Folarin Balogun, the accidental American who told the Premier League no

Folarin Balogun

Photo: Bryan Berlin / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	July 3, 2001 New York City
Occupation	Footballer
Honours	CONCACAF Nations League 2022 · CONCACAF Nations League Finalists' Best XI 2023
Individual awards	AS Monaco Player of the Season

An airline’s refusal to let a heavily pregnant woman board a flight home to London is the reason the most talked-about striker in American soccer carries an American passport. Folarin Balogun grew up in London, learned the game in Arsenal’s academy and wore England shirts at youth level, and then chose the United States, a program that had never produced a finisher of his kind. After a World Cup summer in which he matched the best tally by any American since the very first tournament, the interesting question is what he does with the leverage. His first answer, on the last night of the English transfer window, was to turn down a Premier League contract that had already been agreed.

His parents, Yoruba Nigerians settled in London, were visiting New York when his mother was seven months pregnant, and staff would not let her fly back. He was born in Brooklyn and was home in London two months later. At eight, Arsenal scouted him from the Sunday league side Aldersbrook, after a trial at Tottenham Hotspur that very nearly turned into a contract across north London.

The academy years were good ones. His under-16 side won the Liam Brady Cup against Bayern Munich and Juventus, he signed professional terms in February 2019, a few months before his 18th birthday on July 3, and a year later a contract stand-off had Brentford circling. He stayed, made his senior debut in a Europa League tie against Dundalk in October 2020 and scored his first senior goal against Molde a month later. The Premier League debut came at Brentford in August 2021, in a 2-0 defeat. After that, the first team closed around him.

Middlesbrough took him on loan in January 2022, and Chris Wilder used him as a second striker in the Championship. The real turn came in France. On loan at Reims for 2022-23, he scored on his debut against Marseille, equalised in stoppage time at Paris Saint-Germain and hit a hat-trick against Lorient on his way to 21 Ligue 1 goals, fourth in the league’s scoring chart. No American had scored that many in a season in one of Europe’s five big leagues. Back at Arsenal, he said he would not go on loan again.

By then the international question had become a small saga. Eligible for the United States, England and Nigeria, he had played for England at under-17, under-18, under-20 and under-21 level while attending a US under-18 camp in between. The American recruitment involved quiet meetings in Florida, until he posted a photo of a training pitch on Instagram and supporters spotted the logo of an Orlando bar near the national team’s base. FIFA approved the switch in May 2023. A month later, in his first senior tournament, he scored in the CONCACAF Nations League final against Canada and won his first trophy.

Monaco paid a reported 30 million euros, rising to 40 million with add-ons, in August 2023. The start was rough: a yellow card for diving on his debut, two missed penalties in his first start, against Nice. Injuries took most of 2024-25. The 2025-26 season was the correction. He scored his first Champions League goal at Bodø/Glimt, put two past Paris Saint-Germain in a 3-2 Champions League defeat, and scored in eight consecutive league matches, the same run Kylian Mbappé put together at Real Madrid that season. He finished with 19 goals in all competitions, 13 of them in Ligue 1, and was voted Monaco’s player of the season.

The tidy version of the story, the prodigal striker who found his country, leaves out how uneven the road has been, and how much of his World Cup was argued over outside the United States. In the round of 32 against Bosnia and Herzegovina he scored the opener and was then sent off in the 64th minute for a challenge that caught Tarik Muharemović on the ankle, only the fourth player to score and see red in the same World Cup match, the most recent before him being Zinedine Zidane in 2006. A ‘Free Flo’ campaign followed at home. FIFA suspended the ban after a review, a decision that drew criticism over how consistently FIFA applies its own disciplinary rules. Balogun himself said he expected it to cause a lot of controversy. The reprieve bought nothing: the United States lost 4-1 to Belgium with him on the pitch.

The goals before that were real. Named in the 26-man squad in May 2026, he opened the tournament with two goals in a 4-1 win over Paraguay, the first multi-goal World Cup game by an American since Bert Patenaude in 1930, also against Paraguay. He was player of the match again against Australia, forcing an own goal, as the United States won Group D. The strike against Bosnia and Herzegovina took him to three, level with Landon Donovan’s haul from 2010 and behind only Patenaude’s four. TIME put him on its 2026 TIME100 Next list. ‘It’s beyond explainable how special and unique my story is,’ he said during the tournament.

Then came deadline day. Everton agreed a fee of around 45 million euros plus add-ons with Monaco at the end of August, and the medical threw up doubts about his fitness. Everton moved on, reversed course within roughly an hour after speaking to Monaco’s doctors, and came back with new terms. Balogun declined. Monaco sporting director Thiago Scuro relayed his reasoning in plain words: he was not comfortable with how he had been treated or with the doubts raised about his health, and there was nothing wrong with him. Players rarely refuse a Premier League move once the paperwork is drafted. He did.

The cost is visible in the calendar. He came back late from the World Cup carrying knocks from international duty and missed the opening weeks of the season, and Mauricio Pochettino left him out of the first US squad after the tournament. On September 18 he returned for Monaco as a 76th-minute substitute in a 2-1 win over Lens that kept Filipe Luís’s side unbeaten at the top of Ligue 1.

At 25, Balogun has a club that kept him, a manager who is managing his minutes and a national-team coach waiting to see him play regular football. The next months decide whether the refusal reads as principle or as a detour: if the goals come back in a Monaco side leading Ligue 1, the Everton night becomes the moment he set his own price, and the road towards the 2030 World Cup starts from the front of the queue.

Tags: sports, athletes, 2026 FIFA World Cup, soccer, footballers, Arsenal, Everton, AS Monaco, Folarin Balogun