by Matteo Croce

Some news stories report an event. Others, much more rarely, reveal a rule.

The Balogun case belongs to the latter category. It does not merely invite us to discuss a FIFA decision, but to consider a much broader question: what happens to reputation when it encounters an organisation whose position is so central that its crises are fundamentally different from those of any other organisation?

The US striker is sent off during the United States–Bosnia and Herzegovina match and is expected to miss the following game. FIFA instead decides to suspend the enforcement of the ban, allowing him to play against Belgium. A few days later, Donald Trump publicly states that he personally intervened with his friend Gianni Infantino and thanks the governing body for correcting what he describes as an injustice.

The debate immediately focuses on the legitimacy of the decision. Was FIFA genuinely subjected to political pressure? Did the regulations allow for that kind of interpretation? Is it possible that a political leader influenced the outcome of a disciplinary proceeding?

These questions are inevitable. But they are not the most interesting ones.

From a reputational perspective, the issue is not so much whether a decision is formally correct, but which interpretations it makes plausible. The law operates through evidence; reputation operates through credible perceptions. A controversial decision is judged not only by the outcome it produces, but also by what it suggests about the identity, criteria and priorities of the organisation that made it.

For this reason, the real question is not whether FIFA was entitled to suspend the ban. It is whether the same interpretation would have been available to a less influential federation, a less central country or a player without such authoritative political support.

There is no need to answer. The reputational damage already lies in the fact that the question has to be asked.

It would, however, be a mistake to interpret this episode as simply the latest controversy involving FIFA. In recent years, the international governing body has been at the centre of some of the most significant reputational crises in global sport: the World Cup in Qatar, allegations of sportswashing, the awarding of the 2034 tournament to Saudi Arabia and its growing proximity to governments and political leaders. Yet, when these events are considered together, a difficult-to-dispute fact emerges: none of them has so far undermined FIFA’s centrality within the system, despite damaging its credibility among a significant proportion of its stakeholders.

The World Cup remains the competition that governments want to host, sponsors want to fund, broadcasters want to acquire and billions of people want to watch. FIFA continues to occupy a position that no other actor is currently capable of replacing.

The most immediate explanation would be that FIFA attaches little importance to its own reputation. This conclusion may appear intuitive, but it is undoubtedly wrong. An organisation that governs the most important sporting event on the planet is perfectly aware of the value of credibility. The point, rather, is that reputational costs do not affect every stakeholder with the same intensity, and not all stakeholders have the same ability to turn a loss of trust into a loss of power.

The question, therefore, is not why FIFA accepts exposure to such intense criticism. The question is different: what happens when an organisation believes that, in a particular situation, other assets carry greater value?

This distinction forces us to reconsider the way we are accustomed to thinking about reputation.

For years, we have described it as an asset to be protected. This is the language of crisis communication, corporate governance and risk management. Reputation is presented as fragile capital, built slowly and requiring careful preservation. Yet this representation, although accurate, rests on an implicit assumption: that all organisations respond to the same reputational mechanisms.

Perhaps they do not.

The FIFA case suggests a different hypothesis. Beyond a certain threshold of centrality, reputation may cease to be merely an asset to defend and become a form of capital that can also be deployed. Not because it loses its value, but because it becomes part of a trade-off.

We do not know whether this trade-off is the result of a deliberate strategy or the effect of more complex dynamics. Nor is it necessary to attribute a specific intention to the organisation in order to observe the phenomenon: a reputational cost may be concentrated among stakeholders who, at least in the short term, lack the power required to translate it into a loss of authority.

If this perspective is correct, the question we should be asking also changes. We should no longer ask why some organisations accept reputational risks, but when they decide that those risks represent a rational investment.

The distinction is less theoretical than it might appear. A small business, a professional firm or a listed company can hardly afford to consume its reputation without jeopardising its future. But does the same really apply to a central bank, a major technology platform, an international organisation or an institution occupying a systemically indispensable position?

Perhaps the privilege of the most powerful organisations does not lie in avoiding criticism. It lies in being able to withstand, for longer, the distance between criticism and its consequences.

This is where the Balogun case definitively ceases to be about football. For years, we have considered reputation one of the main sources of power and stability. This episode suggests that the relationship may also work in the opposite direction: not because reputation loses its value, but because power can alter the way it functions.

Perhaps this is the real legacy of a story destined to disappear quickly from the sports pages. It has not merely forced us to debate FIFA’s independence once again. It has required us to abandon a deeper assumption: that a loss of credibility necessarily translates into a loss of power.

That does not always happen. Reputational damage becomes a consequence for power only when it affects stakeholders capable of making it one.

This is the reputation paradox.