Mauricio Pochettino regrets not being ‘more involved’ with Balogun decision

US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino says he regrets not being “more involved” in the situation surrounding US forward Folarin Balogun at this summer’s World Cup.

Balogun was given a red card after a challenge against Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemović, which by rule is accompanied with a one-game suspension. Balogun’s ban for the next game against Belgium was suspended after the US Soccer Federation and US president Donald Trump lobbied Fifa, with Trump saying that he personally placed a call to Fifa president Gianni Infantino to ask the ruling be reviewed. Infantino maintains that the decision to reinstate Balogun was made independently by Fifa’s disciplinary committee.

The entire affair cast a pall over what had been an otherwise positive tournament for the US to that point. Belgium’s players and coaches said in the wake of it that it provided extra motivation ahead of the match. Balogun himself later spoke of having felt uncomfortable with the attention the situation placed upon him.

Speaking with broadcaster Andrés Cantor, Pochettino said he was not involved in the decision – though in retrospect, he may have preferred to be.

“Maybe I regret not having been more involved,” Pochettino said in the Spanish-language interview for Fútbol de Primera. “In the situation that later generated all of the negativity afterwards. Maybe I regret not having been more inside of that decision making process. I wasn’t involved in that decision, to overturn the red card. As a football person, I understand everything … Beyond whether we were right or not [about the call on the field], I think nobody understood how it happened.”

The US were thoroughly outclassed by Belgium in the 4-1 loss, beaten badly in every phase of play. In his remarks to Cantor, Pochettino suggested that the backlash surrounding the Balogun situation actively contributed to the loss.

“As a football person,” said Pochettino, “where many times we have that emotional intelligence – [we know] that energy can change things. I think that energy changed the minute that happened. And by then, the game is played under different parameters, and that match was never a match where I believe the tactics, strategy, or selection of players would have changed the course of what happened during the game.”

Pochettino also suggested that the group who participated in US Soccer’s efforts to get Balogun on the field against Belgium may have been too large for his liking.

“That’s something we’ve talked about internally,” said Pochettino. “I think that these types of things have to be managed under a much more limited structure, a structure where decisions have to be made by very few people, where very few people manage these types of things. [Those decisions] should be strictly sporting and common sense, beyond whether a rule or a committee can say one thing or another.”

Pochettino’s USMNT will face Peru in Orlando on Saturday before facing Chile, Mexico and Canada across the rest of this extended international window.