FIFA’s decision to allow American striker Folarin Balogun to play against Belgium on Monday night may seem absurd, but it isn’t remotely as absurd as the decision that got him suspended in the first place.
Let’s begin with that. Because there are more actual fouls committed during the average corner-kick match than there were on Balogun’s challenge against Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 1.
That isn’t hyperbole. It’s practically a law of soccer physics.
Watch any average match. You’ll see enough shirt-pulling, arm-locking, hip-checking and outright bear hugs to make an NHL referee whistle himself into exhaustion. Half the players look like they’re slow dancing or copping a feel.
The other half resemble contestants in a CrossFit class sponsored by the WWE. The referee generally allows all of it go without penalty because, if he didn’t, the game would become an endless series of penalty kicks.
Then came Balogun.
His challenge was late. It was clumsy and probably deserved a foul. You could even make an argument for a yellow card warning, if you squinted really hard and did away with precedent. But a straight red card ejecting Balogun from the game?
Only if you’ve decided to enforce soccer the way the TSA confiscates shampoo or yogurt, haphazardly and with zero standards or consistency.
There are more actual fouls committed during the average corner-kick match than there were on Folarin Balogun’s challenge against Bosnia and Herzegovina player Tarik Muharemovic (left) in California on July 1
Balogun’s challenge was late. It was clumsy and probably deserved a foul. But a red card ejecting Balogun from the game? Only if you’ve decided to enforce soccer haphazardly and with zero standards or consistency
After an extended Video Assisted Referee review – roughly the amount of time it takes a family of seven to order from a McDonald’s drive through, pick up their Happy Meals, and polish them off – the ref concluded Balogun had committed serious foul play and sent him off the field.
This triggered the automatic one-game suspension that accompanies every World Cup red card. For non-soccer fans, that’s the equivalent of getting thrown out of an NFL playoff game and automatically missing the next one.
The reaction bordered on universal disbelief.
This wasn’t Roy Keane’s infamous ‘revenge-tackle’ against Alf-Inge Haaland in 2001. It wasn’t Nigel de Jong planting his boot into Xabi Alonso’s chest in the 2010 World Cup final. It wasn’t one of those tackles that causes television announcers to lower their voices because they fear somebody’s leg may now be severed like in a magic act gone wrong.
It was a routine soccer collision that looked far more dramatic in freeze-frame than it did at full speed. And even when slowed down like the Zapruder film, only the referees thought it deserved a red card.
Then came Act Two.
For several days FIFA’s message was simple: nothing could be done.
Automatic suspension. Mandatory. Sorry.
Then, about 30 hours before the United States’ biggest men’s soccer match in years, FIFA essentially announced: Funny story… Balogun can play after all.
Not because the red card had been rescinded.
Not because the referees in that mandatory video review admitted they had wandered into the weeds and changed their minds.
Instead, FIFA reached into the deepest, dustiest drawer of its disciplinary code and discovered Article 27.
The suspension, it turns out, wasn’t overturned, it was suspended.
If that sounds to you like something George Costanza would invent while explaining why he was still employed by the Yankees, you’re not alone.
Balogun has essentially been placed on probation. If he commits another similar offense within the next year, this suspension can be reactivated. (The suspension of the suspension, you might say, will be suspended!)
In other words, FIFA didn’t erase the punishment.
It put the punishment in escrow or perhaps witness protection.
As a rule, Article 27 isn’t new, but it is rarely implemented. Which is why almost no one expected it to be unearthed in a World Cup knockout-stage red-card case. After all, FIFA has spent days acting as though suspension rules are so sacrosanct, they’re carved onto stone tablets carried by Moses down the mountaintop.
Imagine losing Game 7 of the NBA Finals after the league announced an hour before tip-off that a previously suspended All-Star was suddenly eligible thanks to some obscure paragraph hidden between its dress code and the office coffee policy.
This is roughly how folks are feeling right now in Brussels. Belgium filed an appeal, which was rejected Monday, mere hours before kick-off.
Balogun’s offense was hardly at the level of Nigel de Jong planting his boot into Xabi Alonso’s chest in the 2010 World Cup final (above)
The routine soccer collision between Balogun and Muhamerovic looked far more dramatic in freeze-frame than it did at full speed. And even when slowed down like the Zapruder film, only the referees thought it deserved a red card
Mark Halperin is the editor-in-chief and host of the interactive video platform 2WAY and the host of the video podcast Next Up on the Megyn Kelly network
But here’s where I part company with the outrage.
The scandal isn’t that Balogun is playing.
The scandal is that he was suspended at all.
Sports bureaucracies have a funny habit of becoming more devoted to process than justice. Somewhere along the way they forget that the point of rules is not to protect the rules themselves. It’s to produce fair competition.
FIFA eventually reached the fairest result, it simply chose the most FIFA route imaginable.
This is, after all, an organization that has spent generations making IRS tax codes read like Green Eggs and Ham. Understanding FIFA’s disciplinary code might actually be easier if it was written in Esperanto.
For decades, soccer has worked tirelessly to persuade Americans that the sport isn’t confusing—that once you understand it, you’ll fall in love with its beauty, rhythm and simplicity.
Then FIFA arrives like the producers of Lost in Season Six and says, ‘Actually, we’d like everyone confused again.’
In the end, justice surely prevailed. Balogun should play and Belgium had every right to complain.
And FIFA has once again accomplished something that should have been impossible: it corrected an obvious mistake while leaving almost everyone even more bewildered than before. Which is why confusion, rather than impartiality, may ultimately be the most enduring tradition in international soccer.
‘Let him play!’ a confounded America has been shouting in unison. And now he will.
