Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House’s World Cup taskforce, has defended Donald Trump’s lobbying of Fifa to lift the suspension of US player Folarin Balogun for Monday’s game against Belgium.

The US president claimed that Brazilian referee Raphael Claus, who showed Balogun a red card in the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, was “a little bit suspect, if you check his past”. This was apparently a reference to a match-fixing investigation by Brazil’s senate in 2024 that examined how referees were assigned to games but did not accuse Claus of wrongdoing.

Giuliani told reporters at the Foreign Press Center in Washington DC: “We found it highly suspicious that there was a referee who had been investigated for match-fixing previously, and specifically for irregular red cards, issuing irregular red cards.

“And then when you add the fact that the process was misapplied by how the VAR was initiated there. Contact fouls, you cannot actually utilise the slow-motion in the VAR, and they did that. So when you add those two facts together there, we found [that] it was very, very highly suspicious.

He added: “Look, the US government, whether it’s at the ballot box or whether it’s on the playing field, we want fair play, all right? And so for us, we thought that was very suspicious, to say the least, just like most Americans, I think just like most people who took an unbiased view of this. And we’re happy that US Soccer was able to file the appeal, and that we think the correct result was achieved.”

Challenged by a Brazilian reporter who said Claus had merely given testimony to the match-fixing investigation, and was not a target of it himself, Giuliani admitted: “He was not accused of crimes. We understand that. What I’m telling you is that he was akin to a match-fixing investigation a few years ago in Brazil, where they were giving out, I quote, ‘irregular red cards,’ right? So that’s the facts of it. He was akin to that investigation.”

The US exited the tournament after losing 4-1 to Belgium, who celebrated victory by parodying Trump’s YMCA dance in their dressing room. Critics suggested that the president’s intervention fired up the Belgian team and spoiled much of the global goodwill the US had earned as the host nation.

Fifa has defended Claus. It said in a statement this week: “Throughout his career, he has consistently demonstrated the highest standards of professionalism and integrity.” The Brazilian Football Confederation added: “There is nothing in his record that calls his integrity into question or supports any suspicion of wrongdoing.”

At Wednesday’s briefing, Giuliani also rejected criticism of logistical arrangements for the Iranian national team, who established their base camp in Tijuana, Mexico, rather than the US, despite playing matches in Los Angeles and Seattle. “The flight time – air time – is 27 minutes from Tijuana to Los Angeles, which made it easy to decide that the day before would be a proper time to allow the team to come in the country, give them plenty of time,” he said.

“We also made it clear that they would have to leave that evening. That’s not undue stress when you think about National Football League, the NFL – teams will often take cross-country flights right after the game is finished with.

“And if you look at the US national team, after their trip to Seattle for their second match that they played against Australia, they left right after that match to go back to Orange county, a very similar flight time to what the Iranians did there. And then for the Seattle match with the Iranians, we allowed them to come in two days earlier, as it had been smooth moving in there.”

With just eight matches remaining, Giuliani, who is the son of the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, declared the World Cup a historic and economic success, reporting that more than 6.5 million fans have already attended matches, nearly doubling the previous record of 3.5 million set by the US in 1994.

He noted that Trump had raised concerns over high ticket prices but said Fifa received more than 500m ticket requests for 7m tickets. “So for a supply-demand perspective, it’s just out of whack. There’s just so much demand to come to the United States to watch the World Cup.” Some 4,547 tickets per match were distributed to US military veterans.

Giuliani said the administration streamlined entry for millions of legal visitors without compromising security. More than 5m Esta applications were processed in the first half of the fiscal year for the 19 qualifying Esta countries. B-1 and B-2 visa interview wait times were reduced significantly; in Buenos Aires, wait times dropped from 300 days to less than two weeks, and in Brazil from over 600 days to less than a month.

“There was a lot of talk before about, well, the president is not welcoming or whatever the talk was,” he said. “What I can tell you is: I think the president is one of the most welcoming hosts I can imagine for this World Cup.”

The tournament has broken previous football broadcast records in the US, with an estimated 1.3 billion viewers worldwide watching the US team’s opening match against Paraguay, according to Fifa, and a monumental 2.7 billion watching the Argentina-Cape Verde game. “Unbelievable when you think that over a third of the world actually tuned in to watch that match,” Giuliani said.

Securing the 11 US host cities required a massive federal mobilisation. The Department of Homeland Security and FBI have confiscated more than 600 drones since the tournament began. Giuliani revealed there had been 1,487 drone detections within temporary flight restriction zones, resulting in 646 seizures and 13 arrests.

As the tournament enters its final stages, he insisted that the US has proved its capability to host massive global events, looking ahead with optimism to the 2028 summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the 2031 Women’s World Cup.

“Soccer is no longer a future American story,” Giuliani stated. “It’s happening right now.”