FIFA’s failure: FIFA has behaved very badly throughout this World Cup, repeatedly kowtowing to White House bullying. It failed to remove Iranian-American fans who carried anti-regime signs when Iran played in Los Angeles, though its regulations ban political statements. It overturned a red card expulsion of a Team USA player at the behest of the American president, an act so unheard of that even some soccer pundits were at a loss for words. The referee assigned to the Argentina-Egypt match lost control of the field, letting Argentina score late and escape with a victory. Now, FIFA says it will sanction Argentina because its players hoisted a political banner handed to them by fans after the team defeated England in the semifinals. The banner asserted Argentine sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas, a bitter territorial dispute that provoked a brief but bloody 1982 war between the two countries. But if FIFA wishes to penalize Argentina, why did it not call for security officials to remove the Los Angeles banners? The answer is that FIFA was unable to assert sovereignty over its own competition and did what it was told by the most powerful of the three hosts. In a word, it has disgraced itself, and, worse still, doesn’t seem to know it.