The joyful, communal festival of World Cup soccer that had seemingly brought the United States together has now been interrupted by a controversy that cuts through notions of fair play on and off the field.<\/p>\n
And it was not hard to find opinions about it.<\/p>\n
Last week, President Trump placed a phone call to the president of FIFA, world soccer\u2019s governing body, that ultimately led to the reinstatement of a star U.S. player who had been suspended from Monday night\u2019s game against Belgium in the round of 16. The player, Folarin Balogun, had been barred after getting a red card last week in a match against Bosnia and Herzegovina.<\/p>\n
Reaction to the reversal ran from incredulity to condemnation to a few Hallelujahs.<\/p>\n
Patrick McDonald, 48, who coaches high school soccer in Birmingham, Ala., said he agreed with the decision and pointed to his own league, where he says controversial calls have been reviewed and later reversed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know an injustice was corrected and it benefited my team and I\u2019m happy with it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Other American fans were excited to see Balogun play \u2014 he has scored three goals in this World Cup \u2014 but they had misgivings about Mr. Trump\u2019s influence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked,\u201d said Ethan Engelken, 23, from Milwaukee, as he was getting coffee at Pike Place Market in Seattle on Monday morning. \u201cExcited but shocked. And confused.\u201d<\/p>\n
He could see how a U.S. victory on Monday night might appear tainted now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d probably celebrate it like it never happened,\u201d Mr. Engelken said. \u201cBut I can see that argument.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Reed, 35, a youth pastor in an Atlanta suburb, said that since the United States is benefiting from that interference, \u201cI\u2019m not too upset by it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFIFA is so freaking corrupt anyway,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we shouldn\u2019t have politicians interfering.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Charnita West Jenkins, from Stonecrest, Ga., learned about the call, she looked at a replay of the foul.<\/p>\n
The red card was a bad call, she said. But she believed it should stand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is the president involved in a soccer match?\u201d said Ms. West Jenkins, who has been a soccer fan since spending the summer in England during the 2006 World Cup. \u201cOnce you change the rules you taint the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond the game, Ms. West Jenkins, 55, also objected to the politics around Mr. Trump\u2019s call. In her eyes, his intervention also highlighted what she described as his convenient stance on birthright citizenship. While the president has tried unsuccessfully to limit it<\/a>, he seems to have made an exception for Balogun, who was born in New York to Nigerian parents but raised in London.<\/p>\n \u201cThe president is talking out both sides of his mouth,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Others criticized FIFA.<\/p>\n Matt Gilley, a Maine lobsterman, said he disagreed with the organization\u2019s handling of the episode.<\/p>\n \u201cIt shows favoritism toward the U.S.A.,\u201d said Mr. Gilley, 41. If FIFA \u201cthought the call was wrong, they should have reversed the call, not kicked the can down the road a year.\u201d<\/p>\n Balogun was given a red card after coming down hard on a Bosnian player\u2019s ankle in a match last Wednesday. A red card had meant an automatic suspension for the next match.<\/p>\n But hours later, Mr. Trump called Gianni Infantino, FIFA\u2019s president, and on Sunday the organization reversed itself, saying that Mr. Balogun could play against Belgium.<\/p>\n Mr. Infantino has made extensive efforts to win Mr. Trump\u2019s favor<\/a>. Last year, he gave Mr. Trump a \u201cFIFA Peace Prize\u201d<\/a> after the president\u2019s unsuccessful campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize. FIFA had never awarded such a prize.<\/p>\n Stephanie Brock, 50, who runs a commercial interior design firm in Portland, Maine, said Mr. Trump\u2019s intervention and the resulting reversal was \u201ca bad look for the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe fix is more corrosive than the original questionable call,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Reporting was contributed by Tim Arango, Eduardo Medina, Audra D. S. Burch and Jenna Russell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The joyful, communal festival of World Cup soccer that had seemingly brought the United States together has now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[108304,110273,1452,110274,84801,75,84,83,9,24,63,1069,89465],"class_list":["post-288509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-athletics-and-sports","tag-balogun","tag-donald-j","tag-folarin","tag-international-federation-of-association-football-fifa","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-trump","tag-world-cup-2026-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}