!! the garbage pile

Europeans are fundamentally different from Americans in one particular way: they expect life to be aggravating and at times unfair. It’s just a fact of moving through the world. I joke that in Europe, the customer is always wrong. You didn’t read the fine print. The only pharmacy in town is closed every other Tuesday for three hours, and even if the times weren’t posted, that’s still your problem. Too bad if you want the bill, because the waiter’s on his union-mandated half-hour smoke break, and you’re just going to have to wait.

To quote the great Mark Knopfler: sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. There’s something freeing in that. Things are less in your control, so there’s less angst in managing your expectations.

In America, things couldn’t be more different. We simply can’t accept a wrong left unrighted.

The flight attendant sneezed handing you a drink on your one-hour flight? 15,000 frequent flyer miles. Didn’t like your appetizer? A replacement is on the way, and the whole course comes off the bill. There’s a reason our interstates are lined with trial lawyer billboards.

Europeans have turned complaining into a continental pastime with no expectation that the universe owes them a remedy for their grief. You gripe about the train being late, your friends nod solemnly and everyone goes back to their apéro. In America, we launch a full-blown investigation of the train system, sue the government (and its contractors) that allowed for the tardiness and hold a Congressional hearing on the state of national infrastructure.

So to an objective observer, the red card shouldn’t have happened, and VAR was a travesty. To Americans, our star player shouldn’t be unfairly banned from a match we couldn’t afford to lose for a card he so obviously didn’t deserve.

Who cares that FIFA used a little-used reversal to fix it. Who cares that other people are mad about it. We. Were. Wronged. It was unjust. It must be corrected. We would accept nothing less.

Europeans waxing poetic about the sanctity of the game are, of course, talking about a governing body whose last tournament host was decided via confirmed cash bribes — one that imposed dress codes on women, shrugged off widespread allegations of modern slavery and reconfigured the entire tournament calendar to suit the host country. Which is exactly the point. If you’ve made peace with all of that, at least enough to watch the tournament four years later, a probationary suspension isn’t actually a scandal.

Maybe that’s the real divide. Over millennia, Europeans have made peace with being the bug. Americans have never once considered it, and apparently, we’re not about to start now.

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text of quote:

Despite the long waffling, this woman is on to something, but not for the reason she thinks.

The real difference isn’t that Americans are more willing to fight for themselves or refuse to settle for second best. It’s that, in this case, she instinctively frames the situation from the perspective of the American player as the main character.

Notice the analogies she uses. She compares Balogun to a customer dealing with a company, someone fighting an insurance provider, or a client taking on a large institution through a trial lawyer. In every example, it’s an individual versus some faceless, impersonal entity. Balogun versus FIFA. Balogun versus “the system.”

But that’s not actually what happened.

What happened was Balogun made a challenge on another player. That player has a name too btw. Tarik Muharemovic. We can all agree the red card was unfortunate, but “unfortunate” and “incorrect” are not the same thing. An unfortunate tackle can still be a red-card tackle.

Football history is full of players whose careers were ended by mistimed or reckless challenges that were never intended to cause serious injury. Intent matters in some decisions, but it is not the standard for serious foul play. If referees only gave red cards for tackles that were intended to injure, the Laws of the Game would be completely different.

Balogun committed an offence that, under the Laws of the Game and the tournament regulations, earned him a suspension for the next match. That has happened to countless players in football history.