Фоларин Балогуны улаан хуудасны маргаан дэлхийн хөлбөмбөгийн нийгэмлэгийг талцууллаа

To the USMNT, it was an enormous boost. To Belgium, it was an outrage. To UEFA, it was “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable,” whereas to U.S. President Donald Trump, it was the reversal of “a great injustice”.

The suspension of Folarin Balogun’s one-game ban, first revealed by The Athletic’s Dan Sheldon and Adam Crafton, is the biggest story of the World Cup. Stories relating to it were featured on the front page of over 35 nationally distributed newspapers globally.

This is how the controversy unfolded, how The Athletic’s reporters broke the story, and why it is far from over.

Red cards can derail an individual and a team’s tournament. Ask France’s Laurent Blanc, or Germany’s Michael Ballack, who missed the 1998 and 2002 finals respectively for disciplinary reasons. Ask Paul Gascoigne, who was famously distraught on the pitch when he realised his booking in the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup would see him miss the final if England progressed.

So when referee Raphael Claus showed Balogun a straight red card in the round of 32 on July 1, it felt like a potentially pivotal moment of the USMNT’s World Cup campaign.

The decision itself was contentious. As Adam Crafton pointed out in a column the following day, there is no malicious intent in Balogun’s tackle — painful as it was for Bosnia’s Tarik Muharemovic — and there were questions over whether VAR protocols were correctly applied, or whether slow-motion replays were used too heavily and exaggerated the offence. (This argument would later form part of U.S. Soccer’s submissions to FIFA.)

FIFA have not stated a reason for the decision to suspend Balogun’s ban or said there was any fault in the VAR process. Still images and slow-motion replays have continued to be used.

“That was a normal action in football,” USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino said after the game. “That happened ​by accident and it’s never intentional. That is why for me it was never a red ​card.”

“After the game (we were) immediately talking to FIFA and the first thing that we established is that there’s no way the U.S. can appeal this red card,” says Dan Sheldon. “So you’re thinking, ‘OK, he’s definitely missing that game’.”

Attention, for USMNT fans, turned to how Pochettino would replace the team’s focal point for the round-of-16 match against Belgium on July 6. But as Pochettino considered his tactical options, with training sessions focused on how the team would cope without Balogun, plans were being drawn up away from the pitch.

Sheldon explains that The Athletic were trying to establish whether FIFA’s disciplinary committee would impose an extended suspension, as happened to Qatar’s Assim Madibo earlier in the tournament.

“There was just this silence,” Sheldon says. “You’re still asking the questions, and there’s still nothing: ‘Oh, we’re not too sure yet.’ Have the disciplinary committee even looked at this? And at that point, you start thinking there’s clearly something amiss here.”

“It was probably as early as Friday night, and the story broke on Sunday, that we started to get the first soundings of U.S. Soccer trying to do something here to try and wriggle out of this to get Balogun on the field,” Crafton says.

The first suggestion that the Trump administration was becoming involved also came on Friday — although “I don’t think anyone at that point appreciated the level to which his administration was committing to this,” Crafton says.

Once FIFA had formally notified them of the red card the morning after the match, U.S. Soccer responded with its view that Balogun should not have been sent off, nor should he be suspended.

It was a view shared by President Trump. Later, after the decision to suspend Balogun’s punishment had been revealed, he would tell journalists in the Oval Office that while he “didn’t know what the hell a red card was”, he was insistent that Balogun did not deserve one and should not miss the match against Belgium.

“I started hearing it means he can’t play in the next game, at least the next game,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Boy, that’s a big’ — you know, if it happened to another player, it would’ve been unfair, but when they take your best player or just about… and they say, ‘You can’t play,’ that’s very unfair.”

To the outside world, this looked like a closed case after the confirmation that the red card could not be appealed.

“In the background, U.S. Soccer’s legal team (and) external counsel had started to build up a case, I think mostly around the use of VAR,” Crafton explains. “But then there was a concurrent thing going on where the White House, Trump, his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Andrew Giuliani, the Executive Director of the World Cup Task Force, were also working with lawyers to start to build up a case and sending things on to U.S. Soccer. So you have these two institutions converging.

“I think in the end, US Soccer would probably still argue that they submitted their own work, but it’s very hard from the outside to get a sense of how influenced everything was by the involvement of the president.”

It also emerged, and was confirmed by Trump when speaking in the Oval Office, that the U.S. President had called FIFA president Gianni Infantino to discuss Balogun’s sending off and suspension, and asked for a review.

Trump mentioned about calling Infantino (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

U.S. Soccer’s submissions to FIFA did not have the full desired effect — it wanted the decision overturned entirely — but ultimately, it was successful in its short-term aim. The Athletic revealed on July 5, one day before the match against Belgium, that Balogun’s punishment had been suspended and he would be available.

There were celebrations in the U.S. camp — centre-back Chris Richards said they had checked the shock news was not AI-generated — at the return of their star player to the potential squad. Elsewhere, there was outrage.

Former Manchester United and England captain Wayne Rooney, speaking on the BBC, called it an “absolute disgrace”. Fellow ex-England international Gary Neville, speaking on UK broadcaster ITV, said he would be “absolutely raging” if he was involved with Belgium “or any other team in the tournament”.

“There are precedents where sanctions have been suspended or deferred,” Pochettino insisted in a press conference. “That’s why I don’t understand why anyone would be surprised; this has happened before. It’s not as if this is some extraordinary event that only happens to us.”

Cristiano Ronaldo could have missed the first two matches of Portugal’s World Cup after being sent off in the qualifiers. He received a three-match ban, but two games of that were suspended. Argentina’s Nicolas Otamendi and Ecuador’s Moises Caicedo also had reprieves from their own bans, with FIFA ruling in May that suspensions from qualifying would not carry over into the final tournament.

