Olle joins us again for his own unique look at the World Cup as it stands this morning. There’s been plenty to chat about too.

The Swansea players’ dreams come to an end as FIFA’s scandals continue. The Round of 32 has passed and the Round of 16 has arrived, proving bloody for our Swansea-affiliated players. Eom’s South Korea were in a very good position heading into the final group game against South Africa — a draw would have guaranteed them 2nd place. South Africa hadn’t looked good, whereas the Koreans had arguably just outplayed group winners Mexico.

Despite this, it all came crashing down for the Koreans. Eom saw no minutes as a goal from Thapelo Maseko handed Bafana Bafana the win and subsequently ended South Korea’s World Cup campaign.
8 out of 12 third-placed teams qualified for the Round of 32, but with 3 points and a -1 goal difference, South Korea were the 10th-best third-placed team. In total, Eom Ji-Sung played 51 minutes in his first World Cup, and overall I thought he looked decent, though it was a bit disappointing that he didn’t get any minutes in the decisive game. Hopefully the experience itself was valuable to him and, in turn, valuable for Swansea City.

Marko Stamenic didn’t have any better luck. New Zealand needed to beat a stumbling Belgium to qualify for the next round, but the Belgians found their footing and decimated the All Whites. 5-1 was the final score and Stamenić unfortunately didn’t impress. It was a tough game, however, and I still think Marko put in two decent performances against Iran and Egypt.

Cameron Burgess’ Australia at least made it to the Round of 32, but without the Swansea man featuring. After his own goal and lacklustre performance against the USA, Burgess was dropped in favour of youngster centre-back Herrington. Cameron didn’t see a single minute of play as Australia progressed on penalties against Egypt. The Socceroos brought on goalkeeper Matthew Ryan solely for his penalty-saving expertise, but he failed to save a single one after the Egyptians quickly unearthed YouTube footage of Mbappé scoring a penalty against him in La Liga. Herrington was one of two Aussies to miss a penalty — perhaps it should have been Burgess instead; who knows?

Paraguay have made waves at this World Cup. After a miraculous victory over Germany on penalties, which resulted in Julian Nagelsmann’s resignation, the Paraguayans played one of the dirtiest World Cup games in recent memory against France. The referee produced one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen, with Galarza going unpunished for hitting both Mbappé and Koundé off the ball being the most egregious example.

There could have been an even bigger upset had Cape Verde beaten reigning world champions Argentina. Messi scored to extend his record to 20 World Cup goals, but it was the Cape Verdeans who stole the show. The scores were 1-1 after 90 minutes before they managed to equalise again after Argentina took the lead. That Cabral screamer will forever live in my memory — probably the game of the tournament so far. Messi and Argentina survived the scare, and I think it may make them even stronger going forward.

Portugal vs Croatia — that second half had everything, but it was referee Espen Eskas who stole the show. First he awarded a questionable penalty to Portugal, but then, in the last minute, when Croatia scored their equaliser, VAR found a potential offside. In the lead-up to the goal, Ivan Matanonić touched the ball ever so slightly with his head, something that didn’t affect the ball’s trajectory. But the sensor inside the ball detected the touch, which made Mario Pašalić offside in the build-up. I disagree with the decision, as I think it directly contradicts FIFA’s rules regarding changing the trajectory of the ball in offside situations, but I will cover this in more detail in a blog post.

There is really too much to cover in this report, but elsewhere, Brazil’s exit at the hands of the Norwegian Vikings, led by Erling Haaland, has caused a stir. The goal machine has now scored 7 goals in his first ever World Cup — generational. Brazil’s exit means the exit of Paul Clement who serves as assistant head coach to Carlo Ancelotti. This means the only Swansea affiliated player or manager left at the World Cup was Portugal head coach Roberto Martinez. Unfortunately Roberto and his sidekick the marmite Ronaldo left the tournament defeated 1-0 by a last gasp Spanish goal.

Two hosts have now been eliminated: Canada went down 3-0 to Morocco and Mexico were narrowly defeated in the Battle of the Azteca. Despite going down to 10 men, Tuchel’s side managed to fight to the end and England will now face Norway in the quarter-finals. It’s the third host, however, who has dominated the headlines. Nothing has stolen the headlines quite as much as FIFA’s decision to revoke Folarin Balogun’s red card ahead of the USMNT’s (USA) game against Belgium. Balogun received a red card after a VAR review for stepping on the ankle of Bosnia’s Tarik Muharemović in their Round of 32 tie. Under normal circumstances, this would mean a suspension of at least one game, but FIFA thought otherwise after some pressure from President Donald Trump.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s ties to the US president are hardly a secret, with the “FIFA Peace Prize” being the most obvious, and laughable, proof of their connection. In response to FIFA announcing their decision to revoke the suspension, Donald Trump took to his social media, writing: “Thank you FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” The Associated Press also revealed that direct calls had been made from the White House to FIFA regarding Balogun’s suspension.

I don’t think we have previously witnessed such blatant corruption directly affecting the game itself. There have been referee scandals in the past, but this kind of post-game corruption is, honestly, historic. There are precedents of red cards being revoked before, but never to this degree.

Let me explain:

The IFAB laws of the game contain a rule stating that FIFA has the ability to revoke a suspension after a red card, but this is incredibly rare and was probably only intended as a safety net for cases where a red card decision was a complete and utter mistake — which should be impossible with VAR. Usually, what FIFA can retrospectively change post-game is how long the ban lasts after the automatic one-game suspension; so FIFA can decide if the suspension should last one or two games, and so on. But never since red cards automatically resulted in at least a one-game ban has one been completely revoked. Garrincha received a red card in the semi-final of the 1962 World Cup but played in the final anyway, but this was before red cards automatically resulted in a one-game ban.

In this World Cup, FIFA has specifically made it so that no red cards are disputable. Therefore, a red card cannot be removed after the fact. There are no modern cases of red cards being revoked like this — because in actuality it is not revoked, only postponed. This is FIFA’s way of circumventing their own rules. They did the same when Cristiano Ronaldo was shown a red card after elbowing Ireland’s Dara O’Shea in the head last November. That red card should have resulted in a three-game ban, but FIFA postponed the ban by a year so the superstar wouldn’t miss the World Cup opening. Of course, we should not forget that Ronaldo himself is close friends with Infantino, having made a joint visit to the White House, for example.

They have done the same here with Balogun. He will serve his ban, but not now. This means FIFA considered his offence to be red card-worthy, so why have they postponed it? Everyone knows the answer already. Gianni Infantino is a stain on the sport. The degree of corruption we are currently witnessing saddens me and is disgusting. The sooner he is removed, the better. The US plays Belgium tonight at 1 AM — an interesting game, to say the least.

Artwork by Xolin