indirect: both are members of the international sports family but operate under separate accountability structures. Any penalty from the IOC would carry significant symbolic weight but limited practical reach.
The symbolic weight may be the point. FIFA holds its next presidential election in 2027. An IOC finding against Infantino, even an advisory one, would follow him into that campaign. The rights group’s earlier ethics complaint, filed in December with FIFA itself, has gone unanswered. A parallel IOC process changes the terrain.
FairSquare said it chose the IOC route precisely because FIFA’s internal ethics structures have a documented history of slow-walking complaints against sitting leadership. The IOC operates under its own ethics framework and is not subject to pressure from FIFA’s Council. Whether that independence holds when the subject is the world’s most powerful sports federation, and the accused is its president, remains the open question.
FIFA had not issued a formal response to the IOC complaint as of publication. The organization said previously it had found no evidence of wrongdoing in connection with the Balogun suspension reversal. Infantino has not addressed FairSquare’s specific allegations directly.
