10 minutes of stoppage time...Christ.
2026 FIFA World Cup Thread
USA wins 2:0.
US will face Belgium on Monday night in Seattle. Kickoff is set for 7:00 PM CT and it will air on FOX.
US will face Belgium on Monday night in Seattle. Kickoff is set for 7:00 PM CT and it will air on FOX.
Will be tough not having Balogun against Belgium. Pepi will need to step it up but nobody on the squad who brings quite what Balo does.
What the red card brings is way, way, way over the top punitive. If you want to kick the player out of the game, cool. Unfortunate plays happen and ejections happen. That is true of every sport. No problems there.
However, to put the entire team on blast for the rest of the game by forcing them to play a man short is just insanity. Then, to automatically get DQ'd for the next game without review of the game film to see intent.....that's just too much. All red cards shouldn't be created equal. That was an obvious accident and it's costing that young man the biggest game in his career and it's severely dampening the chances of his team to advance.
FIFA should have the ability to go back after a game and make the next game determination.
I absolutely agree.
A "Like" was just not good enough for.your post.
I hope our boys get pissed off from this and come out on fire vs Belgium
Speaking as someone long-embedded in the game, I feel the in-game penalty requiring a team to play down is an important part of the sport's integrity. Beyond that - the individual player missing at least one more match - I agree with you. I'd like to see the logistics of a mandatory review put in place for every red card issued so that further penalty may be avoided in particular circumstances.
That said, USMNT can and will submit an appeal seeking his reinstatement for the next match. How likely that is to be given is another story.
I lied. Apologies. They will not be allowed to appeal.
This is not a new rule and it's always been like this. It's supposed to be punitive.
I think the red card was a bit harsh, but it was not an "obvious accident" - it was a reckless challenge. Not intentional, but reckless. And you get punished for reckless in soccer. I'd have rather seen it be a yellow, but have definitely seen red cards shown for similar before.
As a side note, intent is usually not really important. You have to be in control or you're going to get dinged. The Qatar player that broke Ismael Kone's (Canada) leg on a similar reckless challenge also wasn't intending to do that. He got a 5 game suspension.
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KBLEE
- Montgomery, IL
I couldn't disagree more. It was an obvious accident, as the Bosnia player came from the blind-side of the US player. The Bosnia player initiated the contact, which knocked Balogun off balance. Anything after that is a consequence of the actions of the Bosnia player. Based on the second angle below, the foul could have been called on the player from Bosnia.
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It's the extension of the leg there at the end, when the Bosnia defender has successfully cut off his path and beat him to the ball (which he is entitled to do), that is the reckless play. And it's not a "blind spot." Balogun knows he's there because the leg extension comes after shoulder to shoulder contact is initiated. Not intentional, but definitely reckless, which is why it should get at least a yellow card every time (if not reckless, then yellow card wouldn't be justified either). The reason you see this elevated to red sometimes is because this kind of play, stepping on someone's ankle like that, has in the past caused serious, sometimes career ending injuries. To some refs, knowing that and recklessly extending that leg when you have no realistic play on the ball is enough.
Soccer prides itself on having few rules that never change. It's not about balance and fairness, it's about how minutely play can be measured to ensure that the pure and inerrant rules are followed. End of story, because it's out of the referees hands (but really not at all) and out of FIBA's hands (but really not at all).
Yeah, it's terrible. It always will be. Sic semper in tyrannide.
The rules never change but are completely subjective and unevenly applied. It's OK for soccer to be a bit physical. It's possible to have more tiers of penalty than just yellow or backbreakimg red card.
Orange - miss the rest of the game for dangerous play
Red card - suspension with intent
It's not that hard and doesn't need to be this difficult to get it right.
Using VAR to freeze frame stepping on someone's ankle does more harm to the spirit of the game. Why couldn't they just retroactively suspend Messi from his earlier similar looking play? Where's the line?
The player whose ankle got stepped on played the next 40+ minutes without difficulty too...
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You're talking like being in front of someone or winning a challenge automatically puts that person in the right, when that is definitionally untrue. The BiH player initiated a violent challenge getting under Balogun. Balogun was not playing recklessly in the instant prior to that challenge and put his foot down when knocked off balance. Don't get lulled in by slo-mo. Watch it in real time from seconds before the challenge and then the bang-bang as Muharemovic hip checks him. It's less realistic to think that Balogun has the time to become reckless while being knocked off balance than it is to notice that, within a few hundredths of a second of getting his momentum rocked, he simply tries to put his foot down. It looks biomechanical and HE didn't cause the impact.
Intent isn't supposed to matter, results aren't supposed to matter, and I'm secure in my argument that Balogun wasn't being reckless. Let's say you don't buy that and can point to a timeframe where Balogun was consciously reckless. You'd then be stuck arguing for a red card if Balogun's blind foot placement had only found turf. Of course, in the world without an ankle-stepping result, none of us would have been talking about the play. It's fairly likely that neither player would even have gone to the ground.
This is one of the more ridiculous statements I've seen. What the Bosnia player did was 100% ok, shoulder to shoulder contact. They have a word for his play there in soccer, and that word is "defending." He has as much a right to go for that ball as Balogun has and he gets there first. If that were considered a "violent challenge" it would be literally impossible to defend in soccer.
Biomechanical?
Try this stand still and have someone push your right shoulder from the side to unbalance you. In order to regain your balance, do you extend your right foot outwards and press down? Of course not. Your right foot either stays up as a counterweight or you shift your entire weight away from the push, kind of shuffling to your left. He wasn't trying to regain balance, he was making a very late and reckless challenge on a ball that was already gone, which is why anyone who knows soccer, including the American commentators, acknowledged that a yellow was warranted even if they disagreed with the red.
I mean you seem to not think it was even a foul, or even that the Bosnia player committed a foul. I'm inclined to disregard that opinion entirely.
No, that's not how it works. If there's no foul (i.e. contact) then there's no card. Intent, recklessness, etc. only come into play if there is an actual foul.
Right, which is how that scenario plays out hundreds of times a game. But here Balogun made a reckless challenge, and unfortunately he did not whiff and instead got the opposing player's ankle studs up. Sometimes players make reckless challenges and whiff and everybody carries on. That's called being lucky.
Wouldn't that be an argument against any call that gets changed by VAR? "It was only a goal after VAR," "it was only offside after VAR," "it was only a penalty after VAR," etc. Or any play that gets reversed on video review in any sport?
It seems like a lot of fans get upset with this stuff when it hurts their team, but would be completely fine, or even in favor of it, if it was the other way around. Like, the thing about this play is that everyone is lucky the Bosnia player was fine, but plays like this have absolutely resulted in very serious injuries in the past. If things were reversed and the Bosnia player did this, and Balogun ended up with his Achilles ruptured people on here would be howling not only for a red card but also for the longest suspension in FIFA history.
You can make any challenge look bad with VAR. They bodied Adam's away from the ball with zero consequence, VAR didn't review it.
Also how is this is a comparison? The Bosnian player played the remaining 40+ minutes without so much as a limp. No one's Achilles was ruptured.
What should Balogan have done differently? What did he HAVE TIME to do differently? When did his serious recklessness begin?
KBLEE
- Montgomery, IL
Since everyone here seems to love single frames. This was not "shoulder to shoulder" contact. It was a hip-check and barge through Balogun's back which caused him to lose his balance.
Ah, yeah, you aren't watching the whole replay at speed while saying this. That helps me understand where you're coming from. People watching that same tired slo-mo clip can make their brains see almost anything. Like Balogan having time to play for the ball or there being shoulder-to-shoulder contact.