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Live updates: Trump called FIFA chief over USA player’s red card (thehill.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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President Trump called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to discuss the red card given to Team USA’s Folarin Balogun during Wednesday night’s game against Bosnia and Herzegovina, an person familiar with the conversation told The Hill. Trump later cheered the reversal, calling it an “injustice.”

FIFA said its independent panel overturned the red card suspension for Monday’s game.

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[–] 217 points 4 months ago (40 children)

I dont even like soccer and this is fucking bullshit

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (39 children)

    I mean that red card was actually total bullshit.

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  • [–] 139 points 4 months ago (20 children)

    That part doesn’t matter. If FIFA is getting a sitting leader of one of the host country governments to interfere with the outcome, it just signals how little the United States cares about the tournament or the sport. FIFA can totally come out and reverse the ruling and tell us why. The fact that they won’t and we are hearing that Trump is involved, will make the world have more distrust. We already denied visas to the referees, players and fans from many countries who wanted to come here for the tournament. This is blatantly cheating.

    If the United States team wants to save face, they need to have Balogun sit out the game tomorrow.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (14 children)

    You really going to pretend FIFA isn’t already a corrupt clown show? That’s wild.

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  • [–] 23 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    I am not. I already know they are.

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  • [+] -9 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Then why do you care about this reversal? It’s irrelevant to the integrity of FIFA. FIFA has no integrity.

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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Go back and reread the post where everyone is pointing out the fact that a sitting world leader called into FIFA to get a foul overturned.

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  • [+] -6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Go back and read up what a shitty organization FIFA is and has been for decades and reexamine why you’re still so invested in, and giving them your money and attention.

    It’s quite pathetic, actually.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    I don't watch FIFA so I don't give a shit. I know that they're corrupt as fuck, but that doesn't change the fact that a government leader called in a favor to get a player suspension delayed for a game that doesn't matter in the world cup.

    Has this ever happened before? Should we let it slide and let more world leaders personally determine the outcome of any sports game?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Brother the government shouldn't be able to have a saying or power over stuff like this, what part of that don't you understand?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    The point is that oligarchs have been manipulating FIFA for decades and this is more of the same.

    How do you think Saudi Arabia got the 2034 cup?

    Same with the previous one in Qatar, and Russia and pretty much all the other cups for the last few decades.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago

    Imagine being so invested in a clownishly corrupt organization and then being surprised when they perform a clownishly corrupt action.

    Stop watching FIFA games. Stop supporting them. It’s that simple. Everything else is whining.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Which is why they're talking about how the team should handle it?

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago

    Their suggestion to how “the team should handle it” is them just whining about something being unfair. The card itself was a joke so the team absolutely should play Balogun.

    If you don’t like that, stop supporting FIFA and get some actual integrity about issues instead of just being mad about the clown show you’re supporting behaving like a clown show.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    And so it’s fine that a dictator manipulates a tournament then ?

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The tournament itself was a clown show to begin with. Europeans absolutely delusional about the integrity of FIFA.

    The card itself was absurd, and the dictator’s “manipulation” was quite small. If Belgium loses its because they’ve been playing like shit the entire contest, not because US striker’s red card that shouldn’t have been given in the first place—was overturned.

    You shouldn’t be watching the tournament all if you genuinely had any principles about the integrity of FIFA / the World Cup. But you do because you’re completely fine with looking away from all their shittiness because you’re too attached to a sport.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Exactly what you said. FIFA removed Ronaldo's 2 game suspension for no stated reason before the tournament, so this is not just Trump fixing it for the US. This is FIFA having no integrity from the beginning.

    The red was very harsh. The VAR protocol was broken in giving the red. Belgium has been playing like shit.

    And as incredibly sad as it has made me to miss the first World Cup in my country since I've been an adult, I'm boycotting it because I am not OK with looking away from their shittiness.

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  • [+] -22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

    No, it does matter. Two things can be wrong. But it is right that the player is not punished for a baseless call or for your other unrelated grievances that have nothing to do with what happened on the field.

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  • [–] 42 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    An outside influence that has NOTHING to do with the game calling the head of the federation is bullshit. You can't call him to get the call over turned why the fuck does the person who won the fifa peace prize get to do it. Let the coach or the player or the team manager get the call reversed.

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  • [–] 25 points 4 months ago*

    Exactly. Trump corrupted the process by interfering. The fact that the decision should've been reversed became irrelevant the moment Trump decided to call in a favor from his buddy Infantino. It's no longer about a bad call on the field.

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago (13 children)

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Now show the Messi boot in someone’s calf during this tournament, and the half dozen other worse infringements that didn’t even result in a yellow card

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Read my earlier response in this thread that already agrees that Messi should have also been shown a red card for his challenge. It was more intentional than this one.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    Ok, but Messi didn’t get a red card. So we just get some players with different rules than others? Seems like refs are just making it up as they go, not a good look for the sport.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Ok. Now show it in video instead. It was an accident. The still frame looks bad, and it probably should have been called a yellow, but it didn't meet the criteria for a red card.

