If the USA had won against Belgium, who knows where that would have left us with this 2026 World Cup?
Not in a good place, that is for sure.
The combined efforts of Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino had put this 2026 World Cup on the brink, thanks to the outrageous decision to suspend the one-game suspension for Folarin Balogun.
It was quite incredible how then Infantino and FIFA then tried to make out that this is all normal, that suddenly getting a red card doesn’t automatically mean a (USA!) player doesn’t get banned for at least the next match. Gianni Infantino and his FIFA minions trying to make out that this was a decision made that wasn’t the norm, due to special circumstances with this particular red card, but not telling us exactly what these special circumstances actually were.
Well of course they couldn’t do so because they aren’t going to admit that the special circumstances were of course Donald Trump telling them to overturn the red card.
What was especially stupid about this cunning stunt was that despite the previous combined efforts of Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino to ruin this 2026 World Cup (outrageous ticket pricing, dubious staging of when tickets became available to buy, stopping various people from various countries entering the United States including one of the referees, not to mention the appalling treatment of the Iran contingent and so on), the tournament had actually proved to be a massive success in many ways. With amongst the many positives, the fact that the USA team had actually done really well and played good attacking exciting football and winning, as had fellow co-hosts Mexico and Canada to varying extents.
The irony is so sweet though, because it appears that the Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino cunning stunt actually ended up playing a major role in knocking the USA out of the 2026 World Cup, as opposed to helping them progress. Belgium had been poor in this tournament and stumbled through to the last 16 somehow, yet against the USA they suddenly looked a far better team. A sudden improvement for Rudi Garcia’s side? I am not convinced. Folarin Balogun was in the starting eleven in the early hours of Tuesday morning (UK time) but he and his teammates looked pale shadows of what they had shown previously.
In this last 16 contest it quickly became apparent that it was the USA team who had been massively impacted, not in a good way, by all the political machinations that facilitated Balogun becoming magically available. They were obviously weighed down by everything that had happened, whilst the injustice felt by Belgium due to Trump and Infantino’s/FIFA’s actions clearly helped them to spark into life and show some desire that hadn’t previously manifested itself.
Belgium won very easily, the USA with a lucky deflection for their goal in the 4-1 defeat. It will be Belgium who face Spain in Los Angeles on Friday for a place in the semi-finals.
If it had been instead the USA who progressed, with the help of Balogun, where would that have left us?
The outrage felt around the world at the deviation from the established rules would not have gone away, instead it would have become magnified many times over.
I never imagined I would ever see a worse case of cheating than what the despicable Maradona did in 1986, but that was just one player, one cheat on the pitch. This would have been the actual people in charge of the tournament who had changed the course of a match, a tournament, by subverting the rules.
I actually felt sorry for Mauricio Pochettino and his players because they innocently became the biggest victims of the actions of FIFA and Donald Trump. We will now never know what the outcome of the match had been if the Balogun ban hadn’t been tampered with but I am very confident that they would have given Belgium a far tougher match.
One of my favourite ever quotes is from Groucho Marx and I think it perfectly applies to Gianni Infantino, FIFA generally, as well as Donald Trump: “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them…well, I have others.”
Another truism is that cheats never prosper, well apart from Diego Maradona.