The decision of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee to suspend the execution of Folarin Balogun's one-match suspension under Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, thereby allowing him to participate in the Round of 16 of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, has generated considerable legal debate. Rather than questioning FIFA's competence to apply Article 27, this article examines the legal limits that should govern the exercise of such discretion when it effectively neutralises the automatic consequence of a red card within the same competition. Through an analysis of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, the FIFA World Cup Regulations and relevant CAS jurisprudence, the article argues that the central issue is not the existence of disciplinary discretion but the need for transparency, foreseeability, equal treatment and adequate reasoning. It concludes that, while Article 27 may exceptionally justify the suspension of disciplinary sanctions, decisions affecting the integrity of an ongoing competition require particularly robust legal justification in order to preserve confidence in the fairness and legitimacy of the disciplinary system.

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SUSPENDING THE SANCTION, EMPTYING THE RULE? The Balogun Case and the Limits of Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code

Introduction

The decision of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee to allow United States forward Folarin Balogun to participate in the Round of 16 match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup against Belgium sparked a debate that extends far beyond the circumstances of a single player. The American striker had been sent off in the 64th minute of the Round of 32 match against Bosnia & Herzegovina, following a VAR review that classified his challenge as serious foul play. The disciplinary episode did not end there. After the final whistle, Balogun re-entered the field of play to celebrate with his teammates despite having already been dismissed. FIFA subsequently opened disciplinary proceedings concerning both the red card and his post-match conduct.

On 5 July, FIFA imposed a one-match suspension together with a USD 40,000 fine. However, the execution of the suspension was itself suspended for a one-year probationary period pursuant to Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, thereby allowing Balogun to play in the following match against Belgium.

The controversy is readily understandable. On the one hand, the FIFA World Cup Regulations provide that a player who receives a red card is automatically suspended for the next match. On the other hand, Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code authorises FIFA's judicial bodies to suspend, wholly or partially, the execution of a disciplinary sanction and place the sanctioned individual under a probationary period. Both provisions coexist and, at least on a literal reading, neither expressly excludes the possibility of applying a suspended sanction during the knockout stage of the FIFA World Cup.

This article does not argue that FIFA lacked the legal authority to apply Article 27. Nor does it proceed on the assumption that political or commercial considerations have been proven to influence the decision. Instead, it addresses a narrower and more fundamental question: what legal limits should accompany the exercise of a general power to suspend the execution of a disciplinary sanction when doing so neutralises the automatic consequence of a red card within the same competition?

Answering this question requires a combined interpretation of the relevant provisions, together with an examination of the purpose of suspended sanctions, the principles of foreseeability and equal treatment, and the extent to which an exceptional disciplinary decision can be effectively reviewed.

1. The Starting Point: The Power to Individualise Sanctions and the Need for Harmonious Interpretation

Article 10.5 of the FIFA World Cup Regulations provides that any player sent off by means of a direct or indirect red card is automatically suspended for the following match. Article 66.4 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code reproduces that consequence, while Article 50.2 confirms that such suspensions take immediate effect. The legal starting point is therefore unequivocal: a red card automatically triggers a minimum suspension without the need for any further disciplinary determination regarding its applicability.

Article 27, however, regulates an entirely different issue: the execution of a disciplinary sanction that has already been imposed. It empowers FIFA's judicial bodies to suspend the execution of a sanction, either wholly or partially, and establishes a probationary period ranging from one to four years. Should the beneficiary commit another offence of a similar nature and seriousness during that period, the judicial body must revoke the suspension and enforce the original sanction, without prejudice to any additional disciplinary measures resulting from the new misconduct.

Furthermore, Article 25 grants FIFA's judicial bodies broad discretion in determining both the nature and the extent of disciplinary sanctions. It requires consideration of objective and subjective elements, aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and every other relevant factor. It even authorises the judicial body, where appropriate, to reduce the sanction or exceptionally refrain from imposing one altogether.

This provision reinforces FIFA's strongest legal argument. The Disciplinary Committee relied not only on Article 27 but also on a general power of individualisation of sanctions. Consequently, the central legal issue is not whether FIFA possessed the competence to suspend the sanction, but rather why that competence was exercised in relation to the automatic suspension for the next match of the same tournament.

At this point, caution is required when invoking the principle lex specialis derogat legi generali. The principle does not establish an abstract hierarchy between legal norms. Rather, it is an interpretative technique designed to reconcile potentially overlapping provisions. Before concluding that two valid rules conflict, every effort should be made to interpret them harmoniously and contextually. Moreover, applying the specific rule does not ordinarily extinguish the relevance of the general one.

