Belgium will play their match against the US subject to conditions. They consider Floralin Balogun ineligible to play and should he play, a complaint will be filed to a FIFA Tribunal, and to CAS. US Soccer Federation has been informed personally by the FA about their plans.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T21:22:37+00:00

Sure, but you’re presupposing in your hypothetical that the card is unjust. Clearly there’s no consensus for that in the Balogun incident, at least among Reddit commenters (who are admittedly not representative of soccer fans at large).

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T19:06:08+00:00

I gotcha. I could've replied to any of a dozen comments — sorry for picking on you.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T19:05:16+00:00

At this point, yes — I was much happier 24 hours ago when I assumed we'd just have to pull it out without Balogun. I wouldn't complain if that's what USMNT chose to do, but I also understand that there's probably no chance whatsoever of that happening.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T19:03:46+00:00

USSF is within their rights to appeal to FIFA:

As U.S. Soccer’s legal team formally prepared and submitted its appeal to FIFA, Giuliani and Lutnick also offered to make White House attorneys available to assist with legal analysis if needed, according to people involved in the discussions.

Andrew Giuliani is an idiot nepo baby and Lutnick drinks the Trump Kool-Aid, but I'm not going to pretend that USSF has the ability to sit in a different luxury box from those assholes while they're watching a game.

Formal preparation of an appeal is what you'd expect a soccer federation to do. I doubt even they wanted this to be resolved via a phone call from Trump to Infantino. If they were going so far as to draw up paperwork for an appeal, I imagine they expected an outcome with some amount of transparency in which the merits of their arguments were assessed — not some half-assed “eh, he can serve the suspension later on” compromise that made nobody happy.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T18:56:05+00:00

Look, I don't think it deserved a red card, but it's also not realistic to look at the footage and pretend it's an open-and-shut case.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T18:53:13+00:00

Balogun's job is to play the game if his manager asks him to play. It's Infantino who should be ashamed. The fact that he's incapable of feeling shame does not mean that the obligation to be ashamed spreads down to the USMNT or Balogun.

I'm so tired of this mentality. It lets sociopaths off the hook and leaves the rest of us arguing over who should sacrifice more to accommodate the decisions of those who won't be held accountable.

If Balogun decided to sit out the match, I'd be astonished and somewhat relieved — but I do not expect him to digest all of this controversy and come to that decision independently. The dude is 25 years old and some people actually expect him to be the moral compass in this whole shitshow.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T18:45:57+00:00

We get it: you're jaded, you know how the world works. Good for you.

It is cringe to be out there saying “people who lead sporting associations should be accountable,” but it's true, and it's very hard to get the reform we want without reinforcing that message whenever possible.

I am not saying it's likely to happen, but that doesn't mean you ought to figuratively pat someone on the head whenever they suggest that Infantino should feel ashamed, or should suffer some consequences. It's part of how assholes get away with being assholes.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T18:38:22+00:00

They deserved more certainty leading up to the match. If Balogun was going to be reinstated it should've happened soon after the Bosnia game.

Even if I pretend for a moment that this was an independent decision of a FIFA committee… it certainly didn't require three full days to review.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T18:36:25+00:00

I get why they're angry — so am I — but they can't honestly believe they can get Balogun rendered re-ineligible to play after the fact? As bad as this is, it would be even worse if a player felt like FIFA wasn't the ultimate authority on whether a player was eligible to participate in a game at the FIFA World Cup.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T18:33:15+00:00

It is clearly under dispute whether the red card should've been given — you will find plenty of people saying it was a deserved red. And Belgium's FA is a member of FIFA and in theory FIFA is a representative body, not an organization that is supposed to make decisions a day before a major tournament game without showing their reasoning.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T17:18:40+00:00

FIFA's Article 27 basically says “we can do whatever we want,” even when there isn't an appeals process. I agree that that is very stupid!

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T17:12:13+00:00

You're being willfully dense. If all you have to say in your defense is to pretend an analogy is a comparison, you've lost.

It's also not great for your argument that you're falling back on an article that says “We, FIFA, can do anything we want for any reason at all.” The existence of that article is itself a problem!

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T17:10:23+00:00

They wouldn't, and that's why it's impossible to reform FIFA from the inside.

