The California Democrat who says he ‘won’t cheer FIFA’s capitulation to power’

Sam Liccardo said he “groaned excessively” when the U.S. national team’s Folarin Balogun was given a red card.

Yet the Silicon Valley representative objected after President Donald Trump pressed FIFA to review the play at issue, before the world soccer organization suspended the penalty and allowed the U.S.’ lead scorer to play in today’s knockout round match against Belgium.

“We can’t win this way,” Liccardo, a Democrat, wrote on social media. “I won’t cheer FIFA’s capitulation to power.” Few other American politicians have expressed a similar sentiment, perhaps wary that they’ll be viewed as rooting against their own country’s success.

But Liccardo joined a chorus of international officials who took issue with the pressure campaign that culminated in Balogun’s return to the pitch, while stressing that the “right outcome” had been reached despite what he viewed as foul play by FIFA leadership. “The fact that we should see this outcome after this corruption summit between FIFA and Donald Trump accentuates the distaste for many,” he told POLITICO in an interview just over an hour before the U.S.

-Belgium match. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Were you at the match where the red card was issued in Santa Clara?

I was not, I’m ashamed to say. It’s slightly outside my district, and a few thousand dollars outside my tax bracket. I watched on television and cheered wildly for the U.

S. team, and groaned excessively when Balogun got his red card. Democrats have accused President Trump of a lot of instances of corruption throughout his second term, so why speak out on this particular incident?

Well, I think in your question there’s an implication, and it’s a fair one, which is: Far be it from me to suggest that FIFA could ever be corrupt. But at least we could say that for once it was Americans that benefited from the corruption, not the Qataris or the Russians. Look, I root for the U.

S. men’s team every time they take the field, and, like virtually ev