From this perspective, Article 10.5 of the World Cup Regulations and Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code can formally coexist. The former establishes the disciplinary consequence of a red card, while the latter governs the execution of disciplinary sanctions. It is therefore insufficient simply to argue that the World Cup Regulations invariably prevail over the Disciplinary Code.

The stronger legal argument lies elsewhere. A general provision should not be interpreted in a manner that deprives a competition-specific rule of its practical effect, transforming a sanction expressly defined as automatic into one that is, in practice, discretionary.

The breadth of FIFA's disciplinary powers also makes the reasoning behind such decisions particularly significant. Article 54 permits the judicial body initially to communicate only the operative part of its decision while granting the parties ten days to request a fully reasoned decision. Such a decision must identify, at a minimum, the relevant facts, the provisions infringed, the legal reasoning, and the criteria applied in determining the sanction.

Accordingly, the absence of an immediate public explanation does not demonstrate that the decision lacked internal reasoning, nor does it establish any procedural irregularity. What it does prevent, however, is any meaningful understanding of which Article 25 considerations justified departing from the ordinary consequence of the automatic suspension rule

2. The Purpose of Suspended Sanctions and the Problem of Irreversibility

A suspended sanction does not eliminate the disciplinary measure. Rather, it preserves the sanction while postponing its execution during the probationary period, seeking to influence the future conduct of the offender. Its rationale is fundamentally preventive and, to some extent, educational: immediate enforcement may be regarded as unnecessary if the possibility of reactivating the sanction provides a sufficient incentive to avoid future misconduct.

A useful illustration is provided by the CAS award CAS 2024/A/11091, FEGUIFUT v. FIFA. In that case, the FIFA Appeal Committee suspended CHF 100,000 of a total fine of CHF 150,000 for a probationary period of two years. According to the reasoning reproduced in the award, the measure was considered "appropriate to fulfil the educational purpose of the sanction and to encourage FEGUIFUT to adopt the necessary corrective measures." The CAS upheld the decision and, in assessing its proportionality, attached particular significance to the fact that two-thirds of the financial sanction remained contingent upon the federation's future conduct.

The comparison, however, has its limits. A financial penalty and a sporting suspension do not produce the same consequences. Nevertheless, the case illustrates a fundamental principle. The suspended portion of a sanction retains its practical value only insofar as the possibility of future enforcement genuinely influences future behaviour. In FEGUIFUT, the economic obligation remained fully capable of being enforced throughout the probationary period.

Recent FIFA practice provides a second point of reference. In November 2025, Portuguese international Cristiano Ronaldo received a three-match suspension following his dismissal against the Republic of Ireland during the European qualifiers for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. He served the automatic suspension in the subsequent match against Armenia, while the execution of the remaining two matches was suspended for one year pursuant to Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code.

This precedent confirms that Article 27 may legitimately be applied to match suspensions imposed on players. Consequently, it would be excessive to argue that its application in the Balogun case was legally impossible merely because the sanction

consisted of a suspension from competitive matches.

The distinction, however, is crucial.

Ronaldo served the automatic and immediate consequence of the red card. Only the additional matches imposed beyond that minimum sanction were suspended.

Balogun, by contrast, was permitted not to serve the only match that should have been automatically missedfollowing his dismissal.

In the first scenario, the automatic suspension rule remained fully effective.

In the second, the automatic suspension itself became the object of the suspended execution.

It is precisely here that the problem of irreversibility emerges.

If Balogun were to commit a similar disciplinary offence during the probationary period, FIFA could revoke the suspension and require him to serve the outstanding match together with any additional sanction resulting from the new offence.

However, such future enforcement would not restore the sporting conditions under which Belgium faced the United States.

The competitive consequence attached to the immediately following match had already been exhausted once Balogun was permitted to participate.

This observation does not automatically render FIFA's decision unlawful.

It does, however, require a convincing explanation as to why the preventive purpose of the suspended sanction justified sacrificing the immediate effect of the automatic suspension rule.

FIFA's official communication merely stated that the Disciplinary Committee had considered the "specific circumstances" of the case together with the available evidence.

It did not identify those circumstances, nor did it explain why they justified departing from the ordinary application of the regulations.

From a legal perspective, this omission is particularly significant.

The issue is not whether exceptional circumstances existed.

They may well have existed.

The issue is that, in the absence of an adequate explanation, neither the competing teams, nor the wider football community, nor future disciplinary bodies can determine which elements transformed what appeared to be an ordinary red-card suspension into an exceptional case warranting suspended execution.

The function of disciplinary reasoning is not merely to justify a particular decision.

