A suspended ban, two on-field psychiatrists: what happens when "sports justice" becomes a global issue?

Edited by Fabio Zarra

Tonight in Seattle, the United States and Belgium are battling for a place in the World Cup quarterfinals in a climate rarely seen on the eve of a round of 16 match. Folarin Balogun, the American national team's top scorer with three goals in four matches, was shown a straight red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina for contact with an opposing defender's ankle, which was deemed involuntary but was nevertheless sanctioned according to FIFA regulations, which carry an automatic suspension for the following match. On Sunday, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee instead decided to suspend that suspension for one year, citing Article 27 of its disciplinary code—making Balogun available for the match against Belgium. The Belgian federation expressed its "astonishment," contesting that Article 66.4 of the same code provides for an automatic sanction, and left the door open for an appeal. Meanwhile, it has emerged that US President Donald Trump personally telephoned FIFA President Gianni Infantino to request a review of the case.

It's not the purpose of this article to determine whether FIFA's decision was correct, nor to delve into the political merits of the matter: the sports press and the federations involved are already covering that ground. What we can do, using the tools of sports psychology, is examine what happens—mentally, not legally—when an event of this kind occurs on the eve of a crucial match.

Two teams, two different psychological experiences

Belgium: The Psychology of Perceiving Injustice

For over thirty years, organizational psychology research has studied what happens when a person—or a group—perceives being treated unfairly with respect to a shared system of rules. The reference model remains Adams's (1965) fairness model: when one party perceives that the relationship between their inputs (compliance with rules, effort) and their outputs (treatment received) is unbalanced compared to that of another party, a motivational drive to "rebalance" the situation is activated—often through increased effort or competitive activation. Colquitt (2001), in his work that systematized the construct of organizational justice into three dimensions (distributive, procedural, interactional), demonstrated how the perception of unfairness in procedures—not just in outcomes—impacts the motivation and behavior of organizational members.

For over thirty years, organizational psychology research has studied what happens when a person—or a group—perceives being treated unfairly with respect to a shared system of rules. The reference model remains Adams's (1965) fairness model: when one party perceives that the relationship between their inputs (compliance with rules, effort) and their outputs (treatment received) is unbalanced compared to that of another party, a motivational drive to "rebalance" the situation is activated—often through increased effort or competitive activation. Colquitt (2001), in his work that systematized the construct of organizational justice into three dimensions (distributive, procedural, interactional), demonstrated how the perception of unfairness in procedures—not just in outcomes—impacts the motivation and behavior of organizational members.

Balogun: Playing under public “grace”

On the other hand, Balogun faces a less explored but equally real psychological condition: stepping onto the pitch knowing that his very presence is the subject of international protest. Before the decision, the striker had stated that he considered the suspension "something I simply have to accept"—an attitude of stoic acceptance consistent with coping strategies focused on controlling what is in one's own hands. The sudden suspension of the sanction abruptly changes the scenario: from a player resigned to missing the match to the protagonist of a media and diplomatic controversy within twenty-four hours.

Here, a more established line of research comes into play: studies on so-called choking under pressure, starting with the classic work of Baumeister (1984, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology), according to which the increased self-awareness induced by intense and evaluative external attention can interfere with the execution of normally automatic motor skills, pushing the athlete to consciously "monitor" movements that function better when left to automatic proceduralization. Tonight, Balogun isn't playing just any game under pressure: he's playing a game in which every contact of his game, for weeks, will be reinterpreted in light of the previous one—a condition of public scrutiny that the literature associates with an increased, though not guaranteed, risk of dysfunctional motor self-regulation at key moments.

The paradox of the “just victory”

Finally, there is a third, more subtle level, which concerns the outcome of the match regardless of who wins. If the United States were to advance, the sporting result would remain, for a segment of the sports public, beset by doubts about its legitimacy—a phenomenon social psychology describes through the concept of a tainted victory: the outcome is formally valid, but psychologically less fully attributable to merit, both for the winner and for those watching. For the host United States, which hasn't reached the quarterfinals of a World Cup since 2002, this means that their eventual qualification will bring with it a dual narrative—sporting and political—that is difficult to separate, regardless of how solid the performance on the pitch.

A reading, not a verdict

Sports psychology can't say whether FIFA's decision was correct. However, it can offer a lens to understand why this match, more than others, is being played before kickoff: on one side of the pitch, a team takes to the field with the motivational drive—well documented in the literature on fairness—of those who feel they've been the victims of a procedural injustice; on the other, a striker must find his automatic play while being, despite himself, at the center of an international scandal. These are two opposing psychological states, generated by the same event—and tonight they face each other on the same pitch.

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Main sources

Adams, J.S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 267–299). Academic Press.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/bookseries/abs/pii/S0065260108601082

Colquitt, J.A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386–400.

Baumeister, R.F. (1984). Choking under pressure: Self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(3), 610–620.Editorial note: the application of equity theory (Adams, 1965) to the relationship between a national team and an international organization such as FIFA is a reasoned extension of the model, not the result of a study conducted on this specific case. The literature on organizational justice in sport concerns almost entirely the internal athlete-coach-federation relationship; this should be explicitly pointed out to attentive readers.