Many Americans felt the heat of the World Cup on Saturday, as the United States lost to the Netherlands. There is no shame in losing to Holland, who are considered the best nation to never win the world’s biggest football tournament, but this exit was a little different. Although the U.S. team has qualified for only one World Cup since 1990, the ceiling for talent among this year’s young Americans is high. So, too, are the expectations. If it’s hope that kills you, as British fans like to say, then this loss in a major tournament feels like a small turning point in American soccer: real suffering is the mark of a true soccer nation.
It’s hard to remember how things used to be. That’s what fandom can do: it can draw you in so suddenly, completely, and emotionally that you forget how life used to be. But for too long in America, football has been almost invisible in the mainstream—a rare game that encourages the dismissal of ignorance and baseless hatred. I spent the last several years on a time-travel trip to the dark days of soccer while writing a book, “New Kids at the World Cup,” about the 1990 U.S. men’s national team. For the first time in forty years, these players saved the game from oblivion and brought football to the glory of America, when football was at its peak. The only thing Americans love about football is the chance to ignore it. If they care about it at all, to appreciate how interesting it is.
The contrast between then and now is almost overwhelming. In the 90s and aughts, the North American league, Major League Soccer, had great prospects. M.L.S. it is now a quarter century old and has more than two dozen organizations—some of which are valued at more than eight hundred million dollars. In addition to providing regular soccer to local fan bases, the team develops talent and promotes American players into the national team. Like other sports, it has to compete for attention with the popular English Premier League – which now also contains many American stars.
After Pelé’s short-lived destruction of the United States in the mid-seventies, when he starred for the New York Cosmos in the North American Soccer League, the game continued to shine so brightly that, in the following decade to, it was considered shameful, like. disco. It is seen as a women’s and children’s game that is not suitable for attracting paying fans. The thought leaders of this American sports populism are sports writers. Some of the journalists who followed the American team in the late eighties expressed their displeasure at playing soccer. On the eve of the group’s big game, against Trinidad and Tobago, some even seemed to be calling for the United States to fail. Many bloggers around the country have written their own version of why I hate football that has become a cult. I collected them all as research. “You can no more control the ball with your feet and head than you can drive a car with your nose and knees,” legendary actor Frank Deford once wrote. “It’s a lot of fun. I can’t even get excited at my kids’ football games,” said Bob Smizik of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. And here’s former quarterback turned congressman Jack Kemp: “It should be distinguished that football is democratic, capitalist, while football is… European communist.”
When you read enough of these old football puns, the formula starts to break down. This game is revered by righteous communists and fascist dictators. Soccer fans aren’t the mindless, sarcastic jerks who hate American sports because they weren’t chosen to play them as kids—but they’re also scumbags who just want to drink and fight with each other. Because the use of hands is not generally accepted, soccer is at odds with evolution. (All sports and fans cursed with dead genes!) Broadcaster Seamus Malin told me that most Americans he encountered in the seventies and eighties regarded football as the “other” sports: taxi drivers, laundresses, exchange students, intellectuals, and hippies.
These days, few serious sportswriters would dare write one of these columns. If a person does, he will be exposed as a dinosaur and will likely suffer on social media. Even Fox News’ current attempt to make football a reality is a half-hearted affair. Apart from a few complaints about the alienation and the lack of sports entertainment, media experts were outraged to see American coach Gregg Berhalter, wearing a T-shirt made by Nike that omitted “United” and simply. read “States” (advocating, one commentator thought, a divided nation—think so), and at the decision of the American Football Association to change the “national” line of red stripes in in the logo through to the rainbow color scheme. In the polls, sports are still second only to American football in popularity among adults. And a scoreless tie, like the USA vs. England match, still brings out the haters. Yet that game and other American games were TV ratings successes. With every World Cup, soccer has become more visible in America, and now it’s O.K. for Americans to love him. To take this idea a step further: it becomes unpleasant to reject it.
