UEFA says decision by FIFA to let U.S. forward play at World Cup is ‘incomprehensible’

Eu­ro­pean soc­cer body UE­FA crit­i­cized FI­FA for an “in­com­pre­hen­si­ble and un­jus­ti­fi­able de­ci­sion” to let Unit­ed States for­ward Fo­lar­in Ba­lo­gun play at the World Cup against Bel­gium on Mon­day de­spite a red card in his pre­vi­ous game.

UE­FA said in a state­ment FI­FA “crossed a red line” with its de­ci­sion not to en­force Ba­lo­gun’s manda­to­ry one-game ban, af­ter the world soc­cer body came un­der pres­sure from U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

FI­FA’s rul­ing Sun­day — to de­fer Ba­lo­gun’s ban for one year of pro­ba­tion — shock­ing­ly de­vi­at­ed from soc­cer’s tra­di­tion­al rule of law and drew sting­ing crit­i­cism glob­al­ly in­clud­ing from for­mer World Cup stars and coach­es at this tour­na­ment.

“It’s a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad de­ci­sion that will hurt the World Cup,” Nor­way coach Ståle Sol­bakken said Sun­day af­ter his team beat Brazil to reach the quar­ter­fi­nals.

UE­FA, whose mem­ber fed­er­a­tions in­clude Bel­gium, in­sist­ed: “Some­times rules are open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion. In this case not.”

“When the cer­tain­ty of rules is no longer guar­an­teed by its guardians, the in­tegri­ty of the game is at stake and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of a com­pe­ti­tion is un­der­mined,” said the Eu­ro­pean soc­cer body, which has of­ten clashed with FI­FA Pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no dur­ing his decade in pow­er.

“We ex­press our dis­be­lief at such an un­prece­dent­ed, in­com­pre­hen­si­ble and un­jus­ti­fi­able de­ci­sion,” said UE­FA, where In­fan­ti­no was its CEO-like gen­er­al sec­re­tary from 2009 un­til be­ing elect­ed to lead FI­FA in Feb­ru­ary 2016.

The Bel­gian soc­cer fed­er­a­tion was prepar­ing an ap­peal in Seat­tle in the ear­ly hours of Mon­day to chal­lenge the Ba­lo­gun rul­ing be­fore a FI­FA-ap­point­ed ap­peals judge. The round of 16 game against the U.S. is due to kick off at 5 p.m. lo­cal time.

Ba­lo­gun’s tack­le

Ba­lo­gun was sent off di­rect­ly for plant­i­ng his cleat­ed foot on the an­kle of Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina de­fend­er Tarik Muhare­movic dur­ing a 2-0 win for the U.S. in the round of 32 last Wednes­day.

That kind of chal­lenge has been a rou­tine red card all sea­son in com­pe­ti­tions world­wide, and Ba­lo­gun could have ex­pect­ed a two-game ban for se­ri­ous foul play.

Still, sim­i­lar chal­lenges by star play­ers have gone un­pun­ished at this World Cup — by Li­onel Mes­si for Ar­genti­na against Al­ge­ria and Mo­roc­co’s Achraf Haki­mi vs. Brazil. Bernar­do Sil­va of Por­tu­gal got just a yel­low card against Con­go.

“I think a yel­low card would have been fair,” Ba­lo­gun lat­er sug­gest­ed.

FI­FA’s in­ter­ven­tions

This World Cup has been re­mark­able for FI­FA seem­ing to rewrite the norms of dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion even be­fore the tour­na­ment be­gan.

A pat­tern of par­dons opened FI­FA to sug­ges­tions of ex­ec­u­tive in­ter­ven­tion in the statu­to­ry in­de­pen­dence of its ju­di­cial bod­ies.

Cris­tiano Ronal­do was cleared to play in Por­tu­gal’s open­ing World Cup game de­spite get­ting a red card for se­ri­ous foul play in a qual­i­fy­ing game against Ire­land last No­vem­ber. He struck an op­po­nent with an el­bow.

Ronal­do served his manda­to­ry ban in Por­tu­gal’s fi­nal qual­i­fy­ing game but he was re­prieved from an ex­pect­ed two-game ban be­cause FI­FA in­tro­duced the idea of pro­ba­tion. An im­posed three-game ban was less mean­ing­ful as two games were de­ferred dur­ing a one-year pro­ba­tion­ary pe­ri­od.

At the open­ing game on June 11, South Africa’s Them­ba Zwane got a red card against Mex­i­co for a sim­i­lar of­fense to Ronal­do’s and FI­FA im­posed a three-game ban with no pro­ba­tion. Zwane did not play again at the World Cup.

Three play­ers sent off in their teams’ qual­i­fy­ing games last year were sur­pris­ing­ly told by FI­FA in May they could serve their bans in a fu­ture com­pe­ti­tion in­stead of at the World Cup, which was the long-stand­ing norm.

Ecuador mid­field­er Moisés Caice­do, Ar­genti­na de­fend­er Nicolás Ota­men­di and Qatar de­fend­er Tarek Salman all had their bans waived for the World Cup.

US ex­cep­tion­al­ism

This, FI­FA said in May, was to en­sure teams “can com­pete with their strongest pos­si­ble squads on the biggest stage of men’s in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball.”

The Ba­lo­gun de­ci­sion sim­ply took this pol­i­cy fur­ther, though not for oth­er play­ers shown a red card so far who were man­dat­ed to miss at least one game.

“It is a prin­ci­ple em­bed­ded in reg­u­la­tions, which can­not be made sub­ject to ex­cep­tions,” UE­FA said, “let alone in the mid­dle of a tour­na­ment where sev­er­al oth­er play­ers have been in the same sit­u­a­tion and reg­u­lar­ly served their sus­pen­sion.” — GENE­VA (AP)

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Sto­ry by GRA­HAM DUN­BAR | As­so­ci­at­ed Press