The USA have received a massive boost after striker Folarin Balogun was given the green light to play in their round of 16 match against Belgium following the suspension of his one-game ban.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old is the leading scorer for the USA with three goals. He scored the opener in the 2-0 win against Bosnia and Herzegovina last Wednesday.<\/p>\n
However, he was later controversially sent off in that game for a foul on Tarik Muharemovic, triggering an automatic one-game suspension under FIFA World Cup rules.<\/p>\n
A red card or suspension in the tournament cannot be appealed. FIFA, however, posted this message to its website Sunday: “By operation of Article 27 FDC, the implementation of the automatic match suspension for USA \u200cplayer Folarin Balogun is suspended for a probationary period of one year.”<\/p>\n
US Soccer issued its own statement in response to \u2060the action: “We accept thedecision of the Disciplinary Committee and are pleased that \u200cFolarin Balogun is eligible to compete tomorrow.<\/p>\n
“Our full attention is focused on \u2060the Round \u200cof 16 match against Belgium in Seattle, and we look forward to the continued support of our amazing fans.”<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has hailed the move.<\/p>\n
Writing on his Truth Social account, Trump said: “Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!”<\/p>\n
This move is not unprecedented in this World Cup.<\/p>\n
Before the start of the tournament last \u2060month, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo faced a three-match suspension after seeing red against the Republic of Ireland at Aviva Stadium.<\/p>\n
Instead, he sat out the following qualifier against Armenia, with the \u2060other two suspended and converted to a one-year probation period. That meant Ronaldo didn’t miss any of the tournament’s group stage games.<\/p>\n
The \u200cUSA are attempting to reach the quarter-finals for the first time since 2002.<\/p>\n
Watch every game of the FIFA 2026 World Cup live on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player with highlights on RT\u00c9 Sport digital platforms and live blogs on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The USA have received a massive boost after striker Folarin Balogun was given the green light to play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-534626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}