{"id":394684,"date":"2026-07-11T12:43:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T12:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/394684\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T12:43:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T12:43:22","slug":"shameful-fifa-president-tarnishes-world-cup-with-u-s-penalty-reversal-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/394684\/","title":{"rendered":"Shameful FIFA president tarnishes World Cup with U.S. penalty reversal \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Re \u201cFolarin Balogun\u2019s red card may be unfair, but FIFA\u2019s decision to lift his suspension might be worse\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandiegouniontribune.com\/2026\/07\/05\/mark-zeigler-folarin-baloguns-red-card-may-be-unfair-but-fifas-decision-to-lift-his-suspension-might-be-worse\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">July 5<\/a>): The U.S. soccer team not only missed a winning goal. It also failed to score a political goal. Why did the team not honor the referee\u2019s red card decision? A loss in their next game could be readily explained by their star player sitting it out. A win in their next game would not be registered with an asterisk.<\/p>\n<p>The FIFA president\u2019s decision, to overturn the red card call, forever tarnishes the World Cup\u2019s marquee. The U.S. team could have effectively overturned that startling decision, by benching the offending player. Doing so would have blocked the global disdain for the president\u2019s interference. The result? Sports fans are now feeling trumped by U.S. politics.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Bill Slomanson, Hillcrest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re \u201cFolarin Balogun\u2019s red card may be unfair, but FIFA\u2019s decision to lift his suspension might be worse\u201d&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1564,975,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-394684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}