Christ This Sucks

It's a dark day for football after FIFA suspended Folarin Balogun's red card

My first reaction when I heard the news was elation, and that's the thing that haunts me.

News began spreading on social media that FIFA had decided to suspend US Men's National Team striker Folarin Balogun's controversial red card around midday on Sunday. I didn't believe it at first. This just isn't something that is done.

From U8's to the World Cup, everyone knows a red card means you're kicked out of the current game, your team plays down a player for the rest of that game, and you are banned from playing the next game. Exceptions to this rule are exceedingly rare, though they do happen in league's around the world.

But not at the World Cup.

As a diehard, lifelong USMNT fan I had been outraged by the harsh card on our most in-form player at this tournament. I was gutted for Flo that he would have to miss a Round of 16 game and for the team having to deal with Belgium without their leading scorer.

My initial reaction of happiness to the news that he would play was born from these feelings. It felt like a measure of justice in the moment due to the harshness of the initial card.

And then the reality of the corruption began to sink in. I went through all the stages of grief over this decision, which you can still find by perusing my Bluesky account.

We're all used to the rampant corruption of FIFA by now. The slave laborers who built the stadiums for the 2022 in Qatar, the bribery schemes amongst nations competing to host the World Cup, Saudi Arabia hosting in 2034, the fucking Peace Prize and the accompanying dropped US Department of Justice charges against multiple FIFA officials.

But this one feels different. We learned over the course of the day yesterday, the full measure of the corruption came to light. Of course there was always going to be an appeal from US Soccer, but normally those would get ignored by FIFA. President Donald Trump apparently made three different phone calls to FIFA President Gianni Infantino about the card.

American hedge fund manager and US Soccer donor Scott Griffin apparently initially brought the red card to Trump's attention. Griffin's donations to US Soccer partially fund US Head Coach Mauricio Pochettino's salary.

We have no way of knowing how key the Trump calls were in the final decision, but the appearance of Trump getting his way here undermines the integrity of the sport. If we are entering a period of time where a politician can call up FIFA to reverse an on-field decision and that is terrifying.

This is the part that didn't enter my mind until some time had passed.

The World Cup this year has been truly a highlight of my whole life. The games have been quality and exciting and even my non-soccer fan friends are texting me about the games. On top of that, my beloved USMNT, the sports team I have probably invested the most passion into over the course of my lives, were in generational form.

The USMNT is not supposed to compete on the international stage. Soccer is a foreign game, I was always told. American soccer fan culture sucks, I was told. It seemed like we had finally arrived for the rest of the world.

I'm afraid that is off the cards now.

I feel bad, mostly. This wasn't the players' fault, or the managers' fault. This wasn't the fans' fault. And this is for sure isn't Flo Balogun's fault, though this unfortunately will be what the man will be remembered for for the rest of time.

I'm not naive enough to call for Balogun to be benched in an act of honor, that is simply not going to happen even if it would make us all feel better if it did.

I feel bad for Ricardo Pepi, whose performances at this tournament have been so uninspiring that not even the White House wanted to see him on the pitch.

I'm sad for the story that we were denied. Before Trump and FIFA's intervention, the storyline was immaculate: the plucky perennial underdog USMNT facing a top 10 nation in the Round of 16, the stage where the US almost always exits the tourney. A game against Belgium, who famously knocked the US out of the 2014 World Cup in the Round of 16 despite a heroic performance by US goalkeeper Tim Howard.

With Balogun, given the form of the two teams, the US is probably at least even odds for advancing. Without him, we would return to our status as unlikely underdogs. But what a story it would have been if we had been able to overcome the red card and win anyway, which I think we had a good chance to do.

Now we will never know.

It would have endeared us to the world. Instead, we get... all of this. Perhaps undeservedly so, this will go down as one of the most corrupt acts in FIFA history (I think the thousands of dead slave laborers mentioned above should be the defining memory of FIFA corruption).

Many fans around the world will now view a US win in this round with a deserved asterisk, and will remember this moment going forward as the day when the rules stopped mattering.

Griffin, Trump, and Infantino has denied us an incredible possible storyline that would have been remembered for generations and replaced it with a stain on the game.

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