The watch convention I attended in San Diego on the lawn felt like an American piece. I was surrounded by young people, old people, and many families. Thousands of people are wearing American jerseys with the names and numbers of current or retired stars. On my book tour, I’ve met young kids – who have no idea how good they are as soccer fans now – and professional athletes. They are the best football players in the world right now. I have met strong supporters who have traveled to almost every American game over the years. And I’ve talked to a lot of people who have strong opinions about the future of soccer in America — the next stages of its popularity, and how and where we’ll experience the game one day. Even the evolution of the songs of American fans is telling: ten-twenty show saccharine “I believe that we will win,” while, in this World Cup, the song “It’s called soccer” sounds like confirm the power of the traditional heavyweights of the sport.
This is not just about us. America’s game and care of soccer matters to the rest of the world more than we thought. It is, of course, a world sport, the sport of the poor in most countries. In many places, only sports are important. Significant numbers in other countries seem to view the American game as a respectable opportunity. Back in 1989, when the young, anonymous American team was working to qualify for the World Cup (some things never change), an unexpected stranger boarded the bus after a game in Costa Rica. It is the country’s president, Óscar Arias, who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Arias felt compelled to give a speech to a group of tired players who just wanted to go back to the hotel on how important America is to democracy in the world, explaining that their opponents that day are their friends. It is hard to imagine a situation like this happening to any other country’s football team.
From an American perspective, watching or even visiting the World Cup (including this year’s show) gives us a new perspective on things, outside of the usual media line and plot. The competition is an event that will stop the world in a way that the Olympics, which has been diverted from all its activities in the shops, will never be. Football captures many of the problems that are happening in this world during the tournament, when the world can be together more than ever. Iranian athletes and their supporters have demonstrated, at great risk, how the police are violating women’s rights in their country. Arab supporters from the region make Palestine as visible as possible. Leaked photos of the Serbian team’s locker room show a Serbian flag with a map that includes Kosovo as part of the country. America’s captain, Tyler Adams, answered a good question about race in the United States in a press conference before the game. This competition opens up the world a little to places that seem closed. Isn’t it surprising that in this year’s group stage, the United States was up against a political ally in England and Wales, and a major opponent in Iran?
Many players view the political movement as a distraction from the games themselves. But even if competing with political rivals is an act of foreign policy, don’t worry about trading jerseys with them afterwards, as football tradition dictates. International football can be a spectacle, low-level diplomacy on the grass as two countries compete in an agreed-upon standard, with a neutral referee and nothing at all. on the stake. Two thousands of patriotic fans in celebration share the pitch as the world watches. The players are all just players in different colors. After America’s victory over Iran, a great video of America’s Antonee Robinson condoling Iran’s Ramin Rezaeian was shared on social media. In the current situation, in this game, it is clear that the fans of any country are not religious fanatics, or the Great Satan. They are not enemies. They were the most common sense among people: they were fans of football, like everyone else. ♦
Portugal lost to South Korea 2-1, but has already qualified for the round of 16. Portugal won the group and will face Switzerland in the knockout stage.
Are the US men in the 2022 World Cup?
The United States men’s team was eliminated from the 2022 World Cup after losing 3-1 in the round of 16 to the Netherlands.
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Why American football is not popular in the world?
1) There is no custom established in some countries. 2) The rules are more complicated than most games. 3) Similar sports are already popular in many major countries (Australian Rules, Rugby League, and Rugby Union). 4) It is a violent game with many injuries.
Is USA out of FIFA?
The United States crashed out of the 2022 FIFA World Cup on Saturday (3 December) with a 3-1 win over the Netherlands. This may interest you : The Ukrainian War Can Accelerate the Return of the Great Political Politics in Latin America.
. The United States men’s national team crashed out of the 2022 FIFA World Cup after defeating the Netherlands 3-1 in the 8th place in the round of 16. AL RAYYAN, Qatar (Dec. 3, 2022) The 8th-placed Netherlands 3-1 in the round of 16 to end the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
