The real irony, which I'm sure is lost on Trump, is that Balogun is only able to play for the US due to his birthright citizenship, something the Trump administration is actively trying to get rid of.
Balogun played for England until 2023.
Yeah, but he has "gun" in his name, so he's definitely American. /s
What a shitty thing to do to the U.S. team. Now, there's no way that they can have a clean victory, if they win. It's tainted with the smell of corruption.
The US should have no path to victory.
That they made it this far has everything to do with biased picks for the initial rounds.
Canada, US and Mexico were all all but guaranteed to get into the round of 32, the US was functionally guaranteed to get into the round of 16.
I'm going to preface this with a disclaimer that I despise the capitalism and fascism the United States government and by extension a significant portion of our population currently represents.
But your take is just biased opinion of hatred for the current administration or our bandwagon of ignorant fans that have no respect for the game. Anyone who watches world football knows that this United States team is undeniably talented. Are they France, England, Spain, Argentina in terms of pitch to bench talent? No. There's more technical ability on all of those teams, but the U.S. almost certainly has more fitness and athleticism than all of them and enough talent to use it to our advantage. This isn't the U.S. of decades past. They have a legitimate chance at making the semi finals where I'd predict we would be knocked out by France. This American squad is legitimately very good. We beat Paraguay handily 4-1 and it wasn't as close as the score suggests. That same Paraguay team eliminated Germany.
Unfortunately all that effort is for naught now that Trump has officially been revealed to be pulling strings behind the curtains for their benefit.
Even the nicest, most delicious hamburger ever made still gets tossed out when it gets shit on it.
Fair, but now the country got caught cheating, they should be thrown out like Russia got thrown out of the Olympics . Not fair to the athletes, but this is the Trumpstain
As someone who has know knowledge of such things what so ever, do they have any chance at winning the cup?
No, they should not.
In the initial phase of the tournament, only Canada wasn't the top seed in their group of 4(behind the Swiss)
The US barely topped their group and in doing so guaranteed that their round of 32 match was against the third seed in Canada's group, Bosnia which isn't in the top 60.
Canada's round of 32 game was against either a similarly ranked South Korea(~28 as I recall), or against the near-60th ranked South Africa. So Canada wasn't guaranteed to get out of R32, but always had a good shot. Canada was never going to get out of R16 short of an actual miracle, the matchup was Netherlands or Morocco.
For the US, their 2nd R16 match v Belgium will be their first game against a peer-or-better opponent of the tournament where statistically they can lose.
I get and agree with what you're saying here but
The US barely topped their group
Is disingenuous. They won their first two games convincingly, winning the group in only two games. The third game therefore meant nothing, so they didn't play to win and still almost came away with a draw. They could have very likely won that game if the first string played, sweeping the group.
Thats extremely disengenous to the then 22nd ranked team, Turkiye. They were the 2nd best team in that group and legitimately beat the US.
They’re a mediocre team at best. Mediocre teams usually don’t make it to the quarter finals without an exceptionally lucky draw and almost never make it to the semis.
To put it into a chess comparison: to win you need a 2700+ elo and the US is maybe a 2200 elo. Decent, they can beat a higher ranked opponent on a good day for them and an off day for the opponent, but they can’t beat world class opponents in succession. The class difference is too high.
Now they are up against their first higher ranked opponent, Belgium, who should win it fairly easy on paper. In a pre-tournament friendly they comfortably beat the US 5-2, which is indicative of the difference in level between the two sides. Still, it’s a knockout game in the world cup, the US has home and FIFA advantage and Belgium has played below their standards all tournament, so they probably have a decent shot at winning the tie.
We always joke about being better on paper in Belgium. The team always seems to underperform when it matters, even though many of the players are some of the best in the world.
Curious for the match though. I don't usually follow it very actively, but the blatant corruption might have lit a fire to ensure the victory.
That’s a good point actually. I guess they could still do the honorable thing and not use that player
They won't because the US Soccer Federation would not dare humiliate Trump after he's so publicly stated about the red card being overturned.
This is what happens when you give in to dictators.
They won’t though.
I'm forseeing boos the next time the US team gets on the field, no fan present will accept this.
The only way to salvage this is to keep Balogun on the bench.
FIFA, one of the most corrupt groups on the planet? I am shocked!
We all know that, but I think this must be the most public and simple corruption ever
So the most corrupt president America has ever seen is "in" with the most corrupt organization that the sports world has ever seen? Shocking.
I mean, that criminal investigation didn’t go away just for the made up FIFA peace prize. This was inevitable.
