Why FIFA is allowing U.S. men's soccer star to play after red card

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts. Boston. I understand sports really well. Really well. And that wasn't a foul.

0:30A World Cup red card meets the Trump card.

0:46It's Monday, July 6th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WVUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, Iranians packed the streets of Tehran today to mourn Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a U.S.-Israeli airstrike in February. Also, historian Heather Cox Richardson says American democracy has survived for 250 years, but the Trump administration is testing its limits. They're not simply breaking the law. They're acting as if the Constitution doesn't exist. Before we get to that story, though, Trump has not been shy in using his pardon powers to commute sentences he disagrees with.

1:30Now he's throwing his weight around with an organization where he has no official authority, his FIFA Peace Prize notwithstanding, and bragging about his role in reversing what he called a great injustice. How do you penalize him for a game that hasn't been played yet? It's very unfair. You can't do that. So, yes, I asked for a review by FIFA. Trump is talking about the decision by FIFA to reverse a one-game suspension for American soccer star Fulgeron Balogun, who got a red card during Team USA's match against Bosnia-Herzegovina last week. On Sunday, FIFA's disciplinary committee announced it would delay that one-game red card ban for a probationary period of one year, meaning Balogun can play in tonight's win-or-go-home match against Belgium.

2:19Belgium's head coach said FIFA's decision was an affront to the sport's, quote, integrity and ethics. European soccer's governing body called it incomprehensible. Reporter Steve Futterman told Indira Lakshmanan, American fans in Seattle for tonight's game were stunned to learn the penalty had been effectively overturned yesterday. Well, I think everyone was in a bit of shock. You know, when the red card was issued last week, there were lots of complaints. The consensus among not just the U.S. soccer fans and officials, but pretty much everyone, was that the red card was a huge overreaction. But FIFA immediately also made clear there was no appeals process, except we all know a lot about Article 27.

3:03That allows a disciplinary committee of FIFA to review pretty much anything it wants to. this was the committee that also delayed a two-game suspension for Portugal's Ronaldo for a year. This allowed him to play in all the matches here. But as for the American fans yesterday, all they seemed to care about was that Balogun is set to play. This is Brian Penn. He is here from Chicago. He did not deserve a red card, so it's fantastic. Changes the game. Belgians should be scared. This will make a difference, you feel? 100%, yeah. He's our goal scorer. Flo. And any questions about why FIFA did this?

3:40Don't know. Don't care. Just happy. I think that's pretty much sums it up. Most of the U.S. fans. Yeah. Just let him play. Well, OK, let's just summarize for people who made out, but I'm watching this very, very closely. Balogun initially did not get the red card. And after referees reviewed the video and looked at it frame by frame, they then gave him this red card. People said it was maybe too extreme because he wasn't intentionally trying to hurt the other player. They made contact while they were both going for the ball. But fans, you know, were not the only people who were mad about the red card last Wednesday.

4:16President Trump spoke about it this morning. Let's listen. I understand sports really well, really well. And that wasn't a foul. That wasn't even an infraction. That was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other. All right. So he's summing up what a lot of American fans thought. But Trump confirmed that he called the president of FIFA and asked him to review the red card and the one game suspension that was given to Balogun. You know, this is a big deal because under FIFA's rules, you can't actually appeal a red card. And yet this whole process happened. Is there precedent for this at previous World Cups?

4:56You mentioned Ronaldo, and that's important because he got to play in the first two games for Portugal, and he's a star for them. So is it just the same as that? It's very similar. It's not identical. A lot of people feel that FIFA doesn't like to have stars sent off. It doesn't like to have, in this case, again, the opinion of many, they don't want to have the U.S. possibly be without its top player in a match that's getting lots of eyeballs watching it. But we mentioned Ronaldo, but in 1962, a member of Brazil's team that featured Pele was also set to be suspended. This would have been for the final match.

5:34Brazil's government got involved. They appealed to FIFA, and lo and behold, he was allowed to play, and Brazil actually won the World Cup. I should point out, in 1962, they did not even have rich cards. That came later on, but this player was kicked off the pitch.

5:52Reporter Steve Futterman in Seattle. More on the World Cup at hereandnow.org. But coming up next, more than three decades of rule by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came to an end earlier this year when the U.S. and Israel assassinated the leader of Iran. Today, hundreds of thousands of Iranians marched in his funeral procession. With the American-Israeli war in Iran still grinding on, despite attempts at peace talks. Robin Young has more after the break.

6:39In Tehran today, a massive crowd of mourners thronged the funeral procession for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed by U.S. and Israeli strikes in February. His son and current Ayatollah of Iran, Mushtabah Kamehaini, did not attend the funeral and hasn't been seen in public since the war started. Full disclosure, host Robin Farzad has been watching all of this closely. He was born in Iran, joins us now for an Iranian-American perspective. Robin, welcome. Thank you. And Ali Kamehaini, Iran's second Ayatollah, supreme leader, ruled the country for nearly four decades. Weeks before he was killed, he oversaw a crackdown.

