America's purest underdog is our men's soccer team

Washington Post

17 hours ago

The history of the U.S. men's national soccer team is full of disappointments and heartbreak, disorganization and dysfunction, and, perhaps most of all, irrelevance.
The team's infamous loss to Trinidad and Tobago eight years ago, which cost it a spot in the 2018 World Cup (on my birthday, no less!), was so crushing that many of the players were booed on sight by American fans for years to come. Even as our talent base has risen — there are more American players in the top international leagues than ever before, by a wide margin — the rest of the world always chuckles when we beg to be taken seriously as a soccer nation. And with good reason.
But on the day before the start of the Gold Cup (the last major U.S. international tournament before next year's World Cup comes to North America) this weekend, I do not remember a time when U.S. fans have been more disgusted about, even openly hostile toward, the national team than we are right now.
The team, which just got smoked by Switzerland in a friendly on Tuesday, is on a four-game losing streak, its longest in 18 years. There is an ugly feud between star player Christian Pulisic and U.S. legend Landon Donovan, who, on a Fox Sports broadcast this past weekend, criticized players who opted to sit out the Gold Cup (Pulisic notably among them). This led to an online flame war that was as destructive as it was aggressively dumb.
But there is a larger crisis for the team, too — something that strikes at the core of what it means to support a national team in the United States right now. What does it mean to cheer for an American team on a global stage in the current political climate? Against teams from Latin America? I dunno: How do you feel about it?
The men's soccer team has always occupied a strange place in the American sporting landscape — the rare U.S. national team that is not, in fact, one of the better teams in the world. It is easy to cheer for our Olympic basketball teams or the women's national soccer team or Simone Biles: They're the best, after all, and they're probably going to win. The men's soccer team has always been middle-of-the-pack, if we're being generous, and well known for its stodgy, defensive style — adopted to compensate for a talent disparity — that is seen as aesthetically displeasing around the world.
But this has also, in a way, made U.S. men's soccer more fun to cheer for than most American teams. Our men's team actually is the underdog all Americans pretend to be, but even better — because it's one that is rising in talent and has all of our resources at its back.
At times over the past decade, cheering for American men's soccer has been like investing in a growth stock, or becoming a follower of an indie band before its big break: You can say you were there from the beginning. This led to what I called, a decade ago, 'hipster patriotism,' according to which thousands of young urbanites, with their tattoos and their beards and their craft beers, would head out to national team games dressed like Benjamin Franklin or bald eagles while screaming 'I Believe That We Will Win!' at the top of their lungs — a sort of ironic nationalistic cosplay that, in the end, did actually make you feel a little patriotic. The U.S. was, for once, the plucky little guy. In men's soccer, we were the future.
That changed in 2017, thanks to the team's inability to qualify for the World Cup. Plus, after Donald Trump's inauguration, a decidedly less ironic nationalism muscled out the hipster patriots. It felt very stupid, all of a sudden, to dress up like Nathan Hale and scream 'America, F--k Yeah!' when your uncle was wearing a MAGA hat and doing the same thing, albeit for entirely different reasons.
Three years after an impressive, even inspiring finish in the 2014 World Cup, hipster patriotism was replaced by cynicism, frustration and a fatalism that was all too familiar: We were the same old Yanks.
Now another World Cup, which the U.S. is co-hosting with Mexico and Canada — two countries that, when they bid to host the tournament with us a decade ago, considered us friends — looms, just one year away. The biggest sporting event on Earth is, it is fair to say, coming to the United States when we are not looking our best.
The Trump administration has warned fans traveling for the tournament not to overstay their visas — not exactly the welcoming spirit of global competition — and there remains considerable confusion about how Trump's latest travel ban will affect the countries that qualify (such as Iran, which has already punched its ticket). Organizers in host cities are admitting they have no idea how this World Cup is going to work. There is wide expectation that supporters of Latin American national teams — generally among the most reliable and avid fan bases at international events — might hesitate to make the trip this time around. The World Cup couldn't have picked a worse time to be in the United States. Excitement can't help but be dampened, both inside the country and outside.
What looked like the dawning of an American soccer era a decade ago now is enmeshed in the same ugliness that surrounds nearly every other aspect of American life. The team is bad, everybody's fighting with one another, and nobody likes us.
Those hopeful hipsters are long gone. Nearly 12 years ago, I attended our U.S. men's national team's 2-0 ('dos a cero') win over Mexico in Columbus, Ohio — a win that secured our spot in the upcoming World Cup. As I left the stadium, a man dressed as George Washington ran up to me and screamed, right in my face: 'America! America! Motherf---in' America! F--k yeah!'
I am pretty sure that won't happen if I attend any of the Gold Cup matches over the next three weeks. I do not know, if I'm being honest, how I would react if it did.