According to reports, the White House made a direct call to FIFA asking president Gianni Infantino to review Balogun’s red card before the United States’ Round of 16 match against Belgium. FIFA later suspended Balogun’s automatic one-match ban under Article 27, making him eligible to play.
Article 66.4 of the same disciplinary code: “A sending-off automatically incurs suspension from the subsequent match. The FIFA judicial bodies may impose additional match suspensions and other disciplinary measures.”
They already ratfucked Iran by making them travel 12 hours by bus from Tijuana to Seattle and back on match day, and by cancelling a winning goal for a supposed offside. Dallas police attacked the Egyptian coach in the airport. This tournament has been the nail in the coffin of FIFA. This is just blatant hyper corruption, sort of a US style UFC-isation of football that the rest of the world will have a difficult time to digest.
FIFA has always been corrupt, from displacement and human trafficking to this. Same as Olympics, NFL, NBA, boxing, WWF, dogfighting, MMA, ad infinitum. People should wake up. Sports aren't wrong, commodification is messed all the way up.
Hmm..... TJ to Seattle is like 1200mi/2000km, so you're looking at nearly 20 hours before factoring in stops.
edit: 2000km, not 200km
It does come across like someone had a bet going and pulled some strings to have it in their favour.
He & FIFA have basically invalidated every red card in the tournament.
If it doesnt stick for the USA it shouldnt stick for anyone else.
World football really needs to move away from FIFA as an organisation.
Most likely the real story is that money changed hands. These old corrupt bastards aren't that complicated, even though they are secretive.
The way things are done nowadays, the payment is done later with highly paid "opportunities" offered to the people who did him that "favor".
That's how politicians who do favors to the right people end up nominated to highly paid political positions or get non-executive board memberships, gold plated consulting gigs or millionaire "speech circuit" gigs in companies of a domain they have no expertise at all in but whose top companies they helped a lot.
During your time holding decision maker power you make "friends" with your executive, legislative or legal decision of people who are either very wealthy or hold power to nominate people to very lucrative sinecures and later they "reciprocate that friendship". This by the way also applies inside the Private sector - for example with Fund Managers buying a lot of services from some specific Investment Banks and later, by an amazing coincidence, ending up a Traders in said banks.
As for the public sector, all you have to do is look at the sources of income after they left of plenty of ex-POTUS or ex-EU Commission members and compare it which who they favored whilst in power.
I was deadass joking with a coworker that Trump would be the kind of person to call FIFA and bitch about a red card, but neither of us thought he would actually do it. I should know by now.
I remember being pleased when we got rid of Blatter
I guess I thought he was the bottom of the barrel
If Europe had any balls we would just go home and start a new organisation to replace the corrupt FIFA.
UEFA is already a thing.
I don’t mean a European organisation. I mean an international one that excludes the USA
Ah, that. Yeah, I understand the sentiment, but of course that's never going to happen. It's not as if any of it is actually about the game for those people, anyway.
Living in a football-crazy country (back during the time of the Fascist dictatorship here, Football used to be one of the methods the Fascists purposefully used to distract the masses) and having lived in other countries in Europe some of which almost as football crazy (like the UK), IMHO football fans are some of the most stupid, most serville people around - tribalist sheeple whose idea of pushing back is to fight with tribalist sheeple who wear a differently colored shirt and whose understanding of "power" in that sport starts and ends at being a game referee.
Even otherwise mildly intelligent people seem to lose 50 IQ points when it comes to "their" team or "their" national team.
So I expect that nothing at all is going to happen.
PS: And I mean Football in the European sense, not the American sense.
I really hope this will be a nail in the coffin of FIFA
I doubt it. All the big clubs profit from it and seem to be doing well with all the money they pay players and management. A new football association would not have the sponsors, name brand recognition and relations behind it to get FIFA clubs play against non FIFA clubs.
Soooo....fans need to start boycotting sponsors until FIFA cleans house or a new association props up?
There is only one possible path we can take now, however terrible it may seem to some : we have to root for Belgium to win that match.
I cannot wait for this absolute piece of human garbage to die.
Bends the knee? Hell, they'd open wide enough for him to go balls deep if he just asked. They'd give the rustiest of trombones...the reachiest of reach arounds. We haven't even talked about the mahogany canoes...
I had heard some initial reports that it was suspended due to the way it being reviewed was against the rules. Something about using slow-mo before calling for the review or something. I had hoped that was the case, because this was the alternative. My already extreme disgust for FIFA somehow got way worse.
ok so who in the white house or who amongst trumps friends had a bet and calls had to be made to assist with said bet. I mean the guy literally just openly admitted to insider trading soooooo yeah this wouldn't surprise me.
When the USA loses in the round of 16 to Belgium, Trump will call Infantino and tell him to change the score.
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