You Can Win the Call and Still Lose the Game

There has never been a week quite like it in the history of the World Cup. A refereeing decision — the kind that normally fuels a few days of sports-radio outrage and nothing more — became an international incident, dragged in the President of the United States, drew a rebuke from European soccer's governing body, and ended with the host nation eliminated anyway.

If you lead projects for a living, you should be paying attention. Because underneath the politics, this is one of the cleanest lessons in project governance you will see all year.

What actually happened

In the round of 32, the United States beat Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0 in Santa Clara. Late in that match, American striker Folarin Balogun planted a cleated foot on the ankle of Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemović. The referee didn't card it in real time, but a slow-motion review produced a red card — and with it, an automatic one-game suspension that would keep Balogun out of the next knockout match.

Then the process got interesting. President Donald Trump confirmed he had personally called FIFA President Gianni Infantino and asked him to review the decision. “I asked for a review because I didn't think it was a foul,” Trump told reporters. FIFA reversed the suspension. Balogun was cleared to play against Belgium.

The reaction was immediate. UEFA, European soccer's governing body, said FIFA had “crossed a red line,” calling the decision “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable.” Commentators warned about political interference and the integrity of the tournament.

And here is the part every project leader should sit with: the United States lost to Belgium 4-1 and was eliminated. They won the argument. They got their star player back on the pitch. And they still went home.

A quick note before the lessons: The PMO Squad doesn't take political sides, and this article isn't an endorsement or a criticism of anyone involved. We're interested in one thing — what happens to delivery when governance, decision rights, and outcomes collide. That story is non-partisan, and it plays out in project organizations every single day.

Lesson 1: Effort and influence are not the same as results

This is the one that should sting. The single most powerful person on earth intervened on behalf of the home team, and the scoreboard still read 4-1.

In project work we see the same illusion constantly. A sponsor throws bodies at a slipping program. An executive escalates hard, wins the meeting, gets the decision reversed. Everyone exhales — problem solved. Except the deliverable still ships late, the budget is still blown, and the customer is still unhappy.

Effort plus payment plus influence does not equal success. The only result that counts is the one on the scoreboard: Was the outcome delivered? Winning the call is not winning the game. If your project reporting measures activity — meetings held, escalations resolved, hours logged — instead of outcomes delivered, you are celebrating a red card reversal while you're losing 4-1.

Lesson 2: When decisions get made outside the process, the whole system loses integrity

Soccer already had a decision-making system for that red card: an on-field referee, backed by video review, operating under published rules. That system produced an answer. What made this a global story wasn't the answer — it was that the answer got changed from outside the process.

Every project organization has its version of the referee and the VAR: a change control board, a steering committee, a governance framework, a PMO. Those bodies exist so that decisions are transparent, consistent, and defensible — so that the same rules apply to the big initiative and the small one, to the loud stakeholder and the quiet one.

The moment decisions start getting made around that framework instead of through it, two things happen fast. First, trust erodes — if the rules can be overridden by whoever has the most power on a given day, why would anyone respect them? Second, you set precedent. UEFA didn't object because of one striker; it objected because of what the reversal implied about every future decision. In your organization, the equivalent is the team that quietly stops bringing changes to the board because they've learned the board doesn't actually decide anything.

Lesson 3: A last-minute reversal is uncontrolled change — and it always has a cost

The suspension reversal looked like a win in isolation. Viewed as a change to a live system, it was uncontrolled change: a decision made under time pressure, outside the normal path, without a full account of the downstream effects. The downstream effects showed up anyway — the reputational fallout, the integrity questions, the strained relationships with other stakeholders in the sport.

Change control isn't bureaucracy for its own sake. It exists precisely so that “we can just reverse this quickly” comes with a clear-eyed view of what the reversal costs everyone else. Skip that step and you don't avoid the cost — you just find out about it later, usually at the worst possible time.

Lesson 4: Powerful stakeholders will lean in — the question is whether you channel that energy or get run over by it

Let's be fair to the impulse. A committed, high-powered sponsor who wants to win is an asset, not a liability. The problem is never that a stakeholder cares. The problem is when there's no structure to channel that care into the process instead of around it.

A strong PMO doesn't tell the sponsor to back off. It gives the sponsor a legitimate, fast, transparent path to raise the concern — a review that happens inside the rules, not on a private phone call. That's the difference between a PMO people respect and a PMO people route around.

Where this lands

Here's the rant we hear most often: “Our PMO produces status decks, but delivery isn't any better, and when it matters, people just route around it.” If that sounds familiar, the World Cup just gave you a very expensive, very public illustration of what that costs.

At The PMO Squad, project and PMO delivery is all we do. We help leaders build governance that people actually use, define decision rights before the pressure hits, and measure the only thing that matters — outcomes delivered, on time and on scope. We're not for everyone. If you want a PMO that produces prettier reports, we're the wrong call. If you want one that gets delivery back on track and makes the hard decisions defensible, that's exactly our game.

You can win the call and still lose the game. Let's make sure your most important initiatives are set up to win the game.

Curious whether your governance would hold up under pressure? Let's have a short conversation and find out if we're a fit.