I need to say this plainly: last night, watching USA vs. Belgium, I wanted Belgium to win. Not a little. The whole match. Jinguk did too. And based on how the reactions looked afterward, we were far from alone — inside the US and out.
That's not a normal thing to admit about your own country's team in a World Cup knockout game. So let me explain how we got here.
The setup
On July 1st, USMNT forward Folarin Balogun picked up a straight red card in the win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. Under FIFA's rules, that's an automatic one-match ban, no appeal. Normal. It happens every tournament.
Except this time, President Trump reportedly called FIFA president Gianni Infantino directly and asked him to review it. The U.S. government reportedly submitted "additional evidence." And on Sunday — one day before the Belgium match — FIFA suspended Balogun's ban, citing a one-year "probationary period." First time anything like this has happened in more than 60 years of World Cup history.
Trump posted afterward: "Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!"
I don't think it was reversing an injustice. I think it was the injustice.
Here's the word for what happened: overturned
Overturned — when a ruling or decision that's already been made gets reversed. That's what happened to Balogun's suspension, one phone call and one day before kickoff.
If I were the U.S. coach, I would have left him out. Not necessarily because the red card itself was fair — plenty of people think it was harsh — but because once FIFA changes the rules for exactly one country, exactly one player, exactly one day before a knockout match, playing him anyway stops being about football. It becomes about whether you think the rules apply to you.
And then the game happened anyway
Belgium won 4-1. Charles De Ketelaere scored twice, Hans Vanaken and Romelu Lukaku added one each. Malik Tillman got the USA's only goal, a free kick in the 31st minute. Belgium advances to face Spain in the quarterfinal. The USMNT's tournament is over.
Here's the word for that: rout. Not a loss — a rout, the kind of scoreline that isn't close at any point.
Even with the rules bent in his favor, Balogun's team lost. Badly.
What the rest of the world said
I went looking for reactions after the final whistle, because I was genuinely curious whether the rest of the world saw this the way I did. It did, overwhelmingly.
UEFA said FIFA "crossed a red line" and called the decision "unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable." Wayne Rooney called it "an absolute disgrace" and said Infantino "should be ashamed" because "the sportsmanship of the game is in question." Norway's national team coach, Ståle Solbakken, said it plainly: "It's a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad decision that will hurt the World Cup." Belgium's Socialist Party put out a statement: "Shame on you! When money calls the shots, the World Cup loses all credibility."
Even inside the U.S., people were split. Some felt a win would have been permanently stained by how it was earned. Others, including Senator Tom Cotton, defended Trump's call.
This wasn't the first time I'd felt this, this month
South Korea went through something painfully similar at this same World Cup. The team was eliminated in the group stage, which stung on its own, but what came out afterward stung more. It turned out the Korea Football Association reportedly appointed head coach Hong Myung-bo without a proper interview or board approval — police opened an investigation into it. In the decisive match against South Africa, Hong benched captain Son Heung-min for reasons that still haven't been properly explained, and the team went out. Hong resigned less than a day after the elimination was confirmed.
President Lee Jae-myung said it plainly: if a coach is chosen through connections instead of ability, "a crushing defeat is inevitable."
What stays with me is who actually paid for it. Not the federation. Not the person who made the call. Son Heung-min did — benched in the biggest game of his international career, over a decision he had no say in. The players are always the ones who carry it: their form, their reputations, sometimes their whole careers, over choices made above their heads.
So when I watched this play out in the U.S. — a phone call bending a rule the players themselves never asked to be bent — it didn't feel unfamiliar. It felt like watching the same story again, in a different language. I grew up in Korea. I chose to build my life here, in the United States, as my second home. And now I'm watching both places show me the same thing: when someone with power picks up a phone, it's never the powerful who absorb the damage. It's the players. It's the ones with the least ability to say no.
That's the part that actually makes me anxious. Not the loss. The pattern.
Why I couldn't cheer
I've lived in this country for years now. I write about it, I love a lot about it, and most nights I'm rooting for it without thinking twice. Last night I couldn't. Not because I don't want the U.S. to succeed at soccer — I really do, especially with this tournament being partly on home soil. But because the moment a phone call can rewrite a red card, winning stops meaning anything.
The game isn't just about who scores more. It's about getting there the same way everyone else has to. Last night, for ninety minutes, the U.S. team represented a country that didn't think that rule applied to it. And the score reflected the world's answer to that: Belgium 4, USA 1.
Subscribe if you want more of this, and I'd genuinely like to hear where you landed on this one in the comments.
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