Greenland, Tariffs, NATO - And Now Soccer. How Trump Is Creating Another Dispute With Europe

There is a point at which the absurd becomes so extreme that you no longer know whether to laugh or to be alarmed, and the relationship between the United States and Europe reached that point on Monday. After Greenland, after tariffs, after the dispute over NATO, it is now soccer that has become the source of the next conflict. Belgian politicians and European soccer officials reacted with outrage after a suspended American player was unexpectedly cleared to play just before the Round of 16 match against Belgium. Consider that for a moment. The transatlantic relationship has been under strain for a year and a half. This week, heads of state and government are traveling to Turkey for a highly anticipated NATO summit, and in the middle of an already tense situation comes a dispute over a red card.

The story deserves to be told in order because the background matters. Trump began 2026 by threatening to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, which is itself a member of NATO, a move that shook the foundations of the alliance. He attacked European governments over the war with Iran, accusing them of failing to support the United States in that conflict. His administration threatened to reduce the number of American troops stationed in Europe, forces regarded as a critical deterrent against Russia, and he berated countries that, in his view, were spending too little on their militaries. European leaders intended to use the summit in Ankara to demonstrate how much more they are now spending on defense, hoping to keep Trump and the United States committed to the alliance. The situation is serious as Russia intensifies its attacks on Ukraine. One strike last week killed thirty one people. Another on Monday morning claimed at least twelve more.

Into that situation Trump picked up the telephone, not because of the dead in Ukraine, not because of the summit, but because of a red card. Last week he called FIFA President Gianni Infantino and asked for a review of the suspension imposed on Folarin Balogun, the leading scorer for the United States at this World Cup, who had received a one match suspension after being sent off. Pause for a moment and consider the proportionality of this. While the diplomats of an entire continent struggle to preserve the unity of the Western alliance, the President of the United States is preoccupied with the lineup of his national soccer team.

FIFA lifted the suspension on Sunday, and the reaction in Belgium was one of disbelief. Maxime Prévot, Belgium's foreign minister and himself a former referee, said the decision could undermine FIFA's stated commitment to fair play. The ruling raises many questions, he said, and if a telephone call was in fact the reason for such an incomprehensible decision, it amounts to an erosion of the most fundamental rules of soccer and of sport itself. The Belgian Football Association said it had no choice but to challenge the player's eligibility and declared itself deeply concerned by the way the matter had been handled.

What happened next was almost inevitable. Belgium's appeal was rejected, and the reasoning carried an almost cynical elegance. The appeal was declared inadmissible because the Belgian federation was not a party to the original proceeding and therefore had no standing to challenge the decision. The logic is immediately obvious. If you are not seated at the table, you are not allowed to speak, even when the outcome concerns your own match. UEFA, European soccer's governing body, described the decision as crossing a red line and called it unprecedented, incomprehensible, and impossible to justify. Belgium was formally granted the right to appeal, but whether a decision could be reached before kickoff on Monday evening remained uncertain. They grant the right to object while ensuring that the objection arrives too late to matter.

Infantino's role is particularly revealing. The FIFA president has courted Trump for years. Last year he presented him with FIFA's first Peace Prize while Trump was unsuccessfully campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize. That sentence deserves to be read twice. A peace prize awarded by the governing body of world soccer to a man who, at the same time, was waging a war against Iran. It is an award that says far more about the presenter than the recipient, and it explains much about the willingness with which a telephone call from the White House resulted in a different outcome.

Trump himself confirmed at the White House on Monday that he had called Infantino to protest the red card and request a review. He said he had watched the match and, as a sports fan, concluded that it was not a foul, not even a violation of the rules. At the same time, he attempted to downplay his own influence. He said he had not told Infantino what to do because he could not tell him what to do, and he did not believe Infantino had made the decision anyway. He said it had been made by a committee, and that the committee had reached the correct conclusion because there had been no foul and everyone wanted to see the best players on the field. The rhetoric is familiar. First you intervene, then you insist that you never intervened, and in the end it turns out to have been the right decision that supposedly would have happened anyway. It is the art of throwing the stone while hiding the hand behind your back.

Infantino, for his part, said he regularly speaks with Trump about matters related to the World Cup. During the conversation, he explained that there was an ongoing legal proceeding before FIFA's independent judicial bodies and that the case would be decided by the appropriate panels in due course. That, he said, is how FIFA's system works, and it is a principle he will always uphold.

They invoke the independence of their own bodies at the very moment those same bodies yielded to a presidential phone call. The American ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, completed the spectacle on X by declaring that President Trump would never interfere in FIFA's internal affairs. Faced with that level of audacity, one hardly knows whether to laugh or simply shake one's head.

The real question, however, extends far beyond the soccer field. It is whether this farce will further inflame diplomatic tensions. Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group does not believe the soccer dispute alone will further destabilize the transatlantic relationship. But he argues that it serves as a timely reminder to European governments of how Trump operates, unconstrained by rules or norms, relentlessly pursuing a policy that places America first in everything. It is the same mindset that stood behind the threat against Greenland, the trade war, and the bargaining over NATO. This time, however, it reveals itself in a form so petty and so ridiculous that the message becomes even clearer. If no rulebook is safe from a phone call, then no alliance is safe from a whim.

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Belgian based Bruegel Institute captures the point perfectly. Europe's political leaders, he says, are likely to see the soccer affair as yet another example of how the United States under Trump has become a lawless and unconstrained place. For Europe's political right, which has already begun distancing itself from Trump, it will become even more difficult over time to align with him. In the short term, however, Kirkegaard argues that European governments urgently need Trump's support at the summit in Ankara because Ukraine requires American Patriot air defense systems in its war against Russia. They will therefore avoid escalating the dispute. That single observation captures Europe's entire dilemma. They recognize the affront, they openly acknowledge it, and yet they swallow it because they depend on missiles that only one country can provide.

Perhaps the sharpest comment came from someone outside politics altogether. Asked for a response, a spokesperson for Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever referred reporters to an Instagram post attributed to the prime minister's cat. "Red card. I'm playing anyway," the post declares in Dutch. It is the most honest sentence in this entire affair, and it comes from a cat. Because that is exactly what this is about. Those who possess enough power play anyway, regardless of what the rules say.

What remains is an image that refuses to leave your mind because it is so small and yet means so much. A president who is waging a war while wearing a peace prize picks up the telephone to erase a red card, and the most powerful sports organization on earth complies. Europe watches, outraged and powerless, biting its tongue because it needs the missiles. Today it is soccer. But anyone who believes it will end with soccer has not understood the past year and a half.