UEFA slams FIFA's 'unprecedented, unjustifiable' Balogun decision

So you mean to tell me that they are in it for the money and not the love of the game?

At the risk of explaining the joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxnpY0owPkA

no worries, then they'll just ship those products through one the other members of the EU

>The European Union allows goods to move freely between the 27 countries in the economic bloc, which would complicate any bid to impose trade restrictions on a single member state. Src: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8r1mzd8vygo

From the article you linked :

>There have been 37 deaths among workers directly linked to construction of World Cup stadiums, of which 34 are classified as “non-work related” by the event’s organising committee.

And regarding the 6500 figure (for the 10 year period 2010-2020) :

>While death records are not categorised by occupation or place of work, it is likely many workers who have died were employed on these World Cup infrastructure projects,

The recent heatwave hitting Europe is said to have cause 1000 excess deaths in a week in France alone (again numbers are projections).

> Between bribing WC officials to sway votes on World Cup locations and awarding the tournament to a country that saw 6,500 deaths of workers building the stadiums

Qatar is a terrible place when it comes to treatment of workers, but that number of deaths is actually unusually low.

The 6500 figure was the deaths for all foreign workers in Qatar over a 10 year period, a country which uses foreign workers for almost all of its labor force (about 95% is foreign). They have around 2 million foreign workers. Compare to the number of citizens of Qatar which is around 400k.

6500 deaths among those foreign workers over that time period works out to a death rate of around 33 per 100k per year.

Compare that to the death rates for males aged 25-34 in the US, which is somewhere in the 160-250 range. I'm comparing to males in that age range because around 80% of the foreign workers in Qatar are male and they are predominantly 25-39.

Qatar's 5-8x lower death rate than the US still could be an indication that they have a serious problem with worker deaths, but to determine that someone would have to dive much deeper into details.

For example a significant component of the US deaths is poisoning (drug overdoses are counted as poisoning). Qatar has a very strong anti-drug policy with little tolerance and harsh penalties, so I'd expect that they don't have many drug deaths.

Same for drunk driving. They also are very intolerant of drunk driving, and consider a driver to be drunk if there is any detectable alcohol in their bloodstream after an accident. (Also, I'd expect most migrant workers don't drive).

The Guardian really should have noticed this and investigated. They really dropped the ball here.

Best result for the game, couldn't ask for better.

The US clearly "cheats" via political pressure on field decisions and Belgium kicked their sorry arses regardless.

Ronaldo was at least banned for the next game before the rest was suspended

There is a rule to reverse the call on the books. Article 27 allows FIFA to replace the suspension for a probationary period. Of course the online mob didn't bother checking that.

There's always going to be a gray area when it comes to contact like Balogun's against Bosnia. Refereeing from one tournament to another isn't the same, the World Cup especially has this issue because the refs all come from different leagues around the world, each with their own skill levels and play styles. The technology helps to a degree, especially around more concrete rules like offside, but this will never fully go away, no matter how much process, people or technology is applied.

Maybe so, but if so then it should be integral that such decision needs to be taken by an independent panel, and not a single powerful individual of the organization, and that heads of state should not be allowed to influence such decision.

The on the pitch call was not a red card. VAR told the ref to go to the monitors to review and then the red card was given. If the on the pitch call stood, which was the right call, then we wouldn't be having the conversation.

The level of scrutiny we place on foot position when determining offsides with VAR is an example of the letter of the law vs the spirit of the law. Offsides was not meant to catch players who were half a foot length beyond the last non-goalie defender.

I'm not sure VAR is the net-benefit we think it is.

I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with the way the rule is written, the issue here is the way VAR was applied. VAR is only supposed to intervene when there is a “Clear and obvious error.”

Balugun’s play certainly “endangered the safety of an opponent”, as the red card rule reads. Intent doesn’t matter as far as the rule goes. But the call on the field will always be subject to the referee’s judgement on the field. They are weighing a variety of factors, and intent plays into that judgment I think.

Bologun’s challenge was certainly red card “worthy”, but I think most people agree that the initial yellow card was the right call, especially since it wasn’t intentional. The ref saw it full speed, made his judgement, and that should have been the end of it.

VAR likely overstepped their mandate here asking for the replay review. I don’t think that was a “Clear and obvious error.” so they influenced the ref to upgrade to red. It’s especially upsetting when there are many other glaring examples of yellow cards in the same tournament that they did not send to review.