Presented as a still image by the video referee, the case for the prosecution is obvious.
The United States forward Folarin Balogun is stepping down, with force, seemingly over the ankle of Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemovic. The opponent’s foot is also in a contorted shape, sliding slightly to his right, providing a squeamish image where the first instinct of the viewer is to wince and turn away.
It does not take a wild, imaginative leap to hypothesize that the challenge could lead to serious injury, such is the defender’s landing and the point of contact. This perception is only enhanced by Muharemovic, clearly in initial pain, beating the floor.
In the second replay shown to the on-field referee, the video is slowed down as Balogun makes contact with the opponent. On a third replay, it is initially played at normal speed, but then frozen at the point of contact, and the challenge is played out in slow motion, presenting the incident in the least flattering light possible for Balogun.
Two further replays are shown from further away angles at normal speed, implying the incident to be more of a jostle and battle for a loose ball between a defender and a forward. Still, by then, Brazilian referee Raphael Claus had already appeared to have made up his mind.
On the basis of the images made available to the referee, the decision to send off the USMNT’s best striker is understandable. From the vantage point presented, via slow motion and still images, the threshold of serious foul play is met. This challenge did appear to endanger the safety of an opponent. Those ensconced in FIFA’s refereeing hub may see that as a conclusive and shut case. Yet to most observers and many of those who have played the game, at any level at all, this was a miscarriage of justice.
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This is because soccer is not a game played in slow-motion or as a freeze-frame. It is played at high-speed in full motion. Its largely subjective rulebook was designed to be implemented via the estimation of well-placed on-field officials, attuned to the pace of a match, rather than to be accounted for in a studio at the speed of a tortoise from an unlimited number of camera angles.
To show the challenge to the referee at a different speed to the incident he originally adjudicated upon is to warp and distort the judgment, removing context from the call. Slowed down, an accidental collision can resemble a premeditated challenge. A bad challenge can become a horror challenge.
It is tempting, too, to wonder whether the on-field referee is being sent to the monitor to review a decision for himself, or merely to sign off on a decision that has been all but made by the video officials.
That sense is only heightened when the first images, which surely shape decision-making most keenly, demonstrate the most incriminating freeze-frame. This can hardly be the most effective or fair way to ensure dispassionate analysis.
In the case of Balogun, the freeze-frame and slow-motion images eliminated the essential context. This was a simple ball played forward by Antonee Robinson, where two players jostled for position, and as the Bosnian defender got in front of Balogun, the forward, off balance, landed in an unfortunate — but clearly unintentional manner — on the ankle of his opponent.
The laws of the game do not make allowances for intent, and there is an argument, which FIFA’s referees will fall behind, to argue that, by the letter of the law, the call can be justified as serious foul play.
But to do so eliminates the intangibles of the sport, the feel for a game, the fact that on the field, it did not occur to anyone, including the on-field referee, that this could be an incident worthy not only of a red card in this game but also of missing a round of 16 match against Belgium. The punishment, quite clearly, does not fit the crime.
While a couple of Bosnian players expressed concern for their clearly hurt defender, there were no significant appeals for recriminations against Balogun, until the officials in a far-away studio intervened. This incident was, in many ways, the rough-and-tumble of soccer, a physical game where, sadly, players sometimes come to harm through nobody’s fault. In ordinary red-card incidents, we should be able to point to what a player could have done differently, or what the perpetrator did wrong. Yet in this case, it was barely a challenge at all. It could be justifiably argued as clumsy, at most worthy of a yellow card, more because of how it looked, rather than what it was.
There is also a valid question as to whether VAR applied the use of slow-motion replays in a manner according to the protocols set out by IFAB, the body that makes the laws of the game.
IFAB’s guidance says: “The VAR can ‘check’ the footage in normal speed and/or in slow motion but, in general, slow motion replays should only be used for facts, e.g. position of offense/player, point of contact for physical offenses and handball, ball out of play (including goal/no goal); normal speed should be used for the ‘intensity’ of an offense or to decide if it was a handball offense.”
In this instance, the term “in general” appears to be doing some exceedingly heavy lifting, while the referees could perhaps argue that slow motion was used to demonstrate the point of contact. But the repeated use of slow-motion, however, appears to go against the spirit of the VAR guidance and appears to have been used to exaggerate the intensity of the offense.
In soccer’s history, it has sometimes required major incidents at big international tournaments to accelerate change. The backpass rule was introduced in 1992, preventing goalkeepers picking up the ball when kicked to them by a teammate, due to the way it ate up time and limited goals at the World Cup in Italy in 1990. Goal-line technology came in 2012, triggered to a significant degree by England’s Frank Lampard being deprived of an equalizer in a World Cup last-16 game against Germany at the World Cup two years earlier.
Now FIFA must use Balogun’s injustice as a similar line in the sand, ending once and for all the unfair and disfiguring use of slow-motion and freeze-frames.