All noise, no reprieve: Balogun cleared to play, but Belgium dump the USA out

Folarin Balogun's red-card ban was overturned after Donald Trump lobbied FIFA, and it made no difference: Belgium routed the United States 4-1 in Seattle to knock the co-hosts out of their own World Cup. The week-long circus over his eligibility ended in an emphatic anticlimax as the Red Devils marched into a quarter-final with Spain.

It was the story that swallowed a week of the World Cup: a red card, a president's phone call, a ban overturned by FIFA, a continent up in arms. And then Belgium answered all of it in the only language that has ever settled a football argument, dismantling the United States 4-1 to send the co-hosts crashing out. Folarin Balogun was cleared to play. It changed nothing.

Remember how we got here. Balogun, the USMNT's leading scorer, was sent off against Bosnia, an automatic ban that should have ruled him out. Then Donald Trump personally telephoned FIFA president Gianni Infantino, FIFA reached for a rarely used clause to suspend the ban, UEFA accused it of crossing "a red line," and Belgium formally challenged his eligibility. After all that, he took the field in Seattle.

What followed was a rout. Charles De Ketelaere scored twice, a Malik Tillman free kick briefly levelled it, and from there Belgium simply pulled away, Hans Vanaken and Romelu Lukaku finishing the job. The Americans had more of the ball and none of the cutting edge, and Balogun, the man at the centre of the storm, was a peripheral figure. Belgium's players and fans revelled in it, mocking the whole circus.

So the intervention that bent the rule book achieved precisely nothing on the pitch, except to pile expectation onto a team that could not carry it. For Mauricio Pochettino and the United States, a home World Cup that was supposed to be a coronation has ended in humiliation on home soil, and the questions will be brutal.

For the neutral, there is a lesson in the anticlimax. You can lobby a governing body, overturn a suspension and dominate the news for a week, but you cannot legislate for ninety minutes of football. Belgium march on to a mouthwatering quarter-final against Spain; the co-hosts go home.

For Kenya, watching from afar, it was pure theatre followed by pure sport. Zogo lote la Balogun na Trump halikusaidia kitu, wenyeji wametolewa nyumbani kwao: all the Balogun and Trump drama helped nothing, and the hosts have been knocked out on their own soil. Follow the road to the final on our bracket.