7:20You described it to us as a Tiananmen Square incident that left thousands dead. Just remind us, you know, how he was perceived, why we're seeing these crowds given that. Okay, for starters, that was a horrific crackdown. The final numbers aren't in yet. The internet was shut down. But talking about, you know, an iron fist, it was kill or be killed. The IRGC and the Confederates of the Ayatollah and the Islamic Republic realized that potentially they were going to get strung up if the street really, truly took over the levers of power in Tehran. But on the flip side of that is, yes, Iran is very big into martyrdom, and this is an important part of the mythology.

8:00But a lot of the patronage system under the Islamic Republic, the people that depend on it for subsidies, for preferential admissions, the bazaaris, the shopkeepers, they have no choice but to show up at this funeral. They're being bussed out. Businesses are getting the shakedown for rice and meat to feed peasants who are coming in from the countryside. So be careful of the numbers that you see from up above. It's not like you can exactly choose to stay at home. Even senior government officials have been leaking to the press that they've been ditching Tehran to go off to their chalets on the Caspian Sea.

8:31But you do seem to see a real passion on the part of people carrying placards about President Trump, weeping. Has part of this been the fact that Iran was attacked? There was a war. Is there maybe a patriotic surge as well? Yes, and that they're still standing. Who could have predicted when the Israelis and the United States, after what happened last summer with the bunker busters, and following up this year, like assassinating senior members, including the Ayatollah himself at will, that this would be the result come July 4th that Iran would feel very emboldened and it successfully held the Strait of Hormuz hostage.

9:13Oil prices shot up. You have the closest thing to the United States, you know, shouting uncle and saying that, we'll kind of give you what you want. Keep it open. Let's continue the talks. Let's continue the talks. So it's a moment of chest thumping, but also a tremendous skepticism that this isn't the last of the fighting that we've seen. Well, but what does it mean to people like you in the Iranian diaspora to see these huge crowds and this turn of events? I don't know what to make of it when you have Netanyahu and the president of the United States step forward and say, after this operation, it will be yours to take.

9:48That is a tremendous prestige and political capital and reputation to put on the line to then be able to slink away six months later and say, actually, you know what, let's bang out a deal and get you guys some oil and offer you this fat carrot. I remain skeptical. Maybe there's some four-dimensional chess at play, but I don't know that if the final victory sound has been blown yet. And there's tremendous skepticism, both in the diaspora community and in the Iranian street itself. Yeah. Ali Khamenei's son, Mushtaba, hasn't been seen in public, is not showing up at these huge funeral processions.

10:27What does that say to you? Is he still maimed? Is he potentially trying to avoid another decapitation attempt by the Israelis and others? Certainly no shortage of family losses. Can't even show up at the funeral of his own family members. And what that does is exacerbate this perceived split, this chasm. The IRGC, the strongmen, are in control right now. And if with this guy is behind the scenes and not showing up anywhere, they're happy just to have that figurehead behind the scenes because Khamenei and his predecessor Khomeini were really powerful in front and center. And everything was deferred up to them.

11:02So I would be watching that chasm and that split closely. How are you and your family feeling? Do you want to go back? Is that home? I would love to go back. You know, it's a problem. I'm a journalist. I'm Iranian born. I'm still of conscription age. And I come in peace. I've always joked with you guys that if they let me open up the first Chipotle in Tehran, I'd bring great civilizations together. And I'd become a billionaire. You know what? And I'd donate all that money. But you can't. It's not safe. It's now we're 47 years removed from the Islamic revolution. And the regime has shown that it's not relenting.

11:37There isn't a Gorbachev type figure. If anything, it's deadlier than ever to protest. So what started off as a year of promise for so many in the diaspora community, there's kind of like this disillusionment that's setting in. Robin Farzad, host of Full Disclosure, thank you My pleasure

12:04We have been marking 250 years of American history by looking back on other big anniversaries and by asking you what you feel about the flag If you missed that, check out Friday's episode, July 3rd, to hear how some people are grappling with what it means to be an American these days. But the fireworks are done, and July 4th is over. So we're also thinking about the future of American democracy. So is Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson, who spoke to Indira Lakshmanan. Practically every day of Donald Trump's presidency has brought startling new actions that are hailed by his allies, blasted by his critics.

12:49Pundits on both sides of the political spectrum throw around superlatives like unprecedented. A lot. And I wonder, in the case of Trump, is that adjective historically accurate? I think it is, yes. Now, he didn't come from absolutely nowhere, of course. He is the outcome of 40 years of Republican rhetoric that gave us a certain kind of lean toward the rise of authoritarianism and the dividing of the country. But what we're seeing in the United States now that is unprecedented is the dismantling of our democracy, not merely the dismantling of laws, for example, but the dismantling of our democracy with essentially a president and a number of appointees around him who are acting extra constitutionally.