It is also to provide guidance for future cases, ensuring consistency, predictability and confidence in the disciplinary system.

Where a sanction directly affects the integrity of an ongoing competition, those objectives acquire even greater importance.

Accordingly, the legal debate is not centred on whether Article 27 could, in principle, be applied.

Rather, it concerns whether the exceptional use of that provision in circumstances that neutralised the automatic sporting consequence of a red card was supported by sufficiently transparent and identifiable legal reasoning.

Without such reasoning, the preventive function of the suspended sanction becomes difficult to distinguish from a discretionary exception whose boundaries remain undefined.

3. Foreseeability, Equal Treatment and Confidence in the Competition

The principle of foreseeability does not require disciplinary regulations to anticipate every conceivable factual situation.

Indeed, individualisation of sanctions is indispensable because no two disciplinary offences are ever identical.

Nevertheless, the broader the discretion conferred upon a disciplinary authority, the greater the need for those affected to understand how that discretion has been exercised.

In CAS 2023/A/9413, FC Zenit v. Russian Football Union, the Court of Arbitration for Sport emphasised that disciplinary offences and sanctions must be sufficiently foreseeable to enable those subject to them to understand both their meaning and the circumstances in which they may be applied.

The Panel simultaneously recognised that sporting associations enjoy a wide disciplinary margin of appreciation.

However, it expressly added that such discretion "is not absolute."

The case did not concern Article 27 or suspended sanctions.

Its significance is therefore analogical rather than direct.

Nevertheless, it illustrates an important principle: the mere existence of an express legal power does not conclude the legal analysis where the criteria governing its exercise remain unclear or impossible to identify.

The Balogun decision also affected interests extending well beyond those of the player himself.

The availability of a key player inevitably influences the tactical preparation of the opposing team and shapes the legitimate expectations of every participant in the competition.

Although Article 68.2 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code specifically concerns the cancellation of yellow cards rather than red cards, it expressly requires FIFA to consider the integrity of the competition and the principle of equal treatment.

That provision is not directly applicable to Balogun's case.

Nevertheless, it reveals broader principles that the FIFA disciplinary system itself regards as fundamental.

Arbitral jurisprudence has likewise emphasised that the coherent application of eligibility rules protects not only the individual concerned but also every club, player and federation participating in the competition.

The CAS expressed this view in CAS 2025/A/11374, Inter Kashi v. AIFF, albeit in a different procedural context, holding that a provisional measure relating to a red-card suspension could not automatically extend to an entirely separate suspension arising from the accumulation of yellow cards.

The practical difficulty became particularly visible when Balogun's case was compared with that of Jarell Quansah.

Former FIFA referees Keith Hackett and Jonas Eriksson publicly questioned the apparent disparity in treatment.

Eriksson considered that the two challenges were broadly comparable in both intensity and degree of aggression.

Such technical assessments do not, of course, establish that the two cases were legally identical.

The FIFA Disciplinary Committee may have relied upon previous disciplinary history, the degree of fault, the seriousness of the consequences, cooperation during the proceedings or any number of other relevant considerations.

Precisely for that reason, identifying those considerations becomes essential.

Without that explanation, observers are left comparing only the visible facts, naturally concluding that similar incidents have produced different disciplinary outcomes.

4. Reasoning, Transparency and Extra-Legal Factors

It is important to distinguish between two separate propositions.

The first would be that the FIFA Disciplinary Committee adopted its decision without legal reasoning. On the basis of the information currently available, such a conclusion cannot be sustained. Article 54 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code expressly permits the judicial body initially to communicate only the operative part of its decision while reserving the reasoned decision for those cases in which one of the parties requests it.

The second—and considerably narrower—proposition is that the public explanation provided by FIFA does not allow external observers to understand why this particular solution was chosen among the various options available under the Code.

Legal scholarship concerning the judicial review of sporting sanctions helps define the significance of this distinction.

In her analysis of German sports law, Van Kleef explains that judicial review typically examines whether the disciplinary body possessed a proper legal basis for its decision, respected procedural guarantees and avoided sanctions that are manifestly unreasonable or arbitrary. Discussing Swiss law, she further observes that the abuse of an association's autonomy may arise where disciplinary decisions conflict with general legal principles such as equality of treatment or proportionality.

Similarly, Foster distinguishes the regulatory autonomy enjoyed by sports governing bodies from those fundamental legal principles that continue to operate as minimum standards controlling the exercise of disciplinary power. Among the essential elements of good governance, he identifies the existence of a clear legal basis, the prohibition of arbitrary decision-making and the application of transparent and objective criteria.

These considerations become particularly significant whenever external pressure exists.

