Фоларин Балогуны хэрэг: ФИФА-гийн шийдвэр ба түүхэн жишиг

The case of Folarin Balogun will be remembered for years to come, through no fault of his own.

It will be thought of as a symbol of how FIFA is currently run — after all, the most powerful man in the world spoke openly about speaking to FIFA to change a decision involving his country. Subsequently, that decision was changed. There has also been some confusion about the nature of punishments in football, specifically about the idea that a player should be punished by both missing the remainder of the game in which they’re sent off and future games.

The concept of a deterrent is one thing, but the other is precedent: Balogun’s case is the first time a player has been sent off at a World Cup and then not been suspended for at least the next game since 1962.

In that time, players have missed finals through suspension, notably Laurent Blanc in 1998 (dismissed in the semi-final for slapping Slaven Bilic) and Michael Ballack in 2002 (for two yellow cards in the tournament), although the latter instance is less likely to be repeated. Ballack was booked in Germany’s third group game and then again in the semi-final, a harsh situation that has been modified for this World Cup: the slate is wiped clean after the group stage and the quarter-finals, meaning you have to work pretty hard to miss a significant game for two bookings.

But the story of the last instance of a player being sent off, then not immediately serving a ban of some description, has significant similarities to Balogun’s case. It also involved a star player, national presidents getting involved and some very opaque decision-making by the people in charge.

Garrincha was Brazil’s star of the 1962 World Cup, even more so than Pele. Pele actually injured his groin, so he didn’t play beyond the second game. It seems strange to outsiders, but Garrincha was more beloved than Pele in Brazil by some; the carefree purity of his football and freewheeling lifestyle was preferred to what was perceived as Pele’s solemn professionalism and willingness to put his name to any product if the price was right.

But even Pele recognised his talent. “Without him by my side, I would never have won three World Cups over the course of my career,” he once told FIFA.com about Garrincha.

“Next to him, next to the prodigious instantaneity of his reflexes, we are laggards, bovines, hippopotamuses,” wrote the Brazilian playwright and journalist Nelson Rodrigues, about Garrincha. In ‘Soccer In Sun And Shadow’, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano said, admittedly with some hyperbole and flourish, that “in the entire history of football, no one made more people happy.”

He was the subject of a thousand stories, some bleak, some funny, many almost certainly not true, many illustrating his genius, many illustrating his childlike nature. A favourite that fits into the latter two, possibly the latter three categories, is the one recounted in Alex Bello’s book ‘Futebol’, about a coach who noticed Garrincha was reading a Donald Duck cartoon rather than listening to a team talk. “You,” the coach supposedly said, “will do whatever you want.”

He became even more famous because of his relationship with the singer Elza Soares, but was also a tragic figure: he was bow-legged, an alcoholic, and he died in poverty aged just 49, of liver cirrhosis. But he was also a genius, an astonishing talent who had carried Brazil through the 1962 World Cup.

Which was why there was such a fuss when it looked like he would be suspended from the final.

In the semi-final against Chile in Santiago, Garrincha had a running battle with his marker, Eladio Rojas. The Chilean had spent most of the game kicking Garrincha, either trying to stop him or trying to provoke a reaction.

He failed in the first aim: Garrincha scored twice in the game and laid on another for Vava. Brazil won 4-2 and were through to the final, where they would play Czechoslovakia.

But Rojas eventually succeeded in the second aim. After one too many fouls, Garrincha’s patience finally snapped with 84 minutes on the clock, and he gave Rojas a knee in the behind. This was spotted by the linesman, Uruguay’s Esteban Marino, who told the Peruvian referee Arturo Yamazaki, and Garrincha was dismissed.

“OK, I was sent off,” Garrincha said afterwards, as reported by The Guardian, “but all afternoon I am kicked… When I was kicked, I struck back. Maybe I was wrong, but I am prepared to face what may come.”

Unlike today, at the time it wasn’t written into the rules that a sending-off would necessarily result in a suspension: that provision was only introduced in 1974. Sendings off were less common, and while, for the most part, dismissed players were banned, it wasn’t a given.

In 1954, for example, Hungary’s Jozsef Bozsik was sent off for fighting Nilton Santos in the infamous ‘Battle of Berne’ against Brazil, but remarkably, further sanctions were left to the individual teams. Hungary decided their captain would be available for the next game.

By 1962, there was at least a disciplinary committee, and while a ban was not mandatory, most expected Garrincha to get one, given the five other players sent off in the tournament all were.

The decision would be down to the committee, but their deliberations would be largely based on the evidence of the match officials, and that’s where strings started to be pulled.

“The Brazilians moved heaven and earth to clear Garrincha’s name,” wrote Ruy Castro in his biography of Garrincha. “Journalist Canor Simoes Coelho called his old friend in Brasilia, Prime Minister Tancredo Neves, to suggest that ‘in the name of the Brazilian people’ he send the committee a telegram asking for a pardon.”

Then the president of Peru, Manuel Prado y Ugarteche, asked the Peruvian ambassador in Chile to lean on their countryman Yamazaki to go easy on Garrincha in the committee hearing, so he passed the buck: he said he had been acting on the advice of his Uruguayan assistant, Marino. But that had been thought of too: as Jonathan Wilson writes in his history of the World Cup ‘The Power And The Glory’, Marino had “conveniently already left Chile after the Brazilian delegation provided him with a ticket to Montevideo — via Paris.”

Balogun after his red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

Furthermore, Garrincha’s case was put forward by the Brazilian federation’s representative Luis Muriel, who solemnly emphasised that this was out of character because it was Garrincha’s first ever red card. Which was not true: he had been sent off three times before, one of which was the result of a mass brawl after which his entire Botafogo team was arrested.

“Had the members of the FIFA commission known about those three incidents, their decision might have been different,” wrote Castro. But they didn’t know; the committee gave Garrincha and Brazil the benefit of the doubt, and he was free to play in the final.

The post-script to this reveals another similarity between the Balogun and Garrincha cases: after all that trouble, lobbying and persuasion, they might as well not have bothered. Just as Balogun was ineffective against Belgium, Garrincha had a fever, so was well below par in the final against Czechoslovakia. However, unlike the Americans, his teammates stepped up: goals from Amarildo, Zito and Vava gave Brazil a 3-1 win.

You would hope there will be at least another 64 years before another similar situation. But given how the game is governed now, don’t bet on it.