Cristiano Ronaldo will likely avoid missing any Portugal games at the World Cup despite his red card in a qualifying game for elbowing an Ireland opponent.<\/p>\n
FIFA published a disciplinary verdict Tuesday that imposed a three-game ban, but with two of those games deferred for a one-year probation period.<\/p>\n
Ronaldo served a mandatory one-game ban when Portugal played its final qualifying game last week \u2014 a 9-1 win over Armenia that sealed its place at the World Cup in North America.<\/p>\n
The superstar had been expected to be banned for at least one more game and start what will be his record sixth World Cup on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
“If Cristiano Ronaldo commits another infringement of a similar nature and gravity during the probationary period,” FIFA said in a statement, then the remaining two games of the ban would be activated.<\/p>\n
FIFA has disciplinary authority over national-team games and Portugal is scheduled to play two friendly matches in March, then likely one or two warmup games in late-May or June. The World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico starts June 11.<\/p>\n
Ronaldo swung an arm and struck Ireland defender Dara O\u2019Shea with an elbow during a 2-0 loss in Dublin two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
The FIFA verdict comes one week after Ronaldo met U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House for a formal dinner with Saudi Arabia\u2019s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. FIFA president Gianni Infantino also attended the event and posed for a selfie photo with Ronaldo.<\/p>\n
Ronaldo has played in the Saudi league for three years for a club majority owned by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund that the prince chairs. Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 World Cup and has been a major financial backer of FIFA in the past two years.<\/p>\n
FIFA said its disciplinary verdict of “the three-match suspension is subject to appeal to the FIFA Appeal Committee.”<\/p>\n
It was unclear who could have legal standing to challenge the verdict, and if that might be the soccer federation of Ireland or Portugal’s opponents at the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Trump is due to attend the draw ceremony Dec. 5 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. where Portugal, one of the 48-team tournament’s top seeds, will learn its three opponents in a round-robin group.<\/p>\n
Reporting by The Associated Press.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
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POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY Cristiano Ronaldo will likely avoid missing any Portugal games at the World Cup despite his red card in a qualifying game for elbowing an Ireland opponent. FIFA published a disciplinary verdict Tuesday that imposed a three-game ban, but with two of those games deferred for a one-year probation period. Ronaldo served […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}