The Balogun Affair: Why Football Can't Shake Off Its Conspiracy Theorists

Football has never been short of supporters convinced the world is against them, but as Guardian Football's Football Daily newsletter argues this week, the game itself keeps handing ammunition to its conspiracy theorists. The newsletter opens with characteristic tongue-in-cheek candour: while its writers remain open to the possibilities that Stanley Kubrick staged the moon landings and that the Pentagon keeps grey aliens tucked away at Area 51, they have little patience for tinfoil-hat theories about officiating. Referees, after all, preside over matches featuring 22 elite athletes who are all expert gaslighters. Mistakes are inevitable — but they stem from good old-fashioned incompetence, not a shadowy cabal devoted to keeping your team firmly in its place. The problem, Football Daily suggests, is that events keep blurring that line. Enter what the newsletter calls 'the Folarin Balogun affair' at the Club World Cup — sarcastically rebranded the 'Geopolitics World Cup.' If an entitled president can successfully agitate to have a player's suspension swept under the rug, fans can be forgiven for wondering whether darker forces also shape the mundane decisions: did the ball go out off Gabriel Martinelli or Enzo Le Fée? A random scroll through assorted social media platforms on any given matchday, the newsletter notes, proves there is no shortage of paranoid supporters ready to connect those dots. With the FIFA World Cup 2026 looming large on the horizon, the scrutiny of officiating integrity and governance that Football Daily highlights will only intensify on the global stage. The rest of the edition turns to its readers in typically eclectic fashion. Luke Davydaitis recalls that one of Orson Welles' final film roles was voicing Unicron in Transformers: The Movie — an enormous planet roaming through space and devouring other planets. 'If that isn't a suitable metaphor for the Premier League and its transfer windows, I don't know what is,' he writes. Doug Peters, meanwhile, wonders whether West Ham and Wolves fans regret complaining about having to wait until the last day for the website's Premier League previews — and whether Tottenham supporters, who also grumbled, should take the hint that complaining may lead to no preview at all. Best of all is Chris Jersan's plea: if Carlos Baleba ends up at Manchester United, surely their fans can finally deliver the 'Daydream Baleba' chant the world deserves. The through-line is unmistakable. Whether it is suspensions quietly disappearing, transfer sagas swallowing entire summers, or preview schedules mysteriously vanishing, modern football repeatedly gives its most paranoid followers reasons to believe. The truth, as ever, is probably far more mundane — but as Football Daily implies, the game's governors might want to stop making the conspiracy theorists' job quite so easy. This article is based on and attributed to The Guardian's daily football email, Football Daily. The full version is available via The Guardian's website.