** World Cup 2026 - USA, Canada, Mexico Thread **

Belligoal on 4 this WC

Never ever doubt him the guys a beast

It's hard to fathom that you actually believe even half of what you wrote. This situation is not the same as anything you mention, and nobody in their right mind is even defending those cases.

Historically most big cups have a key player absent from opening games or even finals and semis. Now, I kinda think that's part of the game; if you misbehave or need a yellow or red to advance, you deserve to be disadvantaged against teams who don't. But I can accept that they perpetually fine tune the rules to minimize absent players for all teams involved, you could argue for it on sporting merit even if the determing considerations are probably commercial in nature.

Obviously a big line is crossed when teams are treated differently from each other. Delaying Cristiano Ronaldo's suspension, possibly until his retirement, was already a farce. That other teams subsequently received the same treatment doesn't diminish that, but only changes how it looks to the gullible. Furthermore, I believe they have yet to codify it in any predictable capacity.

Randomly rescinding suspensions mid tournament, without even overturning the red card decision itself, because it wasn't even (clearly) wrong, is obviously even more bizarre and farcical. No due process was followed, because there isn't one in place, probably by design. The behaviour of Trump and Infantino doesn't help.

Even if the red card was the biggest refereeing mistake of the tournament, which it wasn't, none of this would have been warranted. The red card was fine. Messi should probably have had one too in the first game, but wcyd.

Now the only part of this post that could be slightly controversial: if I were the USA's manager, I would not even play him. Any victory over Belgium would be forever tainted. Thankfully the US team doesn't play any meaningful role, nor Belgium, and we can enjoy the other good games properly.

just watching the highlights, this looks like one of the maddest matches ever. what the hell was going on between 30 mins and half time

Yeah, I didn't manage to dodge the outcome (literally "breaking news: england beat mexico" in the bottom of the bbc1 screen during whatever program), but I am watching the full thing now because it should be mental

The KO games being so late is so WOAT OAT I cant even....

President Trump overturning Balogun's red card with a phone call really puts my bitching about Russia and Qatar to shame. I apologize to both of those World Cup hosts, they did not try to influence the decisions so openly and blatantly.

They had the courtesy to it behind the scenes and dope their players between four walls.

The difference is that they wanted to sportswash their regimes into normalcy, Trump doesn't care about anything

Back in the day I said something along the lines of "Should have given it to the US"... Like milk left on the sun

Found it absolutely hilarious that Blatter called out Johnny

Say what you want about Blatter but at least he was pocketing money without influencing the on-field decisions

Bolded is way overblown in my opinion. The real issue is whether one of the best U.S. players should be allowed to play after receiving a red card. That's at least 10x more consequential than any disruption of Belgium's training. Imagine Balogun hadn't received a red card. The way a lot of people are talking, Poch should have announced at the last second that he was sitting Balogun anyway because of how difficult it would be for Belgium to adjust to the last second change in lineup, which of course is ridiculous.

I don't think literally anyone is saying that if there was no red card issued Poch should elect to bench Balogun.

I'm sure you can dig some folks up on Twitter?

I don't agree that it's overblown, the drop off from Balogun to Pepi (or I guess Wright) is real and they have very different games that you need to prepare against.

If Balogun didn't receive a red card yeah people would dispute the decision itself, that is just sport, but comparing it to this is miles off base.

Excited for Starmer to call Infantino so that Quansah can play vs Norway etc etc etc

Maybe Carney can call Infantino and we can get Canada back in the world cup? Why stop at suspending suspensions. Lets see how far Infantino is willing to go.

All of this.

I'm saying that whether he is on the pitch is way, way, way more impactful than Belgium knowing during training whether he would be on the pitch, especially when you consider that the U.S. also trained as if Balogun would not be available. Put another way, if the FIFA decision had come down 2 hours after the U.S. match, would Belgium feel a lot less screwed? Doubtful.

I'm not defending the FIFA decision and certainly am not defending the process by which the decision got made.

The bottom line is that this reads like host country favoritism. It's hard to believe Balogun would be playing if this World Cup were being played in Europe.

Should Poch bench Balogun for the game anyway? Even UEFA are calling this clown show out.

He's such a Hansi Flick player. Technically he's not exactly what you would expect at Barca but neither are Raphinha and Fermin Lopez and they are doing great. The hierarchy is also very clear. Lamine Yamal gets away with not working so hard but everyone else has to run until they collapse

The gangster move would be to bench Balogun and win anyway.

If you thought last night was intense, tonight it's US vs Belgium.

Going to be lolz when Balogun gets a straight red tonight inside 20m anyway

At the request of President Trump, Vince McMahon has been placed in charge of this match and has now appointed the Referee and the VAR team. Timing of the final whistle will be delivered directly from him operating as the fourth official.

My hangover was pretty fcuking bad this afternoon, respect if you did that last night and went to work in the morning.

Although it's hard to see last night being topped this is a great line up I've been looking forward to. I'd definitely rather see USA go through in their match, Belgium have pissed me off this World Cup and been a bit ass tbh. I'm not too fussed either way for the Portugal/Spain game. It would be funny to see the Ronaldo haters in shambles again but Portugal have been unconvincing so far and Spain are the ones who should (probably) go through on merit.

Portugal 1 - 1 Spain, Spain go on to qualify
USA 2 - 1 Belgium. VAR awarding a USA pen at some point.

we're more or less a belgium win away from this being the euros + messi. even morocco are only really african on paper

Balogun gets an innocuous red at some point, and his punishment is put on hold again. This is the way.