I’m not a fan of football in general but the moment they start dismissing the rules under government pressure is the moment they lose all what’s left of their little credibility.
FIFA is corrupt to the bone, but until now it stayed away from corrupting the game itself, at least officially. There are plenty of dodgy cases with referees and inconsistent applications of the rules, but so far this never extrapolated to interference by the organisers themselves.
Disclaimer: I’m American, I want Balogun to play, and I don’t think it was a red card. I’ve been a soccer coach for over a decade now.
FIFA has never had an issue reducing red card suspensions in any World Cup ever and I don’t see how this is any different. The fact that a country’s leadership went directly to FIFA to complain isn’t unique at all. The only thing unique about it is that it was the host nation, and that’s only unique by circumstance. The USA would have done it either way.
I’m not saying it wasn’t a dirty deal. It was. I’m saying there’s nothing special about it and FIFA is exactly this awful and always has been.
Almost nothing you say is true. This hasn’t happened since 1962. The US should be excluded from this and future worldcups just like Russia when they got caught cheating in the Olympics.
Anything trump touches dies
I agree. Though the best thing that could happen would be a 3-1 or even 4-1 victory for Belgium despite Trump’s maffia bullying. Imagine this makes the entire USA feel like they’re out of their depth that the keeper concedes really silly goals.
Wait and then so that red card striker barely gets to touch the ball and have any attempts on target.
Or that the black players just feel like not even putting any effort in to help the most racist President in recent history who’s actively locking up and arresting their black brothers and sisters in the street for over a year now.
I could see that happening. Time will tell.
Oh and that that entire game would be a metaphor for how one can keep cheating and lying through life, but in the end somehow there’s a universal justice that will have a final say.
Id need to look it up, but apparently it was 100% a red card and multiple people and instances have quoted the rule book itself and its subsections stating it was indeed, a foul worthy of a red card and that no retraction of the suspention should happen.
And as said before too, red cards can get reduced if its more than one match. This was a single match so no, no reduction.
Edit https://www.rbfa.be/en/news/rbfa-statement-regarding-folarin-balogun
Red cards have always led to a suspension of at least the next game, as was again confirmed by FIFA before this cup. Further suspensions can be and often are reduced indeed (e.g. Ronaldo’s suspension during qualifications was reduced from 3 to 1 matches).
Whether it’s truly a red card or not is not really the issue here. What about all other dodgy red cards? What about dodgy goals? Are we going to call those all into doubt too? During the game the referee and by extension the VAR decides. Teams can argue on the field and once the game is over: that’s it, no more discussion about the decisions. Discussion about future cups can happen of course, but you can’t just change the rules of a running cup. That’s not fair to anyone who properly followed them.
I honestly don’t give a damn about Belgium winning or not, but I really don’t like how the US and FIFA are corrupting something that a large part of the world holds very dear. That’s an outright shame. What happened here is unprecedented.
