Red-card stench: At the 1936 Munich Olympics, Adolf Hitler might well have thought it within his autocratic reach to demand that the International Olympic Committee strip Jesse Owens of his gold medals, his meticulous lieutenants perhaps finding a loophole in the IOC rulebook to suit their intentions. Hitler’s loathing of non-Aryans was notorious, and Owens’ swagger annoyed him all the more. But Hitler stood pat. Violating national sovereignty was one thing, meddling in sports quite another.
Cometh a childish 21st-century American autocrat, who, breaking rules both written and implicit, has successfully bullied FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, into overturning a red card handed out to a star American player, an infraction that, the world over, would be cause for an immediate one-game suspension.
UEFA, the European Federation, has protested this reversal as “unprecedented, incomprehensible, and unjustifiable,” rebukes that mean nothing to a convicted felon who knows nothing of the game of soccer. And yet, this decision, because it meddles with the details of how a game is played and officiated, has loosed a stench over the competition.
For Americans who don’t follow soccer, it would be as if basketball-loving President Obama had overturned the result of an NCAA Final Four game because he believed, despite officiating at the time, that a technical foul should’ve been called on a player who scored a game-winning shot, an act domestic fans would find unthinkable and very possibly revolt against. What the next teams to face the U.S. should, but will not, do is to remain stationary, arms folded, for a full 30 seconds following the playing of national anthems to visibly protest a decision that will forever assign an asterisk to the history of both FIFA and, sadly, the U.S. Men’s National Team.