My running joke is that soccer (futball for you purists) is the favorite sport of people who feel baseball is too exciting. I don’t hate soccer. I just don’t like it, care about it or watch it. You are welcome to disagree. Many do, and that’s great too. But the international governing body of soccer, Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA as its commonly, known, has long been seen as a shady, borderline corrupt, association.

This was true even before FIFA invented a Peace Prize to give to Trump when he was sad not to have won the Nobel, to place alongside the trophy he glommed and the medal he pocketed. FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, is nothing if not pragmatic. He knows where his tongue must be stuck to get what he wants.

The World Cup, however, was a huge deal despite whatever reservations one had about FIFA. No matter who paid FIFA what to hold it, the matches were held on a pitch for all eyes to see. Not even Gianni could taint the purity of the game on the field. Balls either got kicked or didn’t. Ball either went into the goal or didn’t. Players either played or… oh no.

President Trump called Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, in the hours after the United States men’s soccer team played Wednesday and asked him to review the suspension of the team’s top goal scorer in the World Cup, Folarin Balogun, after he was given a red card, according to four people familiar with the conversation.

On Sunday, FIFA reversed the suspension, announcing that Mr. Balogun would be eligible to play Monday against Belgium.

We knew there was a call because Trump just couldn’t not tell the world about how he, the great and powerful Trump, got FIFA to cave to his mad will. In the view from Trump World, this was a great thing. There he was, the man whose visage has become ubiquitous in Washington, making FIFA bend to please him. Is he the greatest or what?

On the one hand, there is nothing to show that the FIFA reversal, something that almost never before happened during the World Cup, was in any way related to a phone call from Trump to Gianni. Curiously, the Times characterizes the call as Trump “asking him to review the suspension.” Does that sound like the way Trump behaves?

On the other hand, a FIFA reversal would have been suspect regardless, as its something that almost never happens.

The reversal is highly unusual and is the first time since 1962 that FIFA has allowed a player to appear in a game when they would have been suspended after being sent off in the World Cup. Mr. Infantino has spent years trying to curry favor with Mr. Trump. Last year, FIFA created and gave Mr. Trump the FIFA Peace Prize amid the president’s public, but failed, campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

FIFA gave no explanation or justification for the reversal.

“In line with Article 27 of the FIFA disciplinary code, the implementation of the match suspension is suspended for a probationary period of one year,” the governing body said in a statement. “If Folarin Balogun commits another infringement of a similar nature and gravity during the probationary period, the suspension shall be revoked and the sanction enforced without prejudice to any additional sanction imposed for the new infringement.” The statement did not explain why he did not receive an automatic ban as other players who have been sent off have received.

Article 27? Well, that explains it. Not.

From what I can tell, the red card given to Folarin Balogun after slow motion replay made an inadvertent act look far worse was considered excessive. Balogun should not have been banned, people say. Fair enough, says I, someone who doesn’t really care one way or the other. Refs make mistakes and as every player knows, that’s part of the game. Sometimes the mistakes cut in your favor. Sometimes they don’t. The nature of the game is you play harder, unless you’re Trump, in which case you call your buddy Gianni.

On the third hand, regardless of whether Trump’s phone call was the cause of the reversal of the suspension or not, whether FIFA’s reversal was for good reason or not, the next match between the US and Belgium will be forever tainted by the belief that Trump told Gianni to find him 11780 votes and Gianni did so in some dark, smoke-filled room at FIFA.

The United States men’s national soccer team players will play their hearts out. So too will Belgium. One team will win and the other will not. No matter who wins, the game will be remembered as tainted, under the cloud of a phone call by Trump that took the sport of soccer and debased it like everything he touches. Not that I care, but I still hope the US wins as it will be due to goals made, not phone calls made. But the phone call once made cannot be unmade, and the US team deserves better than to have its efforts emit the odor of Trump.