Mamdani Ripped for 'Curious' Response to U.S. Red Card Getting Overturned with Trump Involvement
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani knows his soccer. After Monday, no one can dispute that much.
The current state of his conflicted loyalties, however, remains an open question.
Monday on the social media platform X, Mamdani delivered what one user called a “curious” response to news that, following a phone call from President Donald Trump to FIFA President Gianni Infantino, the World Cup’s governing body had overturned a mandatory one-game suspension that would have forced United States Men’s National Team star striker Folarin Balogun to miss Monday night’s match against Belgium.
In lieu of direct comments, Mamdani posted a meme.
The meme, in the form of a gif, featured legendary soccer manager José Mourinho saying as follows: “I prefer not to speak. If I speak, big trouble. Big trouble. I don’t want to be in big trouble.”
Mamdani’s chosen meme paraphrased comments Mourinho made after a match in 2014.
“I prefer really not to — not to speak,” the manager said. “If I speak, I am in big trouble — in big trouble. And I don’t want to be in big trouble.”
https://t.co/L7gB6chigX pic.twitter.com/3jsDj7LPxS
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 6, 2026
On X, users reacted to the cryptic meme by calling it “curious,” “odd,” and “LAME.” Some even suggested that the mayor has secretly rooted against the USMNT during the World Cup.
Mamdani finally chimes in — with this very curious non-response response quoting Real Madrid manager José Mourinho’s “you don’t want to be in big trouble” quote. https://t.co/ySxihHn2HV
— Chris Sommerfeldt (@C_Sommerfeldt) July 6, 2026
What an odd thing to say
— Nurblegurble (@nurblegurb89690) July 6, 2026
It’s SO LAME to hate your country like this!
— Mj מירי (@mirijoie) July 6, 2026
Let me guess — you are rooting for Belgium. Such suspense.
(Just like you were rooting for Paraguay, Australia, Turkey, & Bosnia)
😂 😂 🤣
— Cincinattius (@antonybrrrrrr) July 6, 2026
Of course, the meme’s actual, widely accepted meaning goes a long way toward illustrating Mamdani’s probable intent.
The Mourinho meme has such a long and storied history on social media that in 2024, The Athletic published a story marking the 10-year anniversary of the press conference in which the manager spoke those words.
As manager of the English soccer club Chelsea, Mourinho had just watched two of his players disqualified on red cards.
“He batted back a couple of early questions and looked pretty keen to hit the road,” the outlet wrote. “Then, as if by some alchemical reaction, the whole energy of the scene shifted. A bog-standard moan transmuted into something else, something oddly luminous. The words hummed in the way words do when they’re destined to be repeated a million times or more.”
Then came the quote that inspired the meme.
Indeed, it might help non-soccer fans to know that Mourinho has a reputation as one of the sport’s most colorful figures.
“The yellow card was fair because I was rude,” he once said of a penalty he received for an altercation with a member of an opposing club’s staff. “But I was rude to an idiot.”
Thus, considering all context, Mamdani undoubtedly intended his Mourinho meme to convey a complex meaning.
Considering the injustice of the red card against Balogun, the mayor probably used the Mourinho meme because in 2014 the legendary manager made the same complaint.
To give Mamdani his due, that meme usage was certainly a clever way to maintain his objection to the Balogun disqualification without weighing in on Trump’s alleged role in getting the suspension overturned.
“Before the suspension was reversed, tho, Mamdani said on his ‘Morning Pitch’ stream yesterday that Balogun was ‘cruelly’ given a red card,” Politico reporter Chris Sommerfeldt wrote Monday morning on X, to which Mamdani replied with the Mourinho meme.
One prominent politician who hasn’t chimed in yet on the reversal of @USMNT‘s Folarin Balogun’s 1-game suspension: Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Before the suspension was reversed, tho, Mamdani said on his “Morning Pitch” stream yesterday that Balogun was “cruelly” given a red card.
— Chris Sommerfeldt (@C_Sommerfeldt) July 6, 2026
Purely from a soccer perspective, Mamdani did offer correct analysis. In fact, after the referee gave Balogun a red card during the USMNT’s 2-0 victory Wednesday against Bosnia-Herzegovina, prominent American journalists accused FIFA of “corruption.”
Of course, perhaps the real story here is that X users would question Mamdani’s loyalty in the first place.
Last month, three Mamdani-endorsed socialists won Democratic primaries for U.S. House seats in New York. The mayor has also begun to implement socialist policies.
Thus, as the Democratic Party lurches leftward, the Mamdani-led progressive wing has tremendous momentum.
Meanwhile, the Democrat establishment fears that this will not bode well for the party in national elections where the overwhelming majority of conservative and independent voters regard socialism with healthy suspicion.
Likewise, Mamdani has maintained an ambivalent relationship with Trump. Notwithstanding two White House visits from the mayor, he and the president find themselves ideologically very much at odds.
More broadly, of course, the further left one drifts, the more one rejects both nationhood and faith. Long ago, for instance, Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that a communist could never be a Christian.
In short, the mayor posted a clever meme that American non-soccer fans probably did not understand. That does not mean, however, that those same Americans lacked good reasons to question Mamdani’s loyalties.
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