"If you start to adapt in such a way towards state leaders and state politics, you will move the red line of what states' leaders should interfere with. And that happened." Norwegian Football Federation President Lise Klaveness said it plainly. The IOC, however, has decided it's not their problem.
On Friday, the IOC Ethics Commission confirmed it will not be launching a formal investigation into FIFA president Gianni Infantino following his phone call with Donald Trump over Folarin Balogun's red-card suspension. The ruling was procedural rather than exonerating — the IOC simply said FairSquare's complaint fell outside its jurisdiction, since the Olympic Charter limits its ethics oversight to an International Federation's direct relations with the IOC itself.
"The current complaint refers only to the IF's decisions on its governance and its management, including its relations with government," the IOC's statement read. Translation: not our lane.
What actually happened with Balogun
To recap: Balogun received a red card for a tackle on Tarik Muharemovic during the USMNT's 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the World Cup Round of 32. FIFA initially upheld the ban. Then Trump got involved — working alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House task force leader Andrew Giuliani to coordinate legal challenges to the ruling. Trump then called Infantino directly, and shortly after, FIFA reversed course and suspended the ban.
FairSquare subsequently filed a complaint with the IOC citing five alleged breaches of political neutrality principles and two further serious violations. The IOC's response was essentially: wrong address.
What makes this more than a bureaucratic footnote is the institutional pressure that's still building elsewhere. The Norwegian Football Federation has formally requested FIFA's own ethics committee to review FairSquare's complaint. Fifty members of the European Parliament have echoed that call. Klaveness has told her board she plans to file a formal ethics complaint directly — and she's not mincing words about what she thinks happened.
FIFA's ethics committee is the real battleground
The IOC ruling doesn't clear Infantino of anything. It just confirms that FIFA polices itself — which is precisely what critics have always found so convenient about this setup. FairSquare first targeted Infantino back in December over Trump's receipt of FIFA's Peace Prize, a complaint that was acknowledged and quietly buried.
The pattern matters. Each complaint gets filed, noted, and shelved. But the coalition pushing back is getting broader — human rights groups, a European football federation president, members of the EU parliament. At some point, FIFA's ethics committee will have to either act or explain, very publicly, why it won't.
"We need our leader in FIFA to say that this was an error," Klaveness said. So far, that admission hasn't come.
