Trump ruins everything he touches: Part the 10,000th
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I mean when you get a call from the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize you pretty much have to take it, out of respect as they say in the mob (apologies to the Mafia for comparing it to FIFA):
President Trump called Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, in the hours after the United States men’s soccer team played Wednesday and asked him to review the suspension of the team’s top goal scorer in the World Cup, Folarin Balogun, after he was given a red card, according to four people familiar with the conversation.
On Sunday, FIFA reversed the suspension, announcing that Mr. Balogun would be eligible to play Monday against Belgium.
The reversal is highly unusual and is the first time since 1962 that FIFA has allowed a player to appear in a game when they would have been suspended after being sent off in the World Cup. Mr. Infantino has spent years trying to curry favor with Mr. Trump. Last year, FIFA created and gave Mr. Trump the FIFA Peace Prize amid the president’s public, but failed, campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Shortly after Mr. Balogun’s red card, senior Trump administration officials, including Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, and Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House task force on the World Cup, engaged lawyers to help the U.S. Soccer Federation try to appeal, despite FIFA’s rules against such appeals, according to two of the people familiar with the call.
U.S. Soccer officials argued the red card was improperly given to Mr. Balogun because the officials should not have used slow-motion video replay in determining the penalty, the people said. Use of video replays is common practice, and players have frequently been ejected after reviews.
Scott Goodwin, a hedge fund manager and major donor to U.S. Soccer, brought to the attention of Trump officials public accusations that Raphael Claus, the referee, was involved in match fixing in Brazil by giving out irregular red cards. Brazilian authorities and FIFA have found no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Claus, but Mr. Trump brought up those allegations in his call with Mr. Infantino, the people familiar with the call said. Mr. Goodwin referred comment to U.S. Soccer. Mr. Claus did not initially call a foul on Mr. Balogun but was asked to review his decision by other officials tasked with monitoring replays. That group hailed from Venezuela, Colombia and France.
On Sunday, Mr. Infantino and Mr. Trump spoke again right after Mr. Balogun was reinstated, and the president told Mr. Infantino that it was the right decision, the people said. Mr. Trump also called Mauricio Pochettino, the U.S. coach, and wished him luck in the game against Belgium on Monday. Mr. Pochettino told reporters at a news conference on Sunday that his team was “not the bad guys.”
FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment but confirmed Mr. Balogun’s eligibility after The Athletic reported the planned reversal earlier in the afternoon.
The Belgian federation reacted with fury on Sunday. In a statement it described being “astonished by FIFA’s decision to declare suspended United States player Folarin Balogun eligible to play in the U.S.A.-Belgium match.”
(1) Much more knowledgeable fans than me whose objectivity I respect describe the red card on Balogun as a bad call, made possible by an inadvertent bad side effect of the VAR system, which can make a foul look a lot worse in slow motion than it does in real time. The problem with the red card rule is that if it were interpreted literally you would have several red cards in every game, as the rule on its face doesn’t require intention or even recklessness on the part of the fouling player. Taken literally, an inadvertent coming together of two players is exactly as eligible for a red card as a foul that’s intended to injure the opponent. That’s absurd and impractical so the rule isn’t called that way, which is why Balogun wasn’t even given a yellow card by the ref in real time. But the VAR system made Balogun’s foul look much worse than it actually was. Still, I’m told that as red cards go while it was a bad one it wasn’t OBVIOUSLY an incorrect call, in the way that it would have been if the opponent had simply taken a dive and pretended that his leg had been chopped off in the classic Italian fashion. Of course in that particular situation the VAR system is a big improvement. The problem as here is that it’s a two-edged sword.
(2) The latter point makes the lifting of the suspension both unprecedented and outrageous. There’s no appeal process for red card suspensions for a reason: It’s supposed to be an extremely harsh sanction, because by the 1960s big international tournaments were featuring so much brutal play — Pele was basically mugged out of the 1966 World Cup among many similar examples — that FIFA had to crack down in a big way.
(3) This has been a great World Cup so far — the game between England and Mexico last night as well as Argentina-Cape Verde were all time classics, the game’s biggest stars are dominating, and some great Cinderella stories (Norway) are developing — but in his inimitable style Trump is fucking it up with his bottomless corruption. I’m well aware that trying to corrupt FIFA is like trying to make the Pacific ocean a little wetter, but this right here is a disgusting spectacle even by that organization’s non-existent standards.
Komm, Trümpentod.