    If you think it still should be a red after all that, please explain why Messi doing the same thing on purpose wasn't.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    it dose not matter if it was an accident… he could have injured the player… either they are in control or they are just flailing out there like any one of us could

    the usa is a fucking joke… fifa is a fucking joke… soccer is a great sport and these two loser entities are just making everything they touch worthless…

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Except it does matter. Reckless unintentional fouls are still a yellow card.

    I'm not going to disagree about either the US (government) in general or FIFA in specific though.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The rules are a red card can be issued for multiple Sending-off offences with one of those being Serious Foul Play.

    “Serious foul play

    A tackle or challenge that endangers the safety of an opponent or uses excessive force or brutality must be sanctioned as serious foul play. Any player who lunges at an opponent in challenging for the ball from the front, from the side or from behind using one or both legs, with excessive force.”

    International Football Association Board rules

    “The Laws embody the unacceptability of unsafe play in their disciplinary phrases, e.g. ‘reckless challenge’ (caution = yellow card/YC) and ‘endangering the safety of an opponent’ or ‘using excessive force’ (sending-off = red card/RC).”

    In this instance you can see how a referee would see this being beyond a reckless challenge given the potential serious injury that could have occurred.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Yes, a Red is about lunging at an opponent with excessive force in challenging for the ball. That is not what happened. He was moving sideways through the air and needed to put his foot down somewhere. His opponent was also moving sideways through the air and put his foot down in front of where Balogun was going to. If you watch the video, you can even see that the other player kicked Balogun's foot FIRST, which changed the trajectory of Balogun's leg, then put his leg in front of Balogun's foot.

    Sure, call it a yellow for careless play in being in the air without full control. But this was not reckless or violent.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Not what experts say and more importantly not relevant.

    This is know about corruption. The only honorable thing for the US to do now is forfait.

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    • [–] 159 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Whether the red card was bullshit or not it irrelevant. Sports fans everywhere know that shit calls get made. The issue is that a sitting president called up his buddy who happens to be the president of FIFA and had it overturned. That is fucking insane.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I feel like it would have been overturned regardless, as it was an egregiously bad call, but I agree that Trump should have plenty of better things to fill up his schedule with than calling up the FIFA president to complain about a red card in a game of footie. It's a bad look, because now it looks like Trump had a hand in influencing the decision and the fairness and integrity of the game is called into question.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago

    The thing is, FIFA put in rules that the Red could not be overturned. They removed the appeal process. What FIFA should have done was say there was a VAR protocol error (there actually was), which invalidates the procedure to give the Red. They didn't take that easy out. Instead they make it completely obvious that this was corruption and not a mistake.

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    • [–] 38 points 4 months ago

    i.e. someone within trumps inner circle or trump himself had a bet placed on mondays game and called in a favour.

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    [–] 34 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (11 children)

    Reminder of the sponsors of this tournament: Edit: Budweiser and Hisense are also sponsors

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    What's between McDonald's and Unilever?

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    https://www.mengniuir.com/ China Mengniu Dairy Company Limited

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    • [–] 31 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

    the red card was def harsh don’t get me wrong. balogun clearly didn’t mean to do that, but it’s understandable to preserve a level of safety in the game. you have FIFA saying at first that the FA will not rescind the red card given to balogun, then suddenly the president himself calls infantino and now the red card is suspended? come on. had this happened to belgium there would be uproar from so many americans. it is 1)insanely corrupt and 2) sets a very bad precedent cause now any country can just ask to get their bookings for players reversed. this is getting long but anyways please pirate all your world cup games!!

    Edit: LOOOOOLLL GET FUCKED AMERIKKKA daddy trump literally cheated for them and they still lost what a bunch of clowns

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    please pirate all your world cup games!!

    Way ahead of you there.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    I learned that IPTV in some countries is very popular for live feeds when my shitty over the air antenna was having issues and I didn't want to bother subscribing to some crappy app trial for a game or two. Now I know that PBS even broadcasts some of their channels as IPTV over the internet and the TV signal just points it at the stream's URL. Also, ATSC 3.0 is a fiasco for over the air TV, I think that will be the end of broadcast TV. It was fun while it lasted for live events.

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    • [–] 25 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    I’m surprised he’d intervene for a black dude

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  • [–] 26 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    You have to understand its not about intervening for a black dude. To them and other rich racist assholes, they see the players as animals there to serve them. In this case serving as entertainment. They would be just as upset if their cock fighting chicken got penalized.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    Exactly. This is just like a billionaire CEO intervening to help an employee win a court case if that employee is important enough to the success of the company. That same CEO would happily throw that person under the bus if the profits would go up by doing so.

    Trump would happily have this young man skinned alive if it would mean "his team" wins the next game.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    You mean a man in the US team sports arena of being bought and sold in markets.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Tf you on about? He's never played in a US market, unless Arsenal or Monaco moved continents at some point...