13:34They're not simply breaking the law. They're acting as if the constitution doesn't exist. And they're doing so in part by taking on powers under emergency declarations, taking the powers of those emergencies to ignore the laws, for example, which is how we got the tariffs and how we got the war in Iran and so on. So we're seeing this attempt to dismantle our democracy on steroids, if you will. And at the same time, one of the things that is not unprecedented, that is quite precedented in the United States, is you're seeing the American people wake up and saying, listen, I may not agree with my neighbor on immigration policy or on the national debt, but I can agree that I want the right to be treated equally before the law, the right to have a say in my government, and the right to have equal access to resources, all of which were guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence.

14:28Well, the United States has been through the ringer before and has ultimately come out stronger for it. You've written about the Civil War, for example. So what lessons do you take from history about our country's ability to reinvent itself? We are constantly reinventing ourselves, which comes from the very beginning of European settlement in what became the 13 original colonies. constantly the idea that we are not good enough, that we have to do a better job, which enables us to do that better job, to re-examine where we are and to do better in the future. But what's interesting about the period since the signing of the Declaration and then the establishment of the Constitution is that we have had a recurring pattern.

15:11And that recurring pattern is that Americans commit to democracy and they try and put in place either constitutional amendments or laws that are going to enable more people to have access to the rights that are declared under the Declaration of Independence. And then invariably, people want power. And as they want power, they come up and try to divide America in two. They try to say, you people are the real Americans. And the reason you're not getting what you want is because of those people over there. The next stage inevitably is that power concentrates among a very small group of people until the point that even their voters look at them and say, hey, wait a minute, we've lost our democracy and you guys are getting everything.

15:53And then we have a dramatic rebirth of democracy in the United States. And we have done this. We did this in the 1850s. We did it in the 1890s. We did it again in the 1920s and the 1930s. And we are doing it again now. Now, in each of those times, though, it could always have gone the other way. Heather, you know, there's been a lot of concern about the upcoming midterm elections in November. Some people worry that there may be intimidation at the polls. The Supreme Court back in April hollowed out the Voting Rights Act. Mail-in voting is now safe. But how are you feeling about the November elections?

16:34Well, I would like to point out that we've already had voter intimidation, not least the raids of the voter registration organization in Ohio a couple of weeks ago. But I think that if you look at the behavior of this administration, people like Vice President J.D. Vance talking about how the crimes committed by Richard Nixon really weren't such a big deal, I think you can see the fact that a number of people in this administration do not want there to be hearings and certainly do not want to risk the impeachment of the president or risk the kinds of investigations that might lead to criminal charges.

17:10I think we have to expect that there is going to be an attempt to make sure that voters cannot choose who they want to have represent them in the 2026 elections, because there's so much evidence for it, not least in the fact that you are already hearing people like House Speaker Mike Johnson say he will protect the people in the room to whom he was speaking and make sure that the Republicans will win the midterms. Let's imagine America's 300th birthday on July 4th, 2076. What needs to happen between now and then for America to stay true to its founding values? The most important thing will be to get money out of politics, as I say, a very popular position.

17:53But there are a number of aspects of the machinery of our democracy that we have let atrophy, and they simply must be brought up to date. The extraordinary difference, for example, between representation in the Senate from a state like California and a state like Wyoming does not speak to the rights of people to be treated equally, their voices to be treated equally in our system. Similarly, the Electoral College, which by the way, was never intended to be winner take all, it was supposed to be representational, that changes in 1800 and then gets capped in 1929, when it becomes clear to the members of Congress that there'll be more people in urban areas and they're concerned about immigrants than there will be in rural areas.

18:33So they cap the number of people in the House of Representatives so that the Electoral College will not then begin to shift toward the cities. The Supreme Court, which at this point is dominated by a reactionary group of people that does not represent the majority of Americans and that has not been increased since 1869. We also have the issue in our democracy right now that thanks to the advances in health and in transportation, we have people in positions for much longer than probably is healthy for a democracy. So I would say that the first thing that we need to do is make the mechanics of our system match the American people and bring them into the 21st century.

19:12We're going to have to take those things on or watch democracy fall apart because people will say, I have nothing to do with this. It's not my government. I want one that actually represents me. Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College. She writes the daily letters from an American email on Substack. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. There is more to that conversation with Heather Cox Richardson at hereandnow.org, including what she says the media misconstrues by talking about Americans being divided or polarized. And if you're still in a reflective mood about America after the holiday weekend, make sure you check out our episodes from last week, July 3rd about the flag.

19:55And Thursday, July 2nd, we dipped into the archives of the Smithsonian to learn how a hat, a saxophone, and a candle stand help tell the story of America. You can find that by scrolling back in your podcast feed and by checking out hereandnow.org.

20:16But that's it for the show today. Here and Now Any Time comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Jenna Griffiths, James Mastromarino, and Wilder Fleming. Our editors were Todd Munt, Nicaela Rodriguez, and Kat Welch. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin, and here and now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. Hope you had a great July 4th weekend, and we'll be back with you tomorrow.

20:56Thank you.