FIFA will have decidedly lost all of its credibility during this 2026 World Cup. The Balogun affair and the improbable reprieve granted to the American striker supposedly suspended for the round of 16 against Belgium – this on a simple phone call from the White House to Gianni Infantino – has cast shame on the international institution. A football house that continues to disgrace itself.
Latest episode to date: the controversy arising from the equalization of the English against Norway on Saturday evening in the quarter-final of the 2026 World Cup (qualification of the Lions with a score of 2-1, after extra time). The first of Jude Bellingham’s two victorious goals was marred by a not-so-trivial anomaly: the clearance of Norwegian goalkeeper Orjan Nyland having found an aerial camera cable in its trajectory, allowing the English to initiate an assassinated counterattack.
At the time, the Scandinavians tried to protest but Mr. Turpin, then in charge, and his assessors did not receive any alert attesting to such an event. And FIFA at the end of the meeting, seeing the controversy swell, resorted to a shameless lie to clumsily chase away the controversy. “ Before England’s 45+2 minute goal against Norway, the connected ball sensor showed no spike in the pulsation of the ball when it was in the air, and so there is no evidence that the ball hit the hanging cable and changed its trajectory.
»
Proof that the ball hit the cable
Hotly, while his opposing counterpart Stale Solbakken admitted his disbelief and his helplessness, Thomas Tuchel, the England coach, readily joked by recalling a precedent in the tournament: an equalizing goal refused to Croatia in added time against Portugal, in 16e final, for an offside born from a deviation invisible to the naked eye. “
There is a chip in the ball that can tell you if a hair touches it, as we know from Croatia-Portugal. She should be able to tell you if it happened », Says the German coach.
The English tabloid The Sun and the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, for their part, seriously investigated and their conclusions disprove FIFA’s thesis. The 3D animation reproducing the action of the goal according to official data recorded in real time via the technological tools of the company XR Immersiv.io proves that the trajectory of the ball has indeed been modified in the air at the height of the famous “spidercam” cable.
