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Donald Trump reportedly called FIFA president Gianni Infantino in order to get FIFA to review the red card that USA player Folarin Balogun recieved in the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Ordinarily, Balogun's red card would render him ineligible for Team USA's next game against Belgium in the round of 16. However, a special session of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee decided to suspend the red card, allowing Balogun to play against Belgium.
Belgium is big mad. The conventional wisdom in the immediate aftermath of the red card was that this was not a reviewable decision. This is a good reminder that nothing is ever final until it happens.
I've been seeing talk about VAR having been improperly used in this case, and how that's the unspoken justification (because FIFA doesn't want to admit a mistake). Any truth to that?
It was a shitty, stupid call, but shitty stupid calls are a tradition within international soccer that is being threatened by the American Way.
It's one of the major cultural differences between American big-4 sports and international soccer, and has been for years, along with showing pain on the field*. American sports thrive on precision and accuracy, soccer on a vague sense of spirit. In the NFL and NBA the clock is precise to the millisecond, in soccer the game ends when the ref thinks we're at a pretty good spot to end it. In American sports out of bounds is fought down to the inch and moment the ball or the player is out of bounds play stops, in soccer out of bounds is just kinda casual.
Soccer is very like boxing, in that corrupt or fixed matches are part of the lore in a way that is inextricable from the history of the sport. Reading a big Muhammed Ali bio, basically every one of his championship fights had some accusations of corruption or fixing or tomato can or pepper-on-the-gloves antics by somebody. Maradona is one the inner circle best, and also illegally scored in the World Cup and everyone knows it and it's just a joke. Once you accept that it is part of the history, the thought of actually getting calls right would be change, and there's nothing old-head hardcore fans hate more than change.
*My solution to diving, which I find distasteful and unaesthetic: harshly penalize extravagantly showing pain on the field, regardless of whether there was a foul or not. Soccer players aren't inherently more effeminate than any other athletes, they're just trained and socialized to show pain, where other athletes are trained and socialized to shrug it off. The "don't be a bitch" rule will fix the problem.
Can we start by fixing basketball and QB play?
I'm not sure professional Basketball is ultimately salvageable as a sport. It would require major surgery, altering rules in ways that would make the modern sport illegible to the classic sport.
What do you see as wrong with QB play?
Diving for RTP calls mostly. Also Josh Allen is (to be technical) a little bitch.
Agreed that it's an issue. My bete noire is the Mahomes style fake going out of bounds so they defender has to stop his momentum to avoid a RTP, then sneak back in for more yards. Or the late slide to pick up an extra yard. It'll need to be regulated at some point.
I just don't think it's nearly as common or nearly as distasteful as the display you see in soccer, or in the NBA at this point.
I mean it's less common but it doesn't get enough censure because people are used to football players toughing things out.
Josh Allen being a human freight train when he wants to be and a granny with a broken hip when he wants to be is dumber than Neymar rolling around.
I think it gets less censure because of the helmets. I just don't see the same degree of facial acting during NFL games, so it's less distasteful.
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