The 2026 FIFA World Cup produced extraordinary football. It also produced a question FIFA can no longer dismiss as mere supporter frustration: who was actually in control of the competition—the Laws of the Game, political power, opaque technology or FIFA itself?

This is not an argument that every disputed decision was corrupt. It is not a claim that every VAR intervention was wrong. Some decisions angered supporters while still following FIFA’s published rules.

The argument is more precise.

A credible tournament requires rules that are known in advance, applied equally and protected from political influence. Technology should help officials apply those rules—not become an unexplained authority that overrides them. Referees should not merely be impartial; FIFA should remove avoidable conflicts that create reasonable doubts about their impartiality.

At this World Cup, those principles were not always protected.

A referee selected by FIFA—but rejected by the host country

Omar Abdulkadir Artan was not an unknown official arriving without proper accreditation.

He was named Africa’s leading male referee for 2025 and was preparing to become the first Somali referee to officiate at a World Cup. He reportedly held a valid visa but was refused entry to the United States after authorities alleged associations with people suspected of links to terrorist organisations. The Somali Football Federation said it had not received an adequate official explanation. FIFA responded that it did not control host-country immigration decisions. Source 1

That response may describe the legal division of responsibility, but it does not resolve the sporting problem.

FIFA selected the referee. FIFA selected the hosts. FIFA staged a supposedly global competition in countries whose entry policies could prevent selected officials, players, staff and supporters from participating.

The host government effectively gained an undeclared power over the tournament’s officiating pool.

It is not enough for FIFA to say immigration belongs to the host government after the consequences become inconvenient. Before awarding a World Cup, FIFA should obtain binding guarantees that accredited participants can enter unless transparent, reviewable and compelling evidence establishes a genuine danger.

Artan was not formally banned by FIFA. That distinction matters. But the result was the same: a highly rated CAF referee disappeared from the World Cup because of an unreviewable political and immigration decision.

A telephone call no president should have needed to make

The Folarin Balogun case was even more damaging because the political intervention was public.

Balogun received a direct red card during the United States’ Round-of-32 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina. U.S. President Donald Trump subsequently revealed that he had contacted FIFA president Gianni Infantino about the decision.

FIFA’s disciplinary committee then imposed the automatic one-match suspension but suspended its implementation for a one-year probationary period, allowing Balogun to face Belgium. FIFA maintained that its disciplinary body acted independently and that the original red card had not technically been overturned. Source 2

That legal distinction did little to resolve the integrity concern.

UEFA said the decision had “crossed a red line,” arguing that the minimum one-match suspension following a red card was automatic and had already been served by other dismissed players during the tournament. It called the exception unprecedented and unjustifiable. Source 3

The central problem is not whether Balogun deserved the original red card. Referees can make mistakes, and disciplinary bodies can possess powers to suspend sanctions.

The problem is that the president of the host nation had direct access to FIFA’s president, used that access to advocate for his national team, and was followed by an exceptional outcome that benefited that team.

Ordinary teams do not have a national president who can telephone Gianni Infantino. They should not need one.

Why protect the top four teams from each other?

Before the draw, FIFA announced that Spain, Argentina, France and England—the four highest-ranked teams—would be placed in protected knockout pathways.

Provided they won their groups, Spain and Argentina would be placed in opposite halves, as would France and England. The structure prevented the four teams from meeting before the semifinals and protected the two highest-ranked teams from meeting before the final. FIFA described the measure as supporting competitive balance in the expanded tournament. Source 4

But this raises a simple question:

Why should ranking a team highly before the tournament give it protection after the group stage?

The seeded pots had already served their purpose by preventing the strongest teams from being drawn together in the same group. The additional pathway protection created a second advantage.

Forty-four teams entered a supposedly random draw knowing their routes could be altered to preserve preferred paths for four selected nations.

That is not evidence that FIFA fixed the eventual finalists. The arrangement was publicly announced. France and England were protected as well as Spain and Argentina.

But openness does not automatically create fairness.

Researchers examining the draw found that its possible outcomes were not equally likely. Their analysis concluded that FIFA’s procedure performed relatively well under its chosen design criteria, while also finding that the non-uniformity could have been reduced substantially by treating the leading Pot 1 teams more equally. Source 5

A cleaner system would seed the group stage and then let every qualifier enter a fixed, symmetrical knockout bracket. Once the competition begins, reputation should stop providing protection.

The World Cup should determine who the best team is. It should not design the journey around who FIFA already believes the best teams are.

Technology should provide evidence—not become the law

Technology is valuable when it helps officials see what human beings could not see.

It becomes dangerous when the output of a proprietary system is treated as the decision itself.

Croatia appeared to score a stoppage-time equaliser against Portugal through Joško Gvardiol. The goal was disallowed after a sensor inside the ball registered an alleged contact involving Igor Matanović, which created a new offside phase.

The contact was not apparent to the human eye. Reporting at the time noted that the ball did not noticeably change direction. Croatia’s football federation sought an explanation and described the intervention as an abuse of technology. Source 6

The issue is not simply whether the sensor detected a vibration.

The issue is whether the detected event satisfied the written football rule being applied.

Technology should supply evidence to the referee. It should not quietly rewrite the threshold contained in the Law.

The Norway incident exposed the contradiction

The problem became more obvious during Norway’s quarterfinal against England.

