THE LAST POINT: FIFA & Trump cut the legs out from referees
THE LAST POINT
Who’d be a referee? That is a question I’ve posed on this page in the last few years but now that the world’s most powerful man has demonstrated that the referee’s decision is not final, you wonder why anybody would bother to take up a whistle and subject themselves to unwarranted and frankly troubling outside interference.
Donald Trump’s intervention in the suspension of a red card for the USA’s Folarin Balogun ahead of their last 16 clash with Belgium in the early hours of Monday night, Tuesday morning have been described as “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable” – not quite Charlie Haughey’s famous ‘grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented’ but you get the gist, UEFA are spot on about a decision that beggars belief and casts a huge shadow over FIFA, their sycophantic president Gianni Infantino and the integrity of the game.
If that seems overly hyperbolic, the fact that it has been confirmed that the US President and Infantino spoke about Balogun’s suspension and hey presto, a key player for the hosts is suddenly available and Belgium’s chances were hugely diminished - politics invades every sport, and UEFA and FIFA are in the middle of their own battle for control of the beautiful game, but Trump’s intervention set a troubling new precedent that ought to worry anyone who prizes sporting integrity and fairness.
It doesn’t matter that most pundits opined that the red card was unduly harsh - although I’m not sure that the defence that the US forward catching his Bosnia Herzegovina opponent well above the ankle with his studs carries much water, if that is the case, could I kick a lad in the face and get away with because it was an ‘accident’ but I digress – but Balogun was sent off after a VAR consultation and we’re told that the referee’s decision is final and cannot be appealed. Unless you are, in the case of FIFA, cravenly bowing down to the US President.
You wonder if I am making a mountain out of a molehill but consider what happens if the FAI decides not to field against Israel in the Nations League later this year? What happens if Mr Trump, given the US’s close relationship with Israel, decides that the Boys in Green should be banned from all competition as punishment if they take what they believe is a moral stance to not play the game? Given the embarrassing obsequiousness Infantino and FIFA have displayed so far, who’s to say that Ireland wouldn’t be dumped out of all FIFA competition?
That is not a reason not to do the right thing but the fact that we can all envisage that scenario coming to pass gives some notion of the pickle the World Cup has gotten itself into? What if the US lose a game to a late penalty and Trump demands the game be replayed? Or if France and Spain, two vocal opponents of US Foreign policy, look as if they might get to the final? Will referees be instructed to give every possible leeway to their opponents to ensure that doesn’t comes to pass?
Conspiracy theorists would suggest that might explain the officiating in France’s 1-0 win over Paraguary. The South Americans were everyone’s darling when they knocked out the Germans in a game where they benefitted from a frankly absurd VAR intervention but that was surpassed against Kylian Mbappé & Co as Paraguary, to use a hurling idiom, lowered the blade and almost hacked their way into the next round. The fact that the French ended up with three yellow cards to none for the South Americans beggared belief as players seemed in genuine danger of serious injury.
Maybe that’s why I’m a little more tolerant of some of the refereeing controversies engulfing gaelic games over the past two weekends – last weekend’s Hurling Semi-Finals saw two big sending off decisions and although both were correct according to the letter of the law, it hasn’t negated a torrent of criticism from pouring down on the two officials. Hurling lives in a sort of twilight world when it comes to officiating – letting the game flow is paramount but when rules are applied, all hell breaks loose! The fact that referees Johnny Murphy and Thomas Walsh were right in their decisions, according to the rulebook that most of us haven’t fully read, to dismiss Cork’s Darragh Fitzgibbon and not send off Limerick’s Nicky Quaid doesn’t seem to come into it as the outrage machine hits full speed.
The Football refs got it the neck too after the quarter finals – Pat Spillane went after David Gough in his Sunday World column last Sunday for his decisions in the Dublin Galway game but never mentioned a word about the plain wrong decisions that benefitted Kerry against Tyrone. I get we all wear our heart on our sleeves when it comes to our teams, I’m certainly guilty of that, but there is a difference between plainly wrong decisions, however inadvertently made, and judgement calls on when an advantage ends or implementing a rule that is in the rule book but so rarely implemented – Kerry might have had a spot-kick had Paddy Neilan seen Conn Kilpatrick’s challenge on Gavin White in that light.
Standing on the sideline watching League games last weekend, what struck me most was the intense pressure referees are subjected to – cries of ‘steps, breach, foul’ coming from all sides and, in matches without neutral linesmen or umpires, the man in the middle really is stuck in the middle of a maelstrom of pressure, the only man on the field judged accountable for his mistakes while a keeper who drops the ball into the net or a forward who blasts a shot at an open goal wide are greeted with understanding and shouts of ‘next one’ and ‘head-up’.
Referees have it tough but I wonder if it has got much tougher since FIFA’s decision to suspend Folarin Balogun's automatic ban. If it can happen at the most widely televised sporting event in the world, what chance does a referee in Leitrim in a Junior B game have? And where does it end? Los Angeles is due to host the 2028 Olympics – what happens if a great American hope in the pool or on the track is beaten or, God forbid, the Dream Team gets beat on the basketball court? Does Trump step in to get those results overturned as FIFA have now given the green light to challenge the decisions of officials, leaving you wondering where it might all end!