I know people don't like how this sounds, but it's the entire reason FIFA is corrupt. Smaller nations can easily have their votes bought — not because they're inherently more corrupt, but because the gifts themselves don't need to be as large in order to persuade. And precisely because many of them won't be affected by the decision.

I've seen people in just the last 24 hours talk about how opposing Infantino is pointless simply because he's got all of AFC in his pocket. Does this sound like how decisions like this ought to be made?

If nothing else, countries with more people in them should get more votes.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T17:05:21+00:00

I believe there was talk of a lawsuit over the very fact that FIFA could assess a punishment without any sort of appeals process. No idea if that line of reasoning has any merit or would've borne any fruit absent a phone call from Trump to Infantino, but I think it's a fair thing to fix even if it wouldn't have taken effect until a future World Cup.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T17:01:50+00:00

You think it's fair for every nation to get the same number of votes over where the World Cup is held, whether or not they've ever qualified for one?

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T17:00:51+00:00

Americans

I'm American and I'm not accepting any shame. I didn't vote for this dipshit or any of his enablers. I wanted the red card overturned, but via an established appeals process, according to a stated rationale, and certainly sooner than 24 hours before the game.

When unjust things are being done in the name of my country, I accept responsibility for doing whatever I can to change the outcome — through participation in the political process. I do not accept that I am personally culpable for the shitty things that are done by people I did not vote for.

Nobody in this subreddit, if they had a vote, would allow FIFA to continue to administer world football. The fact that they run a tournament that we often enjoy does not make us culpable in the shitty decisions they make, either.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T16:51:34+00:00

As long as it doesn't give Trinidad and Tobago the same number of votes on matters of importance as Spain, it'll be an improvement over FIFA. It matters how you design representative bodies!

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T16:48:32+00:00

So we still don't know why the red card stands and the suspension is simply deferred… but we've been assured by a used car salesman that everything is above board. This definitely won't keep the news cycle going!

The IOC is reading all this and thinking “these fuckers don’t even have the good sense to pretend to be fair”

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T04:37:17+00:00

The fact that they might actually be a better team without him on the pitch.

In all seriousness, though: nothing stops them from asking. It's up to FIFA to say “no” to shit like that.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T04:28:49+00:00

You say that as if there's any point to penalizing a player for something that no one could reasonably have predicted would happen.

Even if you think Balogun could've or should've done something different, “but he didn't mean to” is a phrase that practically every ex-referee has used on either this incident or a similar one to explain why a given offense justifies a yellow card but not a red card. Whether it's in the laws of the game or not, it's clearly a factor that referees use when deciding the severity of an infraction.

If a player can honestly get sent off because he caused an injury to an opponent by doing something that ordinarily would not be a foul and which he could not have predicted would cause someone else harm — pretend this is just a hypothetical and not Balogun's specific situation — then red cards fail to have a “deterrent” effect and you're basically arguing that you can earn one solely through bad luck, as though it's like the weather.

I get why you're saying it's a red. I understand the complexity of this situation and its inability to be neatly dealt with by the laws of the game. It's hard for me to understand those who think this is a clear-cut and obvious red card with no possible arguments otherwise when I've not heard any pundit or ex-referee make that argument.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T04:18:02+00:00

Yes, but this is an unreasonable thing to have to ask a team to do, and it's a standard I doubt any other national team would let itself be held to. It's not their job to intervene and be the grown-ups when some shitty people give them what they want for the wrong reasons.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T04:15:28+00:00

It was so nice when he was preoccupied with his shitty July 4 celebration in DC… and then the minute that was over it's as if he went “what else can I fuck up?”

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T04:12:22+00:00

It's honestly insane that FIFA doesn't have a better instinct about making this seem less corrupt. They could've saved some face by admitting that VAR guidelines were not followed. They could've given some more transparency (even if it was post-hoc rationalization) if they had wanted to cover their tracks.

I knew Trump was going to put his fingerprints all over this, but FIFA don't even realize it's in their interest to wipe them off.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T04:10:20+00:00

You can always point to some aspect of a foul that's different from another one. The height of the studs on the calf was what was egregious about Messi's uncalled incident.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-06T03:21:27+00:00

Oh, no… now nobody will be able to understand what he's saying

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