Before England’s equaliser, a Norwegian clearance travelled high into the air and then appeared to fall sharply downward. Norway’s players, goalkeeper, staff and bench reacted immediately as though the ball had struck an overhead camera cable.

Under the Laws, contact with outside equipment should stop play and result in a dropped-ball restart. The goal-producing move should not have continued if cable contact occurred.

FIFA said there was no evidence of contact because the connected-ball sensor displayed no peak in what it called the ball’s “heartbeat.” Norway coach Ståle Solbakken said people positioned beneath the ball reacted spontaneously and believed it had struck something. Source 7

This created a remarkable double standard.

• Against Croatia, an invisible sensor fluctuation was accepted despite no apparent change in the ball’s movement.
• Against Norway, an extraordinary visible movement and immediate contemporaneous reactions were dismissed because the sensor allegedly registered nothing.

In both cases, the public was asked to accept FIFA’s interpretation without access to the raw data, detection thresholds, filtering process, error margins or independent testing.

That is not transparency. It is technological authority.

Human senses are imperfect. Video angles can be distorted by shadows, perspective and parallax. But sensors are also imperfect. Their usefulness depends upon calibration, sensitivity, sampling, placement and the type of contact they are designed to detect.

The correct response is not to worship human eyesight or worship the machine.

It is to publish enough evidence to test both.

FIFA should remove avoidable referee conflicts

There is extensive research showing that referees can be influenced by social pressure without consciously deciding to favour anybody.

The COVID-19 period created an unusual natural experiment because thousands of matches were played without spectators. One large study across twelve European leagues found that the home advantage fell by almost one-third without crowds and that refereeing decisions became more balanced when home supporters were absent. Source 8

This does not mean every referee is corrupt. It means unconscious influence is real.

If crowd pressure can affect decisions, identity, familiarity and institutional alignment may also create risks—or at least reasonable perceptions of risk.

FIFA therefore should not appoint a referee or lead VAR from the same confederation as one team when the opponent belongs to another confederation. When both teams are from the same confederation, the officiating team should come from outside it.

A UEFA–CONMEBOL match can be controlled by officials from AFC, CAF, CONCACAF or OFC. A UEFA-only match can be refereed by a non-UEFA team. A host country’s matches should be controlled by officials from outside the host confederation.

Sharing a confederation does not prove bias. That is not the point.

Conflict-of-interest safeguards exist to remove preventable doubts before anyone has to prove misconduct.

VAR reviews the category—not the actual importance

VAR is regularly described as a system for correcting “match-changing” mistakes.

That is not quite how it works.

Under the IFAB protocol, VAR can intervene only within specified categories such as goal/no goal, penalty/no penalty, red-card incidents and mistaken identity. The referee or VAR initiates the process. Teams have no formal right to invoke it. Source 9

This creates strange outcomes.

• A questionable penalty can be reviewed because it belongs to the penalty category.
• An obviously incorrect free kick awarded centimetres outside the penalty area cannot normally be reviewed as a standalone decision—even if it occurs in stoppage time and directly produces the winning goal.
• A midfield red-card incident can be reviewed because of its disciplinary classification.
• A clearly incorrect ordinary foul in a far more dangerous position may be untouchable.

The system therefore measures legal category rather than actual consequence.

It also leaves players and coaches without agency. They do not know whether VAR noticed the incident, examined the correct footage or interpreted the issue properly. Their only perceived mechanism is to protest, surround the referee and generate pressure.

Then football punishes them for protesting.

Give teams the right to challenge

The solution already exists inside FIFA’s own experiments.

Football Video Support allows a head coach to request a review immediately by signalling and providing a review card to the fourth official. During trials, teams generally received two requests per match and retained a request when the original decision was changed. Players could ask the coach to initiate the review. Source 10

FIFA says this system is designed as an affordable alternative for competitions that cannot operate full VAR. But the challenge principle is equally valuable at the elite level.

Challenges should include objectively reviewable incidents beyond the existing VAR categories: dangerous free kicks, incorrect restarts, outside interference, mistaken identity and other clear factual errors capable of being corrected before play resumes.

This would not produce endless reviews because teams would lose unsuccessful challenges.

More importantly, it would reduce the emotional heat surrounding referees.

Players would no longer need to scream, plead and surround an official in the hope that somebody might decide to look at the footage. They could exercise a recognised procedural right and then accept the result.

People cope better with adverse decisions when they believe the procedure was fair and they had a genuine opportunity to be heard.

Not every unpopular decision was improper

A serious critique must also exclude incidents where the written protocol was followed.

For example, Egypt’s disallowed goal against Argentina angered many people because VAR went a long way back through the attacking possession phase to identify an earlier foul.

But FIFA’s interpretation places no fixed time or distance limit on reviewing the attacking phase before a goal. People may reasonably oppose that philosophy, but the officials appear to have followed the published protocol.

That is not the same as Croatia, where the argument is that technology may have been used without satisfying the written threshold for a meaningful touch.

Criticising everything weakens the case against the things that genuinely require reform.

Football does not need less technology. It needs technology placed back in its proper role.

Football does not need referees without human instincts. It needs appointment systems that protect them from avoidable conflicts and pressure.

Football does not need players to stop caring about decisions. It needs a formal challenge process that turns anger into orderly review.

The World Cup belongs to every country that qualifies, every official selected and every supporter who believes the result was earned on the field.

FIFA should govern it accordingly.