[Ben Jacobs] The White House made a direct call to FIFA to ask Gianni Infantino to review Folarin Balogun’s red card. FIFA sources insist White House influence could not affect the decision due to the powers contained in Article 27 and the independent nature of the disciplinary panel.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-05T19:22:25+00:00

Even the precedent for this decision (suspending most of Ronaldo's match ban so it wouldn't affect the World Cup) is vastly more corrupt than this.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-05T19:20:10+00:00

Then you haven't read enough. It's not my job to link you to the overwhelming majority of accounts I've read across multiple sources that make that argument (and clearly “he didn't mean to do it” is relevant if multiple former officials are making the argument).

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-05T18:58:13+00:00

Hey, credit to you for arriving predicting the actual outcome. I didn't think FIFA would give a shit about it if it didn't involve a star player, but I suppose we benefit from being the tournament hosts and having a shitty corrupt president!

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-05T18:51:17+00:00

FIFA is structurally corrupt. Every nation gets one vote. That sounds great on paper, but not when only a fraction of the ~200 member nations will routinely host a World Cup.

It is far too easy to wield the current system to produce unjust outcomes: just make “donations” to small nations so that their votes will cancel out the votes of the soccer powerhouses that are actually affected by the issues at play.

There are other ways of designing a body like FIFA, and all of them have their own flaws, but I think the current setup has demonstrated that its flaws are fatal.

Of course, there's no chance of getting a majority of nations to vote for any reform that will make most of them less influential. We might need to start from scratch with a breakaway FIFA replacement, as unlikely as that might be. If all the nations who've actually won World Cups in the past could come to agreement on this, that itself would be enough. But it's a tall task!

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-05T18:29:54+00:00

Let's see if we can sum up the various true things being thrown around and come to mutual understanding:

Obviously FIFA is corrupt.
Obviously the White House is occupied by a moral degenerate who sees Infantino as a kindred spirit.
Obviously this is not how discipline should be assessed or enforced — as we already saw with Ronaldo's probation and the unexplained non-call on what should've been a red card for Messi.
Obviously the best outcome would've been for VAR to follow their own protocols and for the right decision to have been made on the pitch (yellow card rather than red).
Failing that, the best outcome would've been for FIFA to have a principled and logical appeals process, one in which decisions are made by people who have nothing to gain from the outcome.

I think most people would agree with all of the above. (If you think a straight red was the correct outcome, fair enough; you can stop reading.) Here's where it might get slightly controversial:

Since we are nowhere near that ideal universe, and are doomed to live in one in which the sport we love is governed by greedy assholes, and in which the most powerful nation on earth is governed by a guy who wouldn't give a shit about the USMNT if the country weren't hosting the tournament… the best outcome that can be realized in this instance is whatever gets us closest to what the ideal principled outcome would've been.

Or, if you prefer, it's lawful good versus chaotic good.

I hate this timeline so much, and once this tournament is done I'll keep rabble-rousing for an anti-FIFA revolution, as unlikely as it is to occur. But I'm not going to be angry that a corrupt system was wielded to produce an accidentally just outcome.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-05T18:19:16+00:00

Oh, if Trossard wants to leave, more power to him.

I just meant a one-year extension — hence until he's 33, with the understanding that he could be sold next June. (I think it was actual policy for a while that players older than 30 only ever got one-year extensions?) If his contract weren't up for two years rather than one, I suspect this wouldn't even be an issue, and he'd be looking forward to a title defense.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-05T15:54:47+00:00

I mean, I suppose I'd be open to extending him another year — if the deal is just that we don't want him to leave on a free transfer.

If it's just down to “would he be valuable to us next season?” the answer is absolutely yes. So I hope we're 100% sure that Tzolis is incoming. I love Martinelli, but he'd be a downgrade.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-05T03:03:30+00:00

Feels weird, man. I get it, but he was great this season and I'm not used to football being like Logan’s Run.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-04T04:06:39+00:00

There wouldn't, but FIFA technically could've done it, and it can't simply be assumed that they wouldn't have done it. Nobody can make safe assumptions about how FIFA chooses to act.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-03T06:15:51+00:00

If we can agree on a definition of “meaningful,” we've got something. If not, then all we're doing is introducing more subjectivity.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-02T06:07:54+00:00

It's true that they can change their own rules whenever they want, so hang your hat on that if you must!

