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The United States Men’s National Team is coming off of a massive victory on Wednesday night over Bosnia and Herzegovina, but there is a big cloud hanging over them for the next match against Belgium.
That’s because the team will be without star striker Folarin Balogun after he was dealt a wildly controversial red card in the second half of the match.
That, of course, means a suspension is coming his way, but the U.S. got some good news on Friday when FIFA confirmed that the suspension would be for just one match.
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While it was always pretty unlikely that FIFA could add extra games to Balogun’s suspension, they’ve formally decided not to, and that’s the best possible outcome for the U.S. in this scenario.
There is no mechanism through which the U.S. could appeal this decision, so all it could do was hope the suspension would be limited to one match.
Balogun himself gave his first comments on the incident on Friday, shortly after FIFA’s decision to keep the suspension at one game was made public.
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“It’s important for me to say, first and foremost, it was totally unintentional,” he said Friday. “The choice of the referee was his choice. I don’t think it was the correct choice. I think a yellow card would’ve been fair, due to it not being intentional.”
“It’s something that happened; we have to move forward, and I have to accept it.”
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Balogun will certainly be missed for Monday’s match against Belgium in Seattle, seeing as he’s leading the team with three goals in this tournament.
But now, if the Americans are able to pull off a bit of an upset over the Belgians, they’ll be relieved to know that he’ll be back in action in the quarterfinals.
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