Folarin Balogun was back in the United States starting lineup for its round-of-16 match against Belgium on Monday in Seattle after FIFA suspended the red card that had threatened to rule him out. Mauricio Pochettino kept the same lineup the U.S. used in its previous win, with Balogun now available for a match that could send the team into the quarterfinals for the first time since 2002.
The timing mattered because Balogun had been set to miss the game after being sent off in the round of 32 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina, only for FIFA to reverse course on Sunday and place him on one-year probation instead. He also gave the United States a fast start in that game, scoring in the 45th minute before seeing red in the 64th minute after a VAR review judged a challenge on Tarik Muharemovic to be bad.
That made his inclusion against Belgium one of the key lineup calls before kickoff. Rudi Garcia left Jérémy Doku and Kevin De Bruyne out of Belgium's starting side, while Pochettino opted to keep his own group intact. In a separate development, Donald Trump confirmed that he had contacted Gianni Infantino about the suspension and whether it could be reviewed, putting extra attention on a disciplinary call that had already become part of the build-up to a knockout match.
Belgium and UEFA were not satisfied with the outcome. The Royal Belgian Football Association said it was astonished by FIFA's decision to declare Balogun eligible for the USA-Belgium match on Monday at 5:00 p.m. Seattle time, even as Infantino defended the ruling by saying FIFA's judicial bodies are independent and operate autonomously, apply the FIFA Disciplinary Code and decide cases based on the applicable regulations and the specific facts before them. That explanation left unanswered the more specific question of how the panel reached the decision to suspend the red card and reduce the punishment to one-year probation.
The case fits a pattern FIFA has faced before, including deferred suspensions for Cristiano Ronaldo in November and for Nicolás Otamendi and Moisés Caicedo in April, as well as the old Garrincha example from 1962, when political pressure helped open the door to another appearance in a final. For Balogun, the practical effect was immediate: instead of watching from the sideline, he was in the XI when the United States walked into a match that carried real tournament stakes and a sharp dispute over how far FIFA disciplinary independence should reach.
