A host is supposed to harvest the world’s goodwill, not burn it.
By Bobby Ghosh, a geopolitics analyst and commentator, formerly of Time magazine and Bloomberg.
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Folarin Balogun has gone home. The U.S. men’s national soccer team is out of the World Cup, beaten 4-1 by Belgium in the round of 16. Its star striker will be crossing his fingers that “being Baloguned” does not enter the lexicon of the sport. He may not be that lucky. The episode that now bears his name looks likely to become the thing this World Cup is remembered for—the summer the United States hosted the world and showed itself at its worst.
It did not have to be this way, and for a few weeks it wasn’t. Set aside U.S. President Donald Trump’s boorishness—exemplified by his administration’s treatment of the Iranian team—and the tournament had been making the opposite case, for the America that shows up when Washington isn’t looking.
Folarin Balogun has gone home. The U.S. men’s national soccer team is out of the World Cup, beaten 4-1 by Belgium in the round of 16. Its star striker will be crossing his fingers that “being Baloguned” does not enter the lexicon of the sport. He may not be that lucky. The episode that now bears his name looks likely to become the thing this World Cup is remembered for—the summer the United States hosted the world and showed itself at its worst.
It did not have to be this way, and for a few weeks it wasn’t. Set aside U.S. President Donald Trump’s boorishness—exemplified by his administration’s treatment of the Iranian team—and the tournament had been making the opposite case, for the America that shows up when Washington isn’t looking.
When Algeria reached its base camp in Lawrence, Kansas, hundreds of locals waited past midnight through a thunderstorm to greet the players. The university marching band learned the Algerian anthem, an artist carved the Algerian flag into a hillside, and the crowd turned the University of Kansas Jayhawks’ chant into “Rock Chalk, Algeria.” In Galloway, New Jersey, hundreds of Haitian Americans and local children roared Les Grenadiers onto the field for practice—a team playing its first World Cup in 52 years, from a country on Trump’s own travel-ban list and where violence made the team unable to play at home. In Spokane, Washington, thousands entered a lottery for a handful of tickets just to watch Mohamed Salah’s Egypt train.
None of this was arranged by the White House. It was the other America, the one that kept showing up regardless.
The Balogun affair threatens to bury all of that. The facts are by now familiar. During the round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Balogun earned a red card for treading on an opponent’s ankle and an automatic one-match ban that everyone thought to be beyond appeal. Then, on Sunday, FIFA issued a sudden and highly unusual reversal. As it turns out, Trump had phoned Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, several days earlier and asked for what he called a review; FIFA suspended the ban; and Balogun was cleared to face Belgium. Trump thanked the governing body for reversing “a great injustice,” but that’s not how much of the world saw it.
Thanks to the president, with an assist from the invertebrate Infantino, the United States may become the first host in the tournament’s history to leave a World Cup with its standing in the world lower than when it arrived.
Trump has contrived to invert the long-established pattern for the way host governments treat a World Cup. It is about as close to a guaranteed return as public life offers: The world shows up, the cameras run, and for a month the country staging the show looks convivial and capable. Even the hosts who used the tournament to paper over uglier business at home—from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1934 through Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018—harvested some of the goodwill they had paid for.
Trump had bound himself to this World Cup more tightly than any host in memory, drawing the FIFA president into his circle and accepting a “peace prize” from him last winter. The tournament was meant to be his showcase. Long before Balogun, however, the goodwill was already draining. Trump’s travel restrictions shut ordinary supporters from the banned nations out of the country. A Somali referee was turned away at Miami’s international airport, and Moroccan fans holding match tickets could not obtain visas.
The intervention for Balogun capped the sequence, converting what was left of the tournament’s goodwill into something nearer contempt. A host stages a World Cup to make the world think better of it. Trump has managed the reverse, and because the fix could not deliver the win against Belgium yesterday, he is left without even the consolation of a trophy to hold up against the resentment.
Some will argue that the defeat in Seattle proves the whole Balogun affair was harmless. He played, the Americans lost, no damage done. But the damage was never in the result, as much as it was in the attempt. A rule that a phone call can set aside is not made sound again because that particular call failed to produce a win. A norm does not survive on the understanding that bending it counts only when it works.
Belgium won the match cleanly, and that is the end of this particular story. It is not the end of the precedent. A head of state has shown that he can call the custodian of a global game and shift a verdict reached on the pitch. On Monday, it didn’t impact the game’s outcome. It may not always.
Bobby Ghosh is a geopolitics analyst and commentator, formerly of Time magazine and Bloomberg. X: @ghoshworld
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