Inside the 2026 World Cup’s refereeing storm
It is unworthy that the 2026 World Cup’s defining narratives centre on manipulation and political string-pulling rather than footballing brilliance. I am no conspiracy theorist, yet the mounting evidence suggests something is amiss.
But the more I look at the facts and evidence that have piled up over the last month, the clearer a certain picture is emerging: something about this tournament does not sit right, and it is not the football.
Are the goalposts being shifted? Are the referees on call to Gianni Infantino? Has football become the ultimate political tool? Let’s walk through what actually happened and stack it against the rules IFAB says everyone is playing by and see what picture it paints.
If one were to re-referee the match between Egypt and Argentina, which is what VAR is accomplishing now, the French referee can justly be accused of double standards. All that managers and players ask for from referees is consistency. But FIFA’s referee chief, Collina, told Reuters that FIFA was satisfied with how VAR principles had been applied throughout the tournament.
But what else could Collina have said?
“We believe that a foul is a foul,” Collina said. “Regardless of whether the foul appears obvious, if the referee did not see it on the field of play, the VAR can intervene.”
He also defended the decision not to award Egypt a penalty when Mohamed Salah and Julian Alvarez tangled in the Argentina box just before Argentina scored their winning goal, calling it “normal football contact”.
“Stepping on an opponent’s foot is a foul, whereas a defender who touches the ball first and then makes normal football contact has not committed a foul,” he said.
Infantino started it
Some moments do more damage than a thousand op-eds. The night Argentina needed extra time to see off Cape Verde 3-2 in the Round of 32, FIFA president Gianni Infantino stood in front of a camera and, in a line that has now been replayed a million times, told an Argentine reporter, “Tonight, I suffered with Argentina” He caught himself almost immediately, tacking on “but I’m neutral” a correction that landed less like clarification and more like confirmation.
To be fair to Infantino, gaffes happen, and a stray sentence in an emotional post-match interview isn’t proof of a fixed tournament. But context is everything, and this is a president with a previous one. FIFA had already been accused, back at the 2022 Qatar final, of steering five penalty kicks Argentina’s way to its crowning moment. So, when the man running the entire show says he “suffered” for one specific team, in real time, it doesn’t read as a slip to a fanbase that has spent four years cataloguing every marginal call. It reads as the mask slipping.
Messi, Balogun, and red card that wasn’t
Now overlay the officiating record. In Argentina’s opening group match against Algeria, Messi committed a studs-up, 30th-minute challenge on Aïssa Mandi. No card. No VAR intervention. The Algerian Football Federation formally complained to FIFA about the officiating that night. It might have stayed a footnote until USMNT forward Folarin Balogun was shown a straight red for a comparable challenge against Bosnia and Herzegovina days later, a decision even his opponent, Tarik Muharemović, said felt harsh.
Then it got stranger. President Donald Trump personally called Infantino to lobby for a review of Balogun’s red card. FIFA reversed the suspension within 24 hours, offering barely any public explanation, and Balogun played the next round. Trump took a victory lap on social media. Whatever the intent, the optics are that a phone call can now overturn a Laws-of-the-Game decision faster than an official appeal can.
Egypt, Senegal, and African pattern that keeps repeating
Then came the Round of 16 tie between Argentina and Egypt. Egypt led 2-0 with less than 25 minutes left; Mostafa Ziko had scored twice, the second ruled out by VAR for a foul that referee François Letexier judged had happened 20 seconds before the goal, far from the ball. Commentators in real time called it beyond VAR’s remit.
FIFA’s own protocol technically allows review of any foul in the buildup to a goal, however delayed, but “technically allowed” and “in the spirit of the Laws” are not the same thing. It is the second Egypt-abutting VAR call in a fortnight to break Argentina’s way, after a near-identical Iran goal against Egypt was also chalked off. Argentina went on to complete a stunning 3-2 comeback, with Messi scoring his 21st World Cup goal, his eighth of this tournament alone, to equalise.
Senegal’s exit follows the same shape, just without Argentina in the frame this time. Two goals up on Belgium with five minutes left, the Lions of Teranga looked through. Belgium then scored twice in three minutes to force extra time. In the 124th minute, the latest goal in World Cup history, Youri Tielemans converted a penalty awarded after a seven-minute VAR review of a challenge many neutral analysts, including many former officials and football players, argued Tielemans himself had engineered by stepping into Lamine Camara. It was Senegal’s second gut punch inside six months, after they were stripped of the Africa Cup of Nations title in January following a similarly late, similarly contested penalty against Morocco.
