Foul Ball

The U.S. women's soccer team, which dominated the Women's FIFA World Cup for two decades by winning all but one tournament, has now lost a second tournament.  After a scoreless game against Sweden this past weekend, Megan Rapinoe blew a penalty kick in overtime, eliminating the Americans from the tournament. 

In no way am I suggesting that I'm glad that U.S. women's soccer team lost, or that I feel any of the same schadenfreude I get when the Brazilian men's soccer team gets eliminated from the World Cup.  (Every fan of men's soccer should have two favorite national teams - their own and whoever can beat Brazil.)  But I do feel that it was necessary for the women's team to lose because, until recently, the U.S. women's team had been an exception to the rule that you can't win 'em all.  Champion teams need to lose once in awhile, and the Brazilian men's soccer team needs to lose more often than that.

That out of the way, I find it very disturbing and nauseating that American conservative male sports fans are pleased to see the national women's soccer team get eliminated from the World Cup tournament because the team has a reputation for being "woke" - standing up for racial quality, gender equality, rights for non-heterosexauls . . . literally, everything Ron DeSantis has outlawed in Florida. Twitter (oops - X) has been exploding with schadenfreude par excellence (oh great, I just blended two different languages) over their loss, and they found it especially sweet that Megan Rapinoe, who is a lesbian, was the one that blew it for the team.  One chap on social media says that the women's soccer team is the only American national team he roots against because of their "wokeness."  They were very happy to see them brought down by Sweden, even though Sweden itself is a "woke" country where they have all of the nice things the American right won't let us have here.

Right-wing sports fans, gleeful to see the U.S. women's soccer team lose, are calling them a national disgrace.  Yeah, I think they mean the American men's soccer team, which not only has never won a World Cup, they didn't even qualify for 2018.  Then again, American conservative male sports fans think soccer itself is un-American, so why care about even that?  Real Americans love football!  Their nationalistic machismo and their mindless chants of "USA! USA!" at international sporting events are a bigger disgrace than the U.S. women's soccer team - or even the U.S. men's soccer team - could ever be.

Though, all that said, maybe I do have a little schadenfreude myself.  Not toward the U.S. women's soccer team, but toward the subliminally misandric MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle.  Now maybe she won't be so smug for awhile.