But it is worth taking a moment to examine Pochettino’s statement on a deeper level and understand why, despite his insistence, the decision was so surprising.

This is the first time since 1962 that a player has been sent off at a World Cup and not been suspended for at least the next game. That is a run of 64 years and 172 red cards. It is, plainly, an “extraordinary event”.

There have been 13 red cards at this World Cup — including those that have seen players suspended for a key match (Belgium’s Nathaniel Ngoy, Paraguay’s Miguel Almiron, and England’s Jarell Quansah) and one for another host nation (Mexico’s Cesar Montes).

It is also important to note that Balogun’s red card has not been overturned or retroactively labelled by FIFA as an incorrect decision. The punishment has just been changed, and the pertinent question was why.

The Belgian federation, which released a statement saying it was “astonished” by the decision, sent a letter to FIFA requesting a copy of the decision and an explanation of the process that had been followed.

The strength of feeling from much of the rest of the footballing world was made clear by a statement from European soccer governing body UEFA, which released a statement on July 6 saying that the suspension of Balogun’s ban has “crossed a red line”.

“Sometimes rules are open to interpretation. In this case, not,” UEFA’s statement read. “We express our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision.”

“FIFA referred back to Article 27 of their disciplinary code, which essentially gives the disciplinary committee carte blanche to do as they want with suspensions,” Sheldon says. “However, the exact reasons for suspending Balogun’s punishment remain unclear. They’ve never said the decision (to send Balogun off) was incorrect.”

A FIFA statement says that the decision to suspend Balogun’s ban “was decided considering all of the specific circumstances surrounding the incident and evidence available.”

That evidence and those circumstances are not specified, and one of the biggest questions is whether one of the ‘circumstances’ was President Trump’s wishes.

Balogun and the USMNT lost to Belgium (David Ramos/Getty Images)

“I did (call Infantino); I asked for a review, because I didn’t think it was a foul,” Trump said on July 6.

“I didn’t tell (Infantino) what to do; I can’t tell him what to do. And I don’t believe he made the decision; I think it was a committee that made the decision.”

A statement from Infantino via FIFA on July 6 reiterated the independence of the disciplinary committee that had suspended Balogun’s punishment.

“We don’t know explicitly what was said on that phone call,” Sheldon says. However, if the President of the United States is saying, ‘I think that red card was a bit off’ — what’s the inference there?”

“The thing that everybody will remember about this,” Crafton adds, “is that the president called the president.”

Less than 24 hours before the USMNT were due to line up against Belgium, there was still an element of uncertainty over whether Balogun would feature, with the Belgian FA formally challenging his eligibility.

A little over seven hours before kick-off, FIFA dismissed Belgium’s appeal on the grounds that they were “not a party to the proceedings and, as such, (had) no standing to appeal the decision”.

And so five days after Balogun had been sent off, after an intervention in his favour from the U.S. President, an unprecedented decision by FIFA meant he lined up once again for the USMNT — but he and his team-mates could not produce a performance to match the scandal.

As Infantino watched on at Seattle Stadium, the tournament’s main hosts, for all their defiance, slumped to a 4-1 defeat and exited with a whimper. Balogun, the unwitting face of the World Cup’s biggest controversy, was made to wait until the 82nd minute for a shot on target.

“In recent days, we have been shown a lack of respect here in the U.S.,” Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois said after his team’s victory. “It was said that they could beat us easily, but I think today we proved that we are a good team. We played a great match.”

“It was the best performance Belgium produced at a tournament for years,” Crafton says. “Clearly, what had happened motivated them.”

Ultimately, Balogun’s return did not improve the USMNT’s fate. But it may yet affect others at this tournament.

“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” UEFA’s statement read. “Equally, such a decision creates a precedent in the ongoing tournament, where similar situations will now require equal treatment, to the detriment of the competition.”

On July 6, France appealed to FIFA to rescind Michael Olise’s yellow card from their round-of-16 match against Paraguay. If Olise were to pick up another booking against Morocco in the quarter-final on July 9, he would miss the semi-final should France progress. The French Football Federation insist, though, that their appeal for Olise was not a direct response to Balogun’s ban being suspended. France head coach Didier Deschamps revealed in his press conference on Wednesday that Olise’s booking had been upheld.

Also on July 6, it was reported that the English Football Association was considering its options over the suspension of Quansah. The defender was sent off in his team’s 3-2 win over Mexico and was therefore set to miss England’s quarter-final against Norway on Saturday, July 11. FIFA confirmed today that Quansah’s two-game ban has been upheld.

Seventeen players are entering the quarter-finals on one yellow card, leaving them set to miss any semi-final if they are booked in the next game and their team progresses.

“It has opened this Pandora’s Box where people now feel like they can appeal anything,” Crafton says.

Belgium are preparing for their own quarter-final against Spain, but even after beating a Balogun-boosted USMNT, they will not forget this episode quickly.

“The Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) is proud of the way the Red Devils responded on the pitch yesterday,” a statement on July 7 read. “At the same time, the RBFA will continue to pursue the ongoing FIFA matter off the pitch.

“Clear procedures, respect for the rights of defence and the consistent application of the regulations are essential to maintaining the confidence of member associations, coaches, players, supporters and all other stakeholders in our sport.

“Regardless of the sporting outcome, the RBFA will continue to advocate for the correct and consistent application of these principles by FIFA, ensuring that any form of arbitrariness is avoided.

“In doing so, we feel supported by millions of football fans around the world, as well as by many other member associations.”

The USMNT’s World Cup is now over. This story is not.