Team USA is hours away from its biggest home-soil match in a generation. ESPN has somehow decided it’s the villain.
Instead of building excitement for Monday night’s World Cup Round of 16 showdown against Belgium in Seattle, ESPN senior writer Mark Ogden spent the eve of the match explaining why Team USA shouldn’t feel too good about getting Folarin Balogun back.
His headline says it all: “Nobody benefits from FIFA letting Balogun off the hook — not even the USMNT.”
FIFA MAKES FINAL RULING ON US SOCCER STAR FOLARIN BALOGUN’S CONTROVERSIAL RED CARD SUSPENSION
Rather than seeing a controversial decision corrected, Ogden argues the reversal hurts the tournament, hurts FIFA and, somehow, even hurts Team USA.
A VAR review turned what many viewed as an accidental step on an opponent’s ankle into a straight red card for Balogun during Team USA’s 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The decision was immediately criticized as excessive, with Mauricio Pochettino among those arguing it never warranted a straight red.
FIFA’s disciplinary committee ultimately suspended the automatic one-match ban under Article 27, clearing Balogun to play Monday.
President Donald Trump spoke with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, arguing the punishment was unjust before FIFA reversed course, a source told Fox News.
Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik and White House task force leader Andrew Giuliani put together a team of lawyers outside the White House to challenge the use of slow-motion replay to give Balogun the red card, according to OutKick founder and Fox News contributor Clay Travis.
That should have settled the matter.
Instead, Ogden argued that correcting the decision is what hurts the integrity of the World Cup.
He writes:
“If the U.S. defeats Belgium on Monday, the global soccer community will not view it as a hard-fought, tactical triumph… Instead, it will forever carry an asterisk, tainted by the perception that the host nation used corrupt, backroom political maneuvers to alter the tournament’s rules.”
That’s quite the way to preview the biggest American soccer match in decades.
Rather than seeing an overly harsh punishment reversed, Ogden is warning fans that any victory should come with an apology attached.
He doubles down from there, arguing FIFA has “damaged the credibility of its own tournament,” warning the decision creates “a dangerous precedent,” and concluding that “nobody benefits” from Balogun being allowed to play, not Belgium, not FIFA and “not even the USMNT.”
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Rather than celebrating the overturning of a controversial suspension, Ogden is telling Team USA fans they should feel bad if their team wins.
The column also argueed FIFA would never have made the same decision for a smaller nation, treating American influence as a moral failing instead of acknowledging a reality that has existed for decades: host nations enjoy advantages. Home crowds matter. Host nations have advantages. That’s international sports.
If FIFA ultimately concluded an obviously controversial call deserved another look, that’s an indictment of the original officiating, not the United States.
So Monday night, Team USA will field its best eleven players, exactly as it should.
ESPN can keep clutching its pearls.
USA by a million.
Send us your thoughts: alejandro.avila@outkick.com / Follow along on X: @alejandroaveela
