The 37-member FIFA Council will decide on 16 December in Doha whether to rewrite Article 27 of the Disciplinary Code, the “exceptional circumstances” clause that was used in July to suspend Folarin Balogun’s automatic one-match ban at the home World Cup.

The motion is on the table because of a phone call. US President Donald Trump personally called FIFA president Gianni Infantino and asked him to review the sanction, raising immediate questions about the independence of FIFA’s disciplinary process.

Infantino addressed the council on Thursday in a meeting that ran for three and a half hours. He apologised for the handling of the FIFA Forward Enterprise commercial-rights plan but, according to European delegates present, he did not produce documents on the plan and did not walk through the Balogun ruling or Trump’s intervention.

“I apologised for the mistakes that we made in relation to the communication and consultation process related to the FIFA Forward Enterprise project, which then led to many consequences,” Infantino said.

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Balogun had been shown a straight red card in the 64th minute of the United States’ round-of-32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina on 1 July for a foul on Tarik Muharemovic. The hosts won 2-0 with ten men. His automatic one-match suspension was then overturned by FIFA’s disciplinary committee, and he played in the round-of-16 tie against Belgium on 6 July.

Trump has not denied making the call.

“All I did was ask for a review. I didn’t say, you have to do this,” he told reporters at the White House.

On Truth Social, after the ban was lifted, he wrote.

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“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice.”

‘Not fit to be the FIFA president’

English FA chair Debbie Hewitt, who sits on the FIFA Council as a vice president, said the apology landed with some contrition but did not go near the questions the council had come to ask.

“The man has to answer those questions. If he doesn’t answer those questions, no, he is not fit to be the FIFA president,” Hewitt said.

German FA president Bernd Neuendorf, speaking separately, took the same line.

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“No satisfactory answers were provided,” Neuendorf said.

FIFA, in its own statement, insisted that “all decisions are taken independently by its judicial bodies” and confirmed that work on the Article 27 amendment was already in progress.

What the Doha vote will change

The amendment that will go before the council in December is designed to shut the door that Balogun walked through. Article 27 currently allows a disciplinary sanction to be suspended “in exceptional circumstances,” and that is the ground FIFA leaned on when it lifted the one-match ban.

The proposed rewrite would make automatic bans after a red card non-suspendable in a running tournament, meaning a sent-off player cannot be put back on the pitch at the same World Cup. FIFA’s own internal note calls the change a way to “cure the handling of the Balogun case during the World Cup,” according to documents reported by GiveMeSport.

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The push for the change came in part from the Royal Belgian Football Association, who had been on the losing end of the Balogun decision. The RBFA formally asked FIFA how Article 27 had been applied, whether there had been external interference, and what criteria would govern comparable cases in future. It also asked that any association affected by a disciplinary ruling be heard before FIFA decides.

The next step is the Doha council on 16 December.

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