Set against IFAB’s own Laws of the Game, which say VAR exists only to fix “clear and obvious errors” in four narrow categories, not to re-referee every marginal contact, a pattern emerges. Factual calls, such as offside, are resolved by measurement and rarely argued. It is the judgment calls, the ones that require a human being to decide who initiated contact, that keep bending in predictable directions. Brazil had a Vinicius Junior goal chalked off against Scotland for a soft foul, so debatable that the Brazilian federation wrote to FIFA demanding “consistent application” of the standard.
Ghana were denied what looked like a stonewall penalty against England. Germany’s Julian Nagelsmann called a disallowed extra-time goal against Paraguay “a joke.” Nobody is claiming every one of these was rigged. But when the discretionary calls keep landing against the same category of teams, while the game’s biggest global commercial asset keeps getting the benefit of the doubt, it stops looking random.
Politics was always in the building
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Infantino awarded Trump the inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize” last December, months before the same president was phoning him about a red card. FIFA tried to stage a handshake photo-op between Palestinian and Israeli football officials at its own Congress, only for the Palestinian federation’s president to walk away, telling the room, “We are suffering.”
Iran’s federation nearly boycotted the World Cup draw entirely after its president was denied a US visa. European boycott talk swirled in January over Greenland tensions. Tickets for the final are going for $11,000, a price Infantino defended as simply “market rates,” even as stadiums showed embarrassing patches of empty seats in the group stage. This is a tournament where politics is not a subplot. It is competing with the football for the headline.
What can African teams take into 2030?
This is where we have to be honest with ourselves, because blaming referees alone lets African teams off too easily. Senegal and Egypt were genuinely, avoidably careless in the closing stages of matches they controlled. Senegal were 2-0 up with five minutes to go and conceded twice before extra time even began — that is not officiating, that is game management collapsing under pressure. Egypt led 2-0 against the reigning champions and could not see out the final third of the match. Controversial calls do not fully explain the concession of four combined goals in the last twenty-five minutes across two matches.
A few lessons stand out heading toward 2030, when Morocco co-hosts alongside Spain and Portugal, and African federations will have home continental pressure on their side for the first time in over a decade:
African countries must teach and learn to close out games with structure, not adrenaline. Both Senegal and Egypt shifted from contro,l to panic after conceding once. Elite teams manage a 2-0 lead by killing tempo and denying rhythm, not by chasing a third goal that invites transitions.
Just like the above, managing the moment is also as important as being tactical. Fatigue, hydration-break disruptions, and the sheer occasion of a first Round of 16 appearance in decades visibly affected the composure of both Senegal and Egypt during their collapses. Squads that have been through deep knockout runs before, like Argentina and France, rarely unravel this specific way.
Institutional VAR literacy must be intentionally ,built into the game’s framework, not just protest culture. The Algerian federation’s formal complaint over the Messi non-card is the right instinct; using official channels, not just social media outrage, and it’s a template other federations can copy immediately after contentious calls, while the tournament is still live and scrutiny is high.
How many African referees were on VAR duty at the 2026 World Cup? Two. This means the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and individual federations must recruit and develop more elite match officials. Part of why marginal calls seem to break one way is that they represent a middle ground: more African referees and VARs operating at the World Cup’s top matches would not guarantee different outcomes, but it would change the composition of the rooms making these calls.
Belgium’s manager, Rudi Garcia, said, “We know these [supposedly African] teams, they lose their tactical structure towards the end of the match.
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“We also know that at 2-0, they would do anything to protect their goal which, in my opinion, is a serious mistake.” He clarified the statement on his Instagram handle, saying, “I was referring to teams unaccustomed to managing a lead in high-level World Cup matches.”
Football is still, at its core, magical, with the emotion, the theatre, the sheer improbability of these run-ins. That’s what makes it worth the outrage when the sport feels rigged, and worth the honest self-scrutiny when the outrage isn’t the whole story either. Both things are true at once at this World Cup. Officiating deserves scrutiny-some of it deserved and overdue. And African teams, brilliant as they’ve been, still have real, fixable lessons of their own to carry into 2030.
