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{"id":25369,"date":"2026-07-05T23:47:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T23:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/belgians-weigh-folarin-balogun-as-darling-of-the-match-in-which-he-didnt-play\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T23:47:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T23:47:15","slug":"belgians-weigh-folarin-balogun-as-darling-of-the-match-in-which-he-didnt-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/belgians-weigh-folarin-balogun-as-darling-of-the-match-in-which-he-didnt-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgians weigh Folarin Balogun as \u201cdarling of the match\u201d in which he didn&#8217;t play"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>BRUSSELS \u2014 FIFA&#8217;s decision to lift U.S. striker Folarin Balogun&#8217;s one-match ban \u2014 freeing him up to play against Belgium in Monday&#8217;s World Cup round-of-16 match on Monday this week \u2014 has not gone down well in the European nation.<\/p>\n<p>Coverage from Belgian national broadcaster RTBF of the match between Brazil and Norway was distracted, with half-time chatter focusing on the FIFA ruling rather than the game that was underway.<\/p>\n<p>After the closing whistle, the broadcaster showed that Balogun had been third choice for &#8220;darling of the match&#8221; \u2014 despite the fact that the U.S. team was more than 2,000 miles away from where the match in question was played. Balogun received 17 percent of the votes submitted by viewers. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-5.png\" alt=\"Image from Belgian broadcaster RTBF's coverage of the Norway-Brazil game in which U.S. striker Folarin Balogun was voted player of the match \u2014\u00a0despite not playing.\" data-portal-copyright=\"Joe Stanley-Smith\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"0\" data-license-id=\"\" data-licensor-name=\"\" data-title=\"Image from Belgian broadcaster RTBF's coverage of the Norway-Brazil game in which U.S. striker Folarin Balogun was voted player of the match \u2014\u00a0despite not playing.\"><\/p>\n<p>Players on the MetLife Stadium pitch did claim the top two spots, though. Double goal scorer Erling Haaland placed second behind goalkeeper \u00d8rjan Nyland, as Norway dumped five-time champions Brazil out of the competition. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BRUSSELS \u2014 FIFA&#8217;s decision to lift U.S. striker Folarin Balogun&#8217;s one-match ban \u2014 freeing him up to play against Belgium in Monday&#8217;s World Cup round-of-16 match on Monday this week \u2014 has not gone down well in the European nation. Coverage from Belgian national broadcaster RTBF of the match between Brazil and Norway was distracted, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}