Before FIFA announced its decision, the President of the United States publicly declared that he had asked FIFA President Gianni Infantino to review Balogun's dismissal.

This fact, standing alone, proves nothing.

It does not establish that the communication influenced the disciplinary decision, nor does it justify concluding that commercial or political considerations relating to the host nation prevailed over the applicable legal framework.

From a legal standpoint, such an inference would be speculative and therefore unwarranted.

Nevertheless, the coincidence between a high-profile political intervention, the decisive stage of the tournament and an exceptional disciplinary outcome made public scrutiny entirely predictable.

In that context, a detailed explanation would not merely have protected Belgium and the remaining participants.

It would also have protected FIFA itself.

Transparency serves an institutional function.

It demonstrates that extra-legal considerations played no role in the decision-making process.

When the public justification merely refers to unspecified "particular circumstances" without identifying them, the institution inevitably weakens its own position and leaves room for unnecessary speculation.

The issue is not that disciplinary decisions in elite sport have significant commercial or media consequences.

Virtually every important disciplinary decision does.

The legal concern would arise only if such consequences were allowed to replace the legal criteria established by the governing regulations.

As no evidence currently supports that conclusion, criticism should remain within a more secure analytical framework:

the more exceptional the disciplinary decision, the greater the need for transparent reasoning capable of demonstrating that the decision was based exclusively on legal considerations.

5. A Proposal for Structuring the Application of Article 27 During the Competition

The Balogun case illustrates the desirability of establishing clearer parameters governing the application of Article 27whenever the sanction concerned is due to be served during the same competition.

There appears to be no compelling reason to prohibit the application of Article 27 altogether.

The FIFA Disciplinary Code deliberately grants judicial bodies a broad power of individualisation, and genuinely exceptional circumstances may arise in which immediate enforcement would not serve the objectives of disciplinary justice.

However, the existence of such discretion makes it all the more important to define the criteria governing its exercise.

Drawing upon the applicable regulations and the principles discussed above, five cumulative considerations may be proposed.

First, the judicial body should identify the specific Article 25 circumstances that distinguish the case from the ordinary application of the automatic suspension rule.

Second, it should explain how the preventive or educational purpose of the suspended sanction continues to operate, particularly where the sporting consequence of allowing the player to participate is irreversible.

Third, it should expressly evaluate the impact of its decision upon the competition-specific rule, the integrity of the tournament and the legitimate expectations of the opposing team.

Fourth, the decision should be assessed in light of materially comparable disciplinary precedents in order to ensure equal treatment and consistency.

Finally, the legal reasoning should become publicly available as soon as procedural rules permit, in accordance with Article 54 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code.

These criteria do not eliminate disciplinary discretion.

Rather, they seek to ensure that such discretion remains subject to objective legal control.

They also make it possible to distinguish a genuinely exceptional and legally defensible departure from the ordinary rules from a decision that relies solely upon the broad wording of Article 27.

International football competitions are characterised by compressed schedules and accelerated disciplinary procedures.

Precisely for that reason, clarity of reasoning and subsequent publication of the legal grounds become indispensable for preserving confidence in the integrity and legitimacy of the disciplinary process.

Conclusion

The FIFA Disciplinary Committee undoubtedly possessed a legal basis for suspending the execution of the sanction imposed upon Folarin Balogun.

To deny this would require disregarding the combined effect of Articles 25 and 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code.

Nor is it sufficient simply to argue that the FIFA World Cup Regulations necessarily prevail as lex specialis.

The more persuasive objection lies elsewhere.

On the basis of the information currently available, it is impossible to verify why a general discretionary power was exercised so as to neutralise the immediate sporting consequence of a red card during the knockout stage of the same competition.

The specific purpose of Article 10.5 of the World Cup Regulations, its practical effectiveness, together with the principles of foreseeability, equal treatment and the preventive rationale underlying suspended sanctions, all point in the same direction:

the more directly an exceptional decision affects the course of an ongoing competition, the greater the need for its legal justification to be identifiable, transparent and capable of external review.

There is no sufficient basis for concluding that political or commercial interests prevailed over the applicable legal framework.

It may nevertheless be observed that the limited public explanation provided by FIFA allowed such suspicions to gain unnecessary traction.

A fuller statement of reasons would not necessarily have eliminated disagreement.

It would, however, have shifted the debate away from speculation and towards legal analysis.

Ultimately, the Balogun case does not require a choice between flexibility and legality.

A modern disciplinary system requires both.

The real question is whether flexibility is exercised through identifiable legal criteria or whether, in practice, it ultimately empties of substance the very rule it purports to qualify.