No Asterisk Will be Needed
By Bob Gaydos
The red card call.
So we lost. Of course. Trump was involved.
The United States Men’s Soccer Team lost to Belgium, 4-1, Monday in a World Cup knockout match. That’s the equivalent of losing by 20 runs in a baseball game.
By all accounts, Belgium was good, but not that much better than a refreshingly talented USA team whose top scorer had just the day before been ruled eligible to play even though he had received a red card, one-game suspension in the previous game.
To the world, the cards seemed to be stacked in the U.S.’s favor.
Not really. Not when Trump is involved. Just as happened with the New York Knicks, a team playing very well and seemingly immune to pressure in highly competitive competition, the men’s soccer team seemed to be off its game Monday. A bit disorganized. Not loose. Possibly feeling pressure to somehow win a game without the rest of the world thinking it was fixed in your favor?
The loss solved that problem. The loss and Belgium playing well. No asterisk, real or imagined, will be needed next to a U.S. win. Somehow, that doesn’t feel comforting.
To review, Trump, who knows little about soccer and cares less, had intervened in that red card suspension of U.S. star Folarin Balogun by calling FIFA President Gianni Infantino and asking the organization to review the penalty. Infantino is a friend of Trump’s. He also apparently has no shame. The call was reversed, Balogun got to play, Belgium got to show what it had and the U.S. team had to deal with worldwide criticism of favoritism with the president of the host country personally getting its team’s star player reinstated in an elimination game.
Which is how all the world except Trump saw it. He saw it as he always does — a way to make a deal, regardless of how smarmy it looks, if he can get a win. He doesn’t care about the pettiness. Maybe he doesn’t even understand or care why people might be upset. So he made a call and the guy got to play, so what?
So the rest of the team was put in a high pressure situation of having to somehow win without worrying about the political fallout. Just like the seemingly unflappable Knicks, on an 11-game winning streak in NBA championship play, having to win at home in a Madison Square Garden filled with tension and animosity because Trump decided to attend and was roundly booed by the crowd. That could upset the temperament of even talented young athletes.
The Knicks had to go back to San Antonio to win their championship for the city. They did. New York celebrated. The U.S. men’s soccer team, on the other hand, got to go home, wondering forever how well they might have done without their star player against Belgium if Trump had just minded his own business and let sports be sports, rather than just another way to try to steal something.
He’s a national embarrassment. No asterisk needed.
Tags: Balogun, Belgium, FIFA, Infantino, Knicks, Red card, soccer, trump, USMT, World Cup
