FIFA has a rule — Article 9.6 of the 2026 World Cup regulations — which states that “no protests may be made about the referee’s decisions regarding facts connected with play.” The U.S. Soccer Federation, asked this week whether it could appeal Folarin Balogun’s red card, offered a translation: “there is no mechanism for appeal.” This is not an oversight. This is the product.
Balogun scored the opening goal in the USMNT’s 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina on July 1, in the 64th minute of a round-of-32 match that was never really close. Ninety seconds later, referee Raphael Claus waved play on when Balogun’s foot landed on Tarik Muharemovic’s ankle in a 50-50 challenge. VAR official Juan Soto disagreed; he sent Claus to the monitor. Claus came back and produced a red card for serious foul play. Balogun walked. He will now miss the Round of 16 against Belgium on July 6 in Seattle — potentially the most consequential American soccer match in decades.
ESPN referee analyst Andy Davies, a former Premier League and VAR official, assessed the review itself as procedurally broken: “VAR made their recommendation based on slow-motion and still replays, which is not aligned with VAR protocols, as these should be used for only point-of-contact purposes.” The contact, he added, “was purely accidental.”
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Mauricio Pochettino, whose roster is now short its leading scorer, was direct: “For me, never is it a red card. It was a normal action in football that happened by accident.” Weston McKennie called the no-appeal situation “a bit bogus.” Alexi Lalas, on broadcast, called it “an absolute joke of a refereeing night.” None of it matters. FIFA has already said so.
The federation’s defense, when pressed, is that the VAR review is the appeal. The officials looked at the footage; the official reached a conclusion; the system worked exactly as intended. Which is technically true, and also the problem. When the review and the original decision are housed in the same unaccountable structure, calling one the appeal of the other is circular logic wearing a referee’s jersey. You can’t appeal to a body that reports only to itself.
This arrangement exists in virtually no other major soccer competition. The English Premier League, the Champions League — both maintain mechanisms to contest red cards after the fact. FIFA is on track to collect nearly $9 billion from this tournament on U.S. soil; it did not allocate any of that effort toward a process for admitting error. Balogun, who scored two goals against Paraguay to become the first American to do that in a World Cup since 1930, will watch the Belgium match from somewhere that isn’t the pitch.
An appeals process implies accountability. No organization that refuses to build one does so by accident. That is a preference, stated plainly in Article 9.6, enforced completely, and insulated from any evidence that it produced the wrong result. FIFA doesn’t need an appeal process; it already decided.
