Card Sharps

You know me.

Balogun is the star striker for the U.S. national soccer team. In the squad’s last match, he was handed a very questionable red card for a foul on an opposing player. That disqualified him from playing in tonight’s round of 16 elimination match against Belgium, the highest-stakes game in American soccer history.

The U.S. had lost its best player under dubious circumstances at the worst possible time in a World Cup on its own turf. “Time for the federal government to get involved,” the president surmised, as he often does.

Donald Trump reportedly phoned FIFA President Gianni Infantino in the hours after Balogun’s suspension. (You’ll remember Infantino as the man who presented him with the, cough, inaugural FIFA Peace Prize.) What was said between them is unclear, but on Sunday the organization announced that Balogun’s suspension had been changed to probation for a period of one year. He’s eligible to play against Belgium.

This will be the first time since 1962 that a player sent off in a World Cup match will take the pitch in his team’s next contest.

The first absurdity is that this is the rare Trump scandal in which the president isn’t the most crooked figure involved. That would be FIFA, a byword for institutional corruption to the great majority of the world that follows soccer avidly. Typically that corruption is financial in nature, but the organization isn’t above bending the rules for star players the way it did for Balogun. 

Ask Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the biggest names in the sport. He received a red card in a qualifying match last fall that should have made him ineligible for Portugal’s first two World Cup matches, tantamount to the NBA suspending Michael Jordan for the first few rounds of the playoffs. Presto change-o: FIFA found a way to postpone the punishment. Ronaldo could play after all.

A second absurdity has to do with the circumstances of Balogun’s American pedigree. He’s of Nigerian ancestry, grew up in London, has played professionally in Europe—but, through a twist of fate, was born in Brooklyn, New York. His mother was visiting the U.S. during her pregnancy and tried to board a flight home to the U.K. when she was seven months along, but was refused by the airline. After she was forced to stay put until she delivered, her son became a natural-born American.

In other words, one day after the Supreme Court affirmed birthright citizenship under the 14^th Amendment, our anti-immigrant president felt obliged to go to bat for someone whom he and his supporters fervently believe shouldn’t count as American. Don’t tell me the cosmos doesn’t have a sense of humor.