wrote <\/a>that the decision was made independently and autonomously, Trump\u00a0praised the overturning as a \u201creally brilliant decision.” But Spanish and Portuguese fans weren\u2019t so sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not fair that the competition does not have the same rules for everyone,\u201d said Danny Mena, a fan visiting Dallas from Spain. \u201cIt’s not against the USA, but it wasn\u2019t necessary to do this at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mena, who has\u00a0attended five other World Cup tournaments, said he was not surprised that the host team was awarded with an advantage.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m always scared of the host teams, they always receive some kind of help,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Samuel Pinto, a Portuguese fan who travelled to Dallas from Canada, also believed the overturning gives the U.S. an unfair advantage. Despite his indignation over the change, Pinto believed last Wednesday\u2019s red card was the wrong call.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t have been a red, but now you\u2019re crossing a line,\u201d he said. \u201cAre we going to start looking at every single game to see what card was wrong? It happened, the ref messed up, and like every other time, we leave it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Winslow Horne, a U.S. fan from Houston, said overturning the red card was the right call, pointing to a similar situation with Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo. The forward received a red card during Portugal\u2019s World Cup qualifier, and the FIFA Disciplinary Committee suspended his suspension so Ronaldo could play during the tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen this precedent a couple times,\u201d Horne said. \u201cThey had a third party do the whole investigation, and I think we\u2019re very fortunate it happened to us \u2014 he\u2019s our best player\u201d<\/p>\n
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Austin Lopez, a Ronaldo fan, added that he and Horne felt \u201cfortunate as U.S.A. fans\u201d that the suspension was lifted. But he worries that Team\u00a0U.S.A. will be dogged by cheating allegations if they continue to advance in the tournament.\u00a0
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\u201cIf we do win, I don\u2019t want anyone to doubt the legitimacy of that,\u201d Lopez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some fans are worried about more than just the stain on the U.S. record. Juan Carlos, who flew to Dallas from Spain to cheer on his team, said FIFA\u2019s decision to lift the red card suspension mars the reputation of the entire tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUp there, between Trump and Infantino, we don\u2019t know what happened,\u201d Carlos said. \u201cIf they did do it, then that\u2019s very bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, Mena said, the decision affects more than just the U.S. or Belgian teams. He believes it affects the integrity of the World Cup itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cCompetition should be fair for everyone,\u201d Mena said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain forward Lamine Yamal (19) fires a shot as he gets ahead of Portugal defender Nuno Mendes (25)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,88032,104167,87906],"class_list":["post-363524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-dallas-fortworth","tag-tp-fifa-world-cup","tag-tp-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}