Saturday, July 06, 2019

Women's soccer, in an age of American dominance

Throughout the recent FIFA Women's World Cup of Soccer, people have spent a lot of effort and journalists' time inspecting and reassessing their attitudes towards the team from the United States of America. We try to love them, but they make it very difficult.
The US women's soccer team is big and brash and beautiful (some of them anyway). As far as playing the game goes, they are just seem to be in a different league, so to speak, from everyone else. But they do seem - at least to everyone else - to have a bit of an attitude problem. From their 13-0 crushing of poor old Thailand in the opening rounds (and the excessive celebrations that met every single goal), they just make people bristle. In their defence, they argued that, hey, this is the World Cup, why would they not try their best to score as many goals as possible, whatever the competition looks like, but STILL...
Some of the players' comments after games have been, well, lacking in subtlety, humility and respect. And then, or course, every time star and captain Megan Rapinoe opens her mouth, she seems to offend someone, notwithstanding her outspoken hatred of Donald Trump, which most people around the world CAN relate to and sympathize with. That's just who she is: openly gay, and the loudest voice on the team calling for equal pay with the men, she is a larger than life presence both on and off the field. She is the Cristiano Ronaldo or Luis Suarez of the women's game. But STILL...
England had a good team and had a chance to beat them, at least theoretically. But some bad luck, a few iffy refereeing decisions, and some largely unwelcome and unfortunate interference from the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) put paid to that. Hell, even Canada might have done OK on a good day, had they not been knocked out by the Netherlands at an earlier stage, so we'll never really know. And even European Champions the Netherlands were not even able to hold the USA back when it came to the finals.
It seems like the USWNT will get their ticker tape parade through the streets of New York, but Megan Rapinoe has famously refused to go to The White House, even were they to be invited. Mr. Trump says she lacks respect, and she does. But it still might be quite fun to see two disrespectful braggarts going at each other.

No comments:

Post a Comment