The president of the the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) said she will ask her board to pursue a formal ethics complaint over the suspension of Folarin Balogun's World Cup ban. LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Norway's football chief told The Times they are set to make a formal complaint to FIFA over the suspension of Folarin Balogun's World Cup ban because it has put "the whole game at risk". Lise Klaveness, the president of the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF), says she will seek the backing of her board at a meeting on August 6 to lodge the complaint with FIFA's ethics committee over an incident that "should not have happened".
Klaveness told AFP the intention is to "include the Balogun affair" in a complaint already filed by the NFF over FIFA president Gianni Infantino awarding football's governing body's inaugural Peace Prize to US President Donald Trump, which was widely ridiculed. "I will bring it to a board meeting and discuss with my board, and then we do it," Klaveness told The Times in an interview published on Thursday. "To me, it should be in the same sphere of ethical complaint." Trump's involvement in the Balogun affair sparked the controversy.
Balogun's red card in the last-32 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina resulted in an automatic suspension for the match with Belgium. But FIFA stepped in and suspended his ban, leading to widespread condemnation, especially when it emerged that Trump had intervened by phoning Infantino. Belgium appeared inspired by the row and thrashed the co-hosts 4-1.
"When you bend a rule like this, you're on a slippery slope that will put the whole game at risk," said Klaveness. "It is a worry for the game when you compromise fundamental rules of the game. "First of all, it should not have happened.
It is very important now to have honest communication around it. "We all know that this verdict was influenced from external forces and did not have the proper process." "We need our leader in FIFA to say that this was an error," she added. Klaveness, a former Norway international who has been head of the NFF since 2022, said bending over for a head of state was a dangerous precedent.
"If you start to adapt in such a way towards state leaders and state politics, you will move your behaviour and the organisation's behaviour, and also the red line of what states' leaders should interfere with," she said. "And that happened." Klaveness was unimpressed too that, according to The Times, the decision to suspend the ban had been taken solely by by the chairman of FIFA's disciplinary committee, Mohammad … Norwegian federation president: Fifa on a ‘slippery slope’Trump called Infantino for review of Balogun’s redDonald Trump’s role in clearing Folarin Balogun from a mandatory one-game ban at the World Cup is set to provoke a formal complaint to Fifa ethics investigators.The Norway soccer federation said Thursday its board of directors will consider filing the complaint at its next meeting, likely on 6 August.
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