David L.

I admit that I’m not the biggest soccer fan, but I’m glad President Trump urged FIFA to do the right thing. Good for President Trump, good for Folarin Balogun, good for the USA. I wish liberals could put their country ahead of their politics just once, but I guess that’s asking too much. Let’s join together tonight and cheer our team on to victory.

Listen, I think decided Balogun can play on the eve of the game is a bad look for FIFA too, but these fans from other countries can drop the fake indignation. Would the English fans be this upset if it was Harry Kane, French if it was Mbappe. Spare out the fake outrage please

the annoying thing about Balogun situation is that every single complainer on here (99% Europeans) would change their tune if it happened to their guy. imagine that was Harry Kane getting sent off. do you think the insufferable British media would have simply accepted the red?

Typical European behavior right here. Instead of getting fired up to face the US at its best after one of the worst calls in history gets rightfully reversed, Belgium cries, plays victim, and tries to find a way to keep their opponent down over a garbage call. This is exactly why the US continues to lead the world in innovation while Europe whines and regulates itself into irrelevance. I’d be scared too, Belgium. 🇺🇸⚽

The most interesting part of the red card saga isn't the ruling. It's how differently Americans and Europeans process the idea that they might have been wronged. Europeans are fundamentally different from Americans in one particular way: they expect life to be aggravating and at times unfair. It's just a fact of moving through the world. I joke that in Europe, the customer is always wrong. You didn't read the fine print. The only pharmacy in town is closed every other Tuesday for three hours, and even if the times weren't posted, that's still your problem. Too bad if you want the bill, because the waiter's on his union-mandated half-hour smoke break, and you're just going to have to wait. To quote the great Mark Knopfler: sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. There's something freeing in that. Things are less in your control, so there's less angst in managing your expectations. In America, things couldn't be more different. We simply can't accept a wrong left unrighted. The flight attendant sneezed handing you a drink on your one-hour flight? 15,000 frequent flyer miles. Didn't like your appetizer? A replacement is on the way, and the whole course comes off the bill. There's a reason our interstates are lined with trial lawyer billboards. Europeans have turned complaining into a continental pastime with no expectation that the universe owes them a remedy for their grief. You gripe about the train being late, your friends nod solemnly and everyone goes back to their apéro. In America, we launch a full-blown investigation of the train system, sue the government (and its contractors) that allowed for the tardiness and hold a Congressional hearing on the state of national infrastructure. So to an objective observer, the red card shouldn't have happened, and VAR was a travesty. To Americans, our star player shouldn't be unfairly banned from a match we couldn't afford to lose for a card he so obviously didn't deserve. Who cares that FIFA used a little-used reversal to fix it. Who cares that other people are mad about it. We. Were. Wronged. It was unjust. It must be corrected. We would accept nothing less. Europeans waxing poetic about the sanctity of the game are, of course, talking about a governing body whose last tournament host was decided via confirmed cash bribes — one that imposed dress codes on women, shrugged off widespread allegations of modern slavery and reconfigured the entire tournament calendar to suit the host country. Which is exactly the point. If you've made peace with all of that, at least enough to watch the tournament four years later, a probationary suspension isn't actually a scandal. Maybe that's the real divide. Over millennia, Europeans have made peace with being the bug. Americans have never once considered it, and apparently, we're not about to start now.

The thing about Balogun playing is that we now existentially have to win a game that’s basically a toss-up