‘It just feels wrong’: Curley slams Trump’s World Cup red card intervention

Star U.S. forward Folarin Balogun had his red-card suspension lifted Sunday after U.S. President Donald Trump intervened on his behalf.

The decision was a moot point after Belgium defeated the USA 4-1 Monday, knocking the U.S. out of the 2026 World Cup, but KIRO host John Curley still believes Trump’s involvement was “wrong.”

“I guess I don’t have a dog in this fight, but it seems like this is wrong. Doesn’t it just feel wrong?” Curley said on “The John Curley Show.” “They made a big deal about the FIFA people getting involved, and then Trump urged the guy to review the call. So the president agreed to look into it. ‘Yeah, let me look into it for you.’ He didn’t commit to overturning it. No, not right away. But then, later on, he looked anyway, and by the time Trump and the guy in charge spoke again the next day, he was ready to tell him the suspension was being lifted.”

Balogun, the American leader with three goals in the tournament, received a red card for stepping awkwardly on the right ankle of Tarik Muharemović of Bosnia-Herzegovina in a 2-0 round-of-32 win on Wednesday, triggering an automatic one-game suspension.

“It just stinks for the people of Belgium who have been like, ‘That’s another example of the United States just kicking people around,'” Curley added. “Fans across the rest of the world cried foul over what they saw as the head of a state putting his thumb on the scale. Yeah, because that’s exactly what it was, forever tarnishing the integrity of the World Cup. Again, if you were the president, if not Trump, but somebody else, and you get a call and you’re supposed to get involved in this, you say, ‘I can’t. I’m not doing that.'”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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