Fair play beyond the pitch: what the World Cup reveals about FIFA governance

If the principle of “Justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done” holds in every court of law, why should football be any different?

Every four years, the FIFA World Cup promises the world one thing: fair play. For almost forty years FIFA has also celebrated exemplary fair play with the FIFA Fair Play Award, bestowed on a player, coach, team, official, or even fan groups in recognition of fair play behaviour either on or off the pitch. But what if fair play is no longer just related to what happens during ninety minutes on the pitch? 

What if the real contest begins long before kick-off?

Who appoints the referees? Who decides which officials are trusted with the biggest matches? Who reviews the controversial calls? Who explains those decisions to the football community? And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all: who holds football’s governing body accountable?

When does inconsistency become a governance issue?

There have always been instances in football where decisions made by officials are found to be flawed. But what is happening in the 2026 FIFA World Cup appears entirely new, thanks to many controversial VAR interventions.

In the group stages, there was a marginal offside decision that denied Iran a late winner in the dying moments of their final game against Egypt, knocking them out of the tournament. Ghana were deprived of a penalty during their match against England after Ezri Konsa’s wild challenge on Prince Kwabena Adu went unpunished, leading to the Ghana coach saying “VAR went for a coffee.” Lionel Messi avoided even a yellow card for a play against Algeria’s Aïssa Mandi that some observers felt would have amounted to a red card in other games. Goals were disallowed for light contact in the leadup, while other seeming fouls went unpunished. Some players were carded for simulation, while others weren’t.

But perhaps the most shocking event in the entire tournament was the decision to overturn the suspension of Folarin Balogun following his controversial red card in the Round of 32 against Bosnia & Herzegovina, in an incident some felt was akin to Messi's against Algeria.

FIFA’s reversal came after a direct phone call from US President Donald Trump to FIFA president Gianni Infantino. This was an unprecedented act of political intervention that even former FIFA president Sepp Blatter condemned as crossing the line.

None of these decisions, taken alone, proves anything.

Referees have always faced marginal, split-second judgment calls. But when supporters, coaches and even federations start asking not “Was this decision wrong?” but “Why does this pattern keep favouring the same sides?” at what point does a series of individual errors become a question about the system itself?

Does representation end with qualification?

The African nations keep earning their spot at the World Cup. Ten African teams qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and many performed very well. African players keep contributing to the game that is played in the entire world. But do the numbers on the pitch matter as far as decision-making is concerned? 

How many officials representing underrepresented confederations get assigned the responsibility of deciding the most critical games in the competition?

Can technology be transparent if nobody understands it?

VAR was introduced to increase confidence in decision-making. Has it? 

Commentary around this tournament suggests it has, at times, simply relocated the debate rather than resolved it. It moves from the field to a review room where fans never get to understand how the decision was actually made. 

One example came in the Argentina–Egypt round of 16 match, where VAR sent the referee to the monitor to disallow a second Egyptian goal for a foul deep in the build-up, which led to many commentators later asking why a similar foul on Mohamed Salah in Argentina’s penalty box that led to Argentina’s late winner (along with Alexis Mac Allister also pulling Egyptian attacker Hamdi Fathy down inside the area during the same play), was not scrutinised in the same way. 

Match officials say that both ‘fouls’ on the Egyptian players were in fact reviewed and found to fall short of the threshold for intervention, which is itself the point: supporters are left weighing a pundit’s suspicion against an official’s assurance, with little visibility into how either conclusion was reached.

Later, England’s equalizing goal against Norway in their quarterfinal appeared on some television coverage to have struck an overhead camera cable, but FIFA later claimed its connected-ball sensor data showed no evidence of contact.

Shouldn’t transparency be treated as being just as important as accuracy?

Is governance judged only when things go wrong?

The law makes a clear differentiation between the two types of justice: substantive, which entails obtaining the proper result, and procedural, which entails obtaining this result by following a transparent, unbiased, and trustworthy process. The World Cup raises the issue of whether the world of football has been so obsessed with getting the decisions right that it has failed to achieve another vital objective - to ensure that they were perceived as being made fairly.

The focus changes accordingly. The question that needs to be asked is no longer just “Was the referee’s decision correct?”. it should become “can the authorities of the sport prove they have a process deserving the trust of every single confederation, every single federation, every single player and fan?”

Has authority been confused with accountability?

Strong institutions aren’t defined by how much power they hold. They’re defined by how effectively that power is scrutinised. Can an organisation be genuinely accountable if its most significant decisions are rarely explained in detail to the public it serves? The question is not whether FIFA gets every decision right. No governing body ever will. The real question is whether football’s most influential institution has built governance systems capable of earning unhesitating confidence from everyone with a stake in the game. 

Until that question can be answered without hesitation, fair play will remain more than a principle of football. It will remain football’s greatest governance challenge.