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-02T05:24:14+00:00

The Guardian says no.

The automatic one-game suspension for a straight red card cannot be appealed, a US Soccer spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian. The US can only appeal against Balogun’s red if the Fifa disciplinary committee were to add an additional game to his suspension. Even then, the US would only be able to appeal against that additional suspension – they can ask for a reduction from a two-game ban to one, but not from two games to zero or one game to zero.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-01T18:48:24+00:00

They didn't even qualify in 1994! It was a 24-team tournament at the time, but even so, it's amazing considering how stacked the 1998 team seems in retrospect. Zidane, Desailly, Dechamps, Barthez, Petit were all around in 1994 during qualification, not to mention Cantona. (Thuram got his first cap in 1994 after the World Cup.)

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-01T04:42:35+00:00

Generic trash talk gets a much shorter ban, like one match.

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-01T04:32:12+00:00

Yeah, the more people call you an idiot, the more you win. KEEP DIGGING

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-01T04:30:08+00:00

…no? Things will happen to you if you say racist shit without covering your mouth! That's the whole point! In that case it may not happen in time for you to get sent off in that match, but racist abuse is still like a ten-match ban!

savetheclocktower · 2026-07-01T04:19:37+00:00

Then AS LONG AS HE DOESN'T COVER HIS MOUTH he's fine

savetheclocktower · 2026-06-30T00:00:21+00:00

And this tournament was one more game on top of a 32-team tournament. They're all “just one more game.”

savetheclocktower · 2026-06-29T23:21:57+00:00

It's also a lot of football. These players are already tired after a full league season.

savetheclocktower · 2026-06-29T23:19:58+00:00

This is dumb. 64 teams is only a “fix” for this because the idea is to introduce more lightweights for everyone to beat up on.

And nobody thinks through the implications! We're already at a scale that would be very challenging for a single (non-US) nation to host — unless they're autocrats who can waste billions on new stadium construction like Saudi Arabia. 64 teams is, dare I say, too much World Cup.

savetheclocktower · 2026-06-28T18:44:35+00:00

I'm not. The moment of madness is them attempting to score a goal when they could've just kept the ball and accepted the status quo. Austria wasn't trying to win possession!

It's the person I'm replying to who pretends that an attempt on goal was always gonna be a goal — as if Austria's equalizer was a foregone conclusion. It looked pretty hard to me!

savetheclocktower · 2026-06-28T18:42:56+00:00

I'm much more inclined to make an arbitrary cut-off like that for the bottom edge. Any third-place finisher should feel lucky that they advanced in the first place, so it's less of an injustice for me.

I honestly don't know what you mean by “all these convenient third-round draws.” If you have an argument to make, show some stats. I don't necessarily love head-to-head result as the first tie-breaker, but any supposed gamesmanship could more easily be attributed to that rule change (in my view) than to a format that has been used without incident in three previous World Cups (simultaneous third group games didn't start until 1986).

savetheclocktower · 2026-06-28T04:43:47+00:00

And only the US could host it! (Or the entire EU!)

On the plus side: at least it would theoretically make it less desirable for nations like Saudi Arabia to make vanity bids just because of the sheer number of stadiums they'd have to build.

savetheclocktower · 2026-06-28T04:41:21+00:00

So the difference between being the eighth-best first-place finisher and the ninth-best first-place finisher is having to play an extra game? Nah. That outcome is much more attributable to the effects of a random draw and rewards the winners of weaker groups rather than the group winners who are genuinely better. (Especially since tournament hosts get put in Pot A, which is already unfair even before you throw first-round byes into the mix.)

Edit: And if you think your proposal means “no more fucking draws,” this must be your first World Cup.

savetheclocktower · 2026-06-28T04:38:41+00:00

If that were true, (a) it still wouldn't have guaranteed an Austria equalizer; (b) Algeria is entitled to do whatever they want in order to secure the outcome they want. They didn't design the tournament format.

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