The United States got a belated 250th birthday gift from FIFA. And it’s way better than some phony-baloney peace prize.
According to The Athletic, FIFA has rescinded the one-game suspension that attached to the red card U.S. striker Folarin Balogun received on Wednesday night in a win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. He’s now available for the Round of 16 game against Belgium, to be played on Monday night in Seattle.
The details aren’t clear as to why the supposedly automatic suspension was lifted. It was supposedly final, as of Friday.
Frankly, there’s seems to be enough play in the joints of the FIFA rules to allow for the exercise of discretion. Which is a fancy way of saying “make it up as we go.”
In this case, the exercise of discretion has put the U.S. in position to have one of its best players available for one of the biggest games the program has ever played.
Whatever the linguistic niceties and chapter-and-verse mumbo-jumbo, it feels like the right outcome. The red card seemed unwarranted in the first place. The fair compromise, since there’s no way to let Balogun go back and finish the game, is to suspend the suspension that went with it.
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