U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in­ter­vened on be­half of star U.S. for­ward Fo­lar­in Ba­lo­gun, whose red-card sus­pen­sion was lift­ed in a de­ci­sion that al­lows him to play in a World Cup match against Bel­gium on Mon­day.

Ba­lo­gun, the Amer­i­can leader with three goals in the tour­na­ment, re­ceived a red card for step­ping awk­ward­ly on the right an­kle of Tarik Muhare­mović of Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina in a 2-0 round of 32 win on Wednes­day, trig­ger­ing an au­to­mat­ic one-game sus­pen­sion.

FI­FA an­nounced Sun­day that the sus­pen­sion had been lift­ed for the round of 16 match, an ex­tra­or­di­nary move that trig­gered praise from Trump and out­rage from Bel­gium’s team. It ap­peared to be the first time since 1962 that a red card dur­ing a World Cup didn’t re­sult in a sus­pen­sion.