My mother is currently being treated for pneumonia, and so I watched Team USA’s Round-of-16 loss to Belgium from her hospital room. I really should apologize to the nurse, who was asking my mother questions about her health and kept being interrupted by me groaning over yet another USA defensive error leading to a Belgian goal. I’ve got all the questions and answers about the last week of the World Cup, including about our idiot president injecting himself into the soccer-sphere without accomplishing anything. Take it away, my imaginary friend.
So, is this a successful tournament for American soccer?
You tell me. On the one hand, we got to see our guys play really well in three victories on the world’s biggest stage. Our fans were swept up in weeks’ worth of good vibes that a tournament like this produces for the host country. The same men who a generation ago would have dismissed soccer as not our sport were this year dissecting the successful elements of Mauricio Pochettino’s midfield press. The bigger field of competitors allowed us to witness Cape Verde’s magical run firsthand. The world found out that Malik Tillman can score directly from free kicks. Granted, the one against Belgium took a deflection off a defender’s head, but the one against Bosnia-Herzegovina was a thing of beauty. One thing our nation hasn’t produced is free-kick artists (at least on the men’s side), so that was good to see. The win over Bosnia had Team USA looking like a seasoned European team, as the players did not lose control even after Folarin Balogun’s (soft) red card. All that was great.
But …
The game against Belgium showcased Team USA’s shaky side at its worst. This wasn’t a valiant effort in defeat like Mexico’s gripping-as-a-telenovela loss to England. This was shambolic, nowhere more so than goalie Matt Freese fumbling the ball miles away from his goal and leaving Hans Vanaken an empty net to shoot at. The Club Brugge attacker’s goal effectively killed Team USA’s chances of coming back. The soccer world is used to seeing top-level goalkeeping from the Americans, but we don’t have it anymore.
Freese was hardly alone, as the whole lineup turned in poor performances. A quarterfinal match against Spain would have been gold, even if that game had ended in a lopsided loss for the hosts. Our team got as far as Brazil did (the five-time champs ran into an exceptionally bad matchup with Norway), but like their fans, we were expecting more.
How’d this happen?
The Belgians did have something to do with their win. Coach Rudi “Resting Bitch Face” Garcia rooted Kevin de Bruyne to the bench after the once-great playmaker mislaid pass after pass in the comeback win over Senegal (a comeback, I’d add, that happened only after de Bruyne had been subbed out of that game). Without him, Belgium’s midfield made USA’s high-energy midfield look second-best. Garcia learned his lesson, unlike Portugal Coach Roberto Martínez, who engineered a comeback win over Croatia without Cristiano Ronaldo, then promptly played the washed striker for all 90 minutes of Portugal’s loss to Spain.
Donald Trump says he got Balogun’s red card overturned. Did that distract Team USA?
Hard to say, especially since we weren’t inside the team’s training camp before and after FIFA publicly rubbished its own rule. I am pretty sure that Poch spent a full three days prepping his team to play without the AS Monaco striker before finding out that his player was available. That’s not easy. I’m also sure that something caused the guys wearing the stars and stripes to look unsettled like they hadn’t before at this World Cup. The USA players said that the controversy didn’t affect them, but then, what else are they going to say? Maybe FIFA lifted Balogun’s suspension without regard for the president’s attempt to put his thumb on the scale, but it’s not hard to understand Belgium enjoying their victory with a heaping side of schadenfreude.
Why should we feel bad about Donald Trump’s interference when it wound up not mattering?
I mean, are we doing this now? Are heads of state going to pressure FIFA to make favorable soccer decisions for their national teams? If so, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum might as well call FIFA President Gianni Infantino to relitigate the “no era penal” game from World Cup 2014. Heck, King Charles should ask FIFA to take away Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal from 1986. It was just so appropriate that Trump called Balogun’s red card a “great injustice,” the same phrase he used to pardon the traitorous January 6 rioters. The moral of the story, as always: Rich old white guys get all the do-overs, especially when people like Infantino are the ones handing them out.
Why is pundit Bastian Schweinsteiger in trouble?
The 2014 World Cup winner trotted out an ancient but still insulting stereotype before Germany’s game against Ivory Coast, when he said the Elephants played “African football,” meaning they are “wild” and “not conditioned by tactics.” The whole idea that teams full of Black players are superb athletes who lack discipline, well, that has been true of some African teams in the past, but we’ve seen enough different ones by now to know that each of them has their own character. South Africa and Ivory Coast are out of this World Cup because they ran into superior opponents, not because they failed to execute a game plan. DRC and Cape Verde fought royal battles against soccer’s elite before they exited. As for Senegal, they just choked, but no African team was less disciplined than Tunisia, which comes from the part of Africa that is predominantly Arab, not Black. Schweinsteiger had so many great Black teammates at Bayern Munich and Germany. You’d think he would know better.
What about Cape Verde?
If you aren’t inspired by what they did, just go away. You don’t need to be reading this. Their Round-of-32 game against Argentina was supposed to be a procession for the defending champs, and the Blue Sharks turned it into a slugfest. Sidny Lopes Cabral’s goal to tie it up at 2-2 deservedly goes down as one of the great goals in World Cup history. Surely someone needs a left-back who can score goals like that, and an MLS club needs to put in a bid for Vozinha, especially since he’s available for free. The country’s tourism trade has boomed because of the team’s run. Whenever I get the urge to write off some tiny nation’s team before a tournament begins, I’ll remember Cape Verde.
How’s your mother doing?
I’m hoping that the treatment she receives in hospital makes her better. She is no soccer expert, but she comes from São Paulo, and she was proud of the national team at a time when that (and samba music) were among the few things Americans knew about Brazil. She turned me on to this sport when Brazil had that magnificent 1980s outfit of Zico, Falcão, and Sócrates that’s on the shortlist of greatest teams that didn’t win the World Cup. Without her, this column might very well not exist. I hope to watch the next World Cup with her.
