Решение ФИФА приостановить дисквалификацию Фоларина Балогуна наносит ущерб целостности этого чемпионата мира

The Ronaldo decision was partly justified on the basis that he had never been sent off in international football before, but also so the teams in question “can compete with their strongest possible squads on the biggest stage of men’s international football†.

This has been the ratings World Cup, the tournament most impressed by celebrity in the game’s history. Watch any game on TV and wait for a slight lull in play so that the cameras can cut to a famous person in the crowd. Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Shakira, Penelope Cruz, Rosalia, David Beckham.

And this is the case on the pitch too. Balogun has been the USMNT’s standout player of a finals that seem to have captured the American imagination like no other before it. Perhaps the real fools are those who naively assumed that he would actually be suspended against Belgium after being sent off in the win over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Balogun was the 12th player to receive a red card at this World Cup. All the others either served a suspension at the tournament or, because their team were eliminated, will do so in their next competitive game(s).

But almost all of those were players most people haven’t heard of.