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I mean, Arsenal is owned by an American. But to your point, Balogun grew up in London and only happened to be born in the US due to airlines not allowing his mom to fly back to their home in London that late into her pregnancy. He has never lived in nor played in the US outside of international games.

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    • [–] 19 points 4 months ago

    So annoying. Government should not give a fuck about games.

    Worse, the people who should care, the sports fans, just keep throwing their money at fifa.

    We are all fucked. Corporate sports and government grift, and people cant stop watching and/or don't care.

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    [–] 19 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    So once again the world proves yet again whatever Trump touches turns to shit as the US loses 4 to fucking 1.

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    • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Yet again, everything he touches turns to absolute dogshit.

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  • [+] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    Because half of Trump voters still think his family did not gain wealth from his presidencies.

    When your voting base is this ignorant, corruption and deregulation festers, feeding into the ignorance/corruption cycle ad nauseum.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago*

    Well to be honest, because we made laws to make it so. If he had been born a plank of wood, and never spoke, walked, or did anything. He would be a billionaire today. We made bankruptcy laws to make sure the rich couldn't become poor by accident. Set bankruptcy at 10% of ones net worth, and every billionaire would fight it. Say you can sell a company was worth 1.4 billion, you can declare bankruptcy and it will cost pennies comparatively. The people who lose their houses are struggling, the companies don't lose anything but a oops.

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    • [–] 62 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I have to say, this is so strangely captivating, I can’t stop looking at it honestly! Weirdly in sync between the two very different approaches! I have zero idea why this is so enthralling but I couldn’t just scroll away without explicitly voicing my confused enjoyment, so peculiar

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    • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Funny. The American ambassador in Belgium has claimed trump didn’t and wouldn’t ever do something like that

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    • [–] 40 points 4 months ago (10 children)

    Unfortunately anything beyond this point is tainted. The only thing that can save this is the USA coach deliberately not fielding Balogun.

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  • [+] -24 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    The card was absurd in the first place, they absolutely should field Balogun.

    FIFA is a comically corrupt organization; of course it’s going to do shit like this, if you don’t like it stop watching world cups and supporting FIFA. Otherwise you’re just whining the clown show didn’t perform the act you wanted it to.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Just because it was accidental doesn’t mean it wasn’t a red card.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Except for when Messi did worse… in fact wasn’t even a yellow card. Imagine defending FIFA’s clown show. Europeans really need to acknowledge: World Cup is an absolute joke, as long as FIFA runs it.

    Whining about what’s fair is pathetic when you support such a shitty, corrupt organization.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    we either have rules or we don't. Otherwise, we will be second guessing ref calls with social media polling of fanboys.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    FIFA doesn’t have rules. This isn’t even the first time it happened; Ronaldo this tournament and the 1962 world cups . Messi didn’t get carded for something worse, and Balogun did. The refs make it up as they go.

    Europeans need to stop supporting FIFA… but they won’t because they’re completely fine with turning a blind eye for its corruption.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    What Messi did was not worse.

    You should look at the video, they both do something similar at the beginning, but they diverge sharply.

    Messi should have been carded, but he didn’t do anything worse than balogun.

    The part where balloons foot lands on the other players ankle is where it goes from a yellow to a red. It was reckless and could have seriously injured another player.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Messi didn't even get a yellow card for it. They have different rules for different players and always have.

    Hating on the Balogun reversal is peak mental gymnastics to try and justify FIFA is somehow legitimate in how they run their tournaments... They aren't. Stop watching them. The Balogun is par for the course with FIFA, it's not more outrageous than other shit they do, or don't do. Seems like you're just mad at who they benefitted this time, because there's half a dozen other red-card qualified plays that didn't result even in a yellow you could bring up from this tournament, too.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago

    Except a red needs to either have intent behind it or have very reckless play behind it. This was just one player being in the air while another player moves his leg into the space where the first player would be landing. That isn't reckless. You can call it careless for leaving the ground and not having a clear space to land, but reckless needs to have more behind it.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    The number of downvotes you have is depressing. FIFA has been insanely corrupt since its inception, a fact that's been well-documented. Anyone that chooses to grandstand over this, while continuing to watch the games, is ignorant at best.

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    • [–] 13 points 4 months ago

    THAT'S CORRUPTION!

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    [–] 11 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    "independent panel"

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    • [–] 10 points 4 months ago

    Infantino should give him another made up prize

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    [–] 19 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    I will exitedly open up a nice Belgian beer if they can make Trump angry this Tuesday.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I will excitedly open up a nice Belgian beer, regardless of the results of the match. It's just a solid decision.

    Might I suggest an ABT 12 or Pavel Kwak?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Wise choice to have a beer ready. I had my "Victoria" (Victory) brand Caguama (32 fl oz) beer ready to go for the game against England. Had to get some masking tape and a sharpie to turn it into a "Derrota" (Loss), but it was still delicious. The salty tears elevated the flavor I think.

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