Justice was done. The United States were bundled out of the World Cup despite a grubby intervention by the President of the United States. Mr Trump had questioned the previously automatic one-match ban on the US striker Falorin Balogun after he had been sent off.

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Lo and behold, FIFA, with the spine of a jelly fish, succumbed.

So Belgium did what had to be done. I imagine a cheer went up at noon in offices across Australia when the screens showed the final result. Skullduggery was done behind the scenes but it didn't work out.

But the bad smell remains.

Mr Trump has trampled on the rule of law in the United States, the country once a by-word for democracy, and he had a good go at doing it in the world's beautiful game. He and the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, deny that anything underhand happened. Just a president asking questions, you understand. Just the dutiful FIFA president listening.

Does anybody believe them?

"I didn't know what the hell a red card was," Mr Trump said of the foul that caused the red card. "When I found out I said, 'You gotta be kidding'."

But Mr Trump knows how brute power is wielded (persuasive soft power, not so much). The big boss questions something, and the minions race out and do whatever dirty deeds might please him. The sadness - but not surprise - is that FIFA felt obliged to go along with it.

Soccer, as Australians and Americans call it, really is the world's beautiful game. It is followed and played by millions of men and women in countries poor and rich around the world. It is elegant in its simplicity.

But FIFA has dragged it down. Gianni Infantino is rightly ridiculed. What on earth was the FIFA Peace Prize presented to Donald Trump all about except an attempt to suck up to the ultra-vane President of the US?

You never quite know what to take seriously when Mr........

© Canberra Times