FIFA Cuts Nahuel Molina’s Ban

FIFA has trimmed Nahuel Molina’s international suspension after an appeal by the Argentine Football Association, cutting the Roma full-back’s ban from seven matches to four and lowering his fine from $77,000 to $60,000, according to Football Italia.

The legal hinge is simple enough, even if football governance likes to dress it in committee language: the original punishment was not erased, it was revised on appeal. Authority stayed with FIFA, and the appeal changed only Molina’s sanction. His Argentina teammate Leandro Paredes did not get the same relief. Football Italia reported that Paredes’s 10-match ban and $90,000 fine were upheld.

That matters because appeals in disciplinary cases are not rehearings of the entire universe. They can end with one player getting a lighter penalty and another being left exactly where he started. Institutions call that case-by-case review. Everyone else calls it uneven, unless the facts justify it. The source material does not set out FIFA’s reasoning, so any claim about why Molina’s penalty was reduced would be guesswork dressed as confidence.

What is clear is the practical effect. Football Italia reported that Molina has already served three matches of the revised four-game suspension, with Argentina having played friendlies against Bolivia, Burkina Faso and Benin since the World Cup final brawl in July. That leaves him one match short of completing the ban, not four. In other words, the appeal did not just improve the optics on paper; it turned a long absence into an almost-finished one.

That is usually the clause worth watching in sports discipline: whether a reduction changes an athlete’s real availability, not just the headline number. A seven-game ban says “deterrence.” A four-game ban, after three matches have already passed, says something closer to “we still disapprove, but not quite that much.”

Football Italia also noted that Molina was not included in the Argentina squad announced for friendlies against Uruguay and Costa Rica. The report does not say whether that omission was driven by the remaining suspension, selection choices, fitness or some combination of the lot, so the cleanest version is the boring one: he was absent, and the reason is not established here.

FIFA’s decision leaves the broader World Cup final fallout intact. The brawl still produced meaningful sanctions, Paredes’s punishment still stands, and Molina still carries a suspension and a fine. But the appeal shifted the incentive in the only place players and federations tend to care about most: availability. Football’s disciplinary bodies enjoy the theatre of principle; the calendar usually gets the last word.