Belgian federation to challenge FIFA’s decision to let Folarin Balogun play in World Cup match

Sto­ry by SAMUEL PE­TRE­QUIN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

The Bel­gian soc­cer fed­er­a­tion wants ex­pla­na­tion from FI­FA about a de­ci­sion to let U.S for­ward Fo­lar­in Ba­lo­gun play at the World Cup de­spite get­ting a red card in his pre­vi­ous game.

Bel­gium takes on the Unit­ed States lat­er Mon­day for a spot in the quar­ter­fi­nals.

The Bel­gian fed­er­a­tion (RB­FA) said it has still not re­ceived ei­ther “FI­FA’s de­ci­sion or any ex­pla­na­tion re­gard­ing this mat­ter. In these cir­cum­stances, it has no choice but to chal­lenge the play­er’s el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for the up­com­ing match.”

It did not spec­i­fy where it in­tends to ap­peal FI­FA’s de­ci­sion.

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in­ter­vened on be­half of star U.S. for­ward Ba­lo­gun, whose red-card sus­pen­sion was lift­ed in a de­ci­sion that al­lowed him to play against Bel­gium.

The Bel­gian fed­er­a­tion said it learned through me­dia re­ports about the FI­FA’s move and sent a let­ter to the gov­ern­ing body re­quest­ing a copy of the de­ci­sion as well as an ex­pla­na­tion of the process.

“As its on­ly re­sponse, FI­FA sent a let­ter to the RB­FA stat­ing that it con­sid­ered this cor­re­spon­dence to con­sti­tute an ap­peal, that a judge had been ap­point­ed, and that the RB­FA had on­ly a few hours to com­plete that ap­peal,” it said. “No in­for­ma­tion what­so­ev­er was pro­vid­ed by FI­FA.

The RB­FA in­sist­ed that FI­FA’s reg­u­la­tions state that the rea­soned de­ci­sion must first have been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the ap­pel­lant.

“While the RB­FA was mere­ly seek­ing le­git­i­mate ex­pla­na­tions, FI­FA it­self cre­at­ed an ap­peal and im­me­di­ate­ly en­sured that it would be de­clared in­ad­mis­si­ble,” it said. “All of this oc­curred while FI­FA si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly re­fused to re­spond to the RB­FA’s le­git­i­mate re­quests.”

Ba­lo­gun, the star for­ward for the U.S. with three goals in the tour­na­ment, re­ceived a red card for step­ping awk­ward­ly on the right an­kle of Tarik Muhare­mović of Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina in a 2-0 round of 32 win on Wednes­day, trig­ger­ing an au­to­mat­ic one-game sus­pen­sion.

FI­FA an­nounced Sun­day that the sus­pen­sion had been lift­ed for the round of 16 match, an ex­tra­or­di­nary move that trig­gered praise from Trump and out­rage from Bel­gium’s team. It ap­peared to be the first time since 1962 that a red card dur­ing a World Cup didn’t re­sult in a sus­pen­sion.

“Re­gard­less of the sport­ing out­come of this match, the RB­FA is deeply con­cerned by the course of events and will con­tin­ue to fight in the com­ing hours, days and months in de­fense of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of ethics, fair com­pe­ti­tion, and the in­ter­ests of foot­ball as a whole,” the Bel­gian fed­er­a­tion added.