The USMNT beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 2-0 in the Round of 32 at the 2026 World Cup, but the win came with a cost that has nothing to do with the scoreline. Folarin Balogun scored in the first half, then got sent off in the second. And now a bunch of former national team players are calling the red card decision straight garbage.
Taylor Twellman is the loudest voice in that group. And he’s not just saying the call was wrong. He’s saying the referee broke FIFA’s own video assistant referee protocol when he made it.
“If the call on the field is what it was, which was nothing, then you cannot, according to the VAR protocols, use slow motion still images,” Twellman said on Yahoo! Sports Daily. “So they did not follow the right VAR protocol. That’s a fact. That’s not even my opinion. So that’s where it is really, really disappointing to me.”
The play happened in the 61st minute. Ball got played up the sideline, Balogun was jostling for position, and as he tried to get into a spot to receive it, he landed on the back of Bosnia’s Tarik Muharemovic. His foot came down on the back of Muharemovic’s calf and ankle. Looked bad in slow motion. Looked like an accident at full speed.
And that’s the whole problem.
Twellman took to X (still not calling it Twitter, whatever) and posted the official VAR protocol. He highlighted a specific section. It reads: “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 offence/player, point of contact for physical offences and handball, ball out of play (including goal/no goal); normal speed should be used for the ‘intensity’ of an offence or to decide if it was a handball offence.”
So the rule says slow motion is for figuring out where contact happened. Normal speed is for figuring out how hard someone meant to hurt somebody else. The referee used slow motion to decide Balogun’s intent. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.
None of this matters for the rest of this tournament though. The USMNT doesn’t have a path to appeal. Balogun will sit out the Round of 16 game against Belgium. And the team has to move on without their best goalscorer for what might be the toughest test they’ve faced so far.
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