Trump, VAR and the Red Card Drama Around Team USA | Evan & Tiki
WFAN Daily
Audacy
3.8 • 795 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
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Summary
Evan Roberts and Tiki Barber break down the controversy surrounding FIFA’s decision to suspend Flo Balogun’s red card ban, clearing him to play for Team USA against Belgium. The debate centers on whether this was a rare case of justice being served, or a strange example of political influence entering the sports world. The conversation dives into the VAR process, why the original red card was so disputed, and how American fans may view due process differently than the global soccer community.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Tiki, I've been thinking about this on this. |
| 0:02.0 | Yes. |
| 0:03.0 | Do I have a problem with our government getting involved? |
| 0:07.0 | Our president, our government. |
| 0:09.0 | Well, it was Howard Lutnik as well. |
| 0:10.0 | Who's the Commerce Secretary? |
| 0:12.0 | Right, right. |
| 0:13.0 | Because I've been diving very deep in this, and I kept thinking, like, do I have a problem with |
| 0:16.0 | Howard Lutnik and President Trump getting involved in a controversial call in sports. |
| 0:21.2 | And the way I tried to frame it in my mind is, if the president, doesn't matter who it is, |
| 0:26.4 | got involved when Janus Antonocombo purposely hurt Kyrie Irving's ankle, would I have a problem |
| 0:33.5 | with it? Well, the answer's no. So thank you, government. It's interesting. I think the |
| 0:39.1 | United States sport fan gets over stuff like this quickly. Yeah. It doesn't linger. The European |
| 0:44.8 | sports fan, because I follow European soccer, I'm a Liverpool fan, the Premier League, the |
| 0:50.0 | Bundes League. I watch all this stuff. And when there's a VAR, because that's the case here, |
| 0:54.6 | it's a VAR, video system referee decision that disrupts a game, people get pissed. Sure. But then |
| 1:00.4 | they have to live with it. And so how this all played out is so interesting to me, because he |
| 1:06.0 | never should have been given a red card in the first place. Was it a red card foul? Absolutely. |
| 1:11.6 | But it shouldn't have been given. |
| 1:13.6 | But we'll get to that in a minute. |
| 1:15.6 | So when President Trump calls, what's his name, Infantino? |
| 1:18.6 | Gianni Infantino from FIFA and says, you know, you got to look at this. |
... |
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