President Trump called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to discuss the red card given to Team USA’s Folarin Balogun during Wednesday night’s game against Bosnia and Herzegovina, an person familiar with the conversation told The Hill. Trump later cheered the reversal, calling it an “injustice.”
FIFA said its independent panel overturned the red card suspension for Monday’s game.
FIFA doesn’t have rules. This isn’t even the first time it happened; Ronaldo this tournament and the 1962 world cups . Messi didn’t get carded for something worse, and Balogun did. The refs make it up as they go.
Europeans need to stop supporting FIFA… but they won’t because they’re completely fine with turning a blind eye for its corruption.
What Messi did was not worse.
You should look at the video, they both do something similar at the beginning, but they diverge sharply.
Messi should have been carded, but he didn’t do anything worse than balogun.
The part where balloons foot lands on the other players ankle is where it goes from a yellow to a red. It was reckless and could have seriously injured another player.
Messi didn’t even get a yellow card for it. They have different rules for different players and always have.
Hating on the Balogun reversal is peak mental gymnastics to try and justify FIFA is somehow legitimate in how they run their tournaments… They aren’t. Stop watching them. The Balogun is par for the course with FIFA, it’s not more outrageous than other shit they do, or don’t do. Seems like you’re just mad at who they benefitted this time, because there’s half a dozen other red-card qualified plays that didn’t result even in a yellow you could bring up from this tournament, too.
Just because his foot lands on an ankle does not make it go to a red. The other player put his foot in the path of Balogun’s. That moves it from reckless down to careless.