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The head of the Norwegian FA has called on Fifa president Gianni Infantino to face his own ethics committee following US president Donald Trump’s interference in the Folarin Balogun case at the World Cup.
Trump confirmed that he called Infantino to ask for US striker Balogun’s one-match ban to be reviewed before the ban was controversially suspended, a move that Lise Klaveness said crossed a “red line”.
“When you bend a rule like this, you’re on a slippery slope that will put the whole game at risk,” Klaveness told The Times. “It is a worry for the game when you compromise fundamental rules of the game.”
When The Independent contacted Fifa to ask about Trump’s involvement, a Fifa spokesperson pointed to its disciplinary code, which allows for sanctions to be suspended at the discretion of the judicial body.
Klaveness, who previously criticised Infantino’s decision to award Trump with an inaugural ‘Fifa Peace Prize’ and called for the award to be abolished, said she would be recommending an official complaint to the NFF board.
“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.
“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. And that happened.”
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