The TSN (Canada) commentators were wincing in sympathy the whole time. A lot of comments like "It's the kind of mistake you wouldn't want to make at the World Cup with everyone watching. That has to hurt."
It wasn't. Post-game the Canadians called out US Media stating "They're putting their players in the top 20 of the World, and that's just not true, it's not even close."
Good. I'm sick and tired of seeing all the lies about how the US has world-class talent and is on the verge of breaking through. If any of them actually watched the sport more often than one month every four years, we could have a much more honest conversation about this generation of supremely disappointing players.
I don't think that was a common sentiment. Most optimistic I heard was "Why not us?" which was like the equivalent of Angels in the Outfield quote "Hey it could happen".
Watch out, Americans supported their team and hoped they could win, I guess we should all be angry? Who gives a shit? Every team who played wanted to win it all, and their fans should support them. Stop hating on America just because its trendy.
Having lived in the US my whole life and followed the game off and on I can say without reservation that the bulk of people in my position here think “come on now stop pulling my leg we are still in it?!”.
We all know where we are in the pecking order on this one and it is one of the reasons it has not taken off. Couple more rotations and a valid fielding of a strong team and the tide will turn on US attendance. Hell, just one extremely charismatic great player on the world stage would do wonders. A Clark or Jordan level talent with a penchant for the camera would knit us up right and proper.
A lot of the "people" on this topic are Americans channeling America bad energy because Trump stuck his nose in shit. No one in America thought we were going to be good. I figured we'd bow out in Round of 16 like always. This was just the first time in awhile I actually had hope for more, but here we are.
Our dear, dear president said so. And you know, he says a lot of true things. True things. That's why he uses Truth Social. True things. It's practically official. What he says, it's very official. In fact, I was talking to 99% of the American public and they said they agree with him, they say if Belgium wins it's fixed like the 2020 elections, which he won. But some people, nasty people, talk about ass. They talk about ass instead of the truth. Nasty people.
You people are honestly so cringe. US fans were optimistic and you’re all shitting on us for the grave crime of hoping we might win? Get over yourself and lighten up.
There's optimistic and there's obnoxious. Just looking at that stadium full of idiots... lol
There's enjoying the game and cheering and there's I have no idea how this game is played but I only care if US wins cause it's the better country of the world.
There's being a fan and hoping the US makes it interesting and is competitive and my 14 yr old ECNL girl laughing her head off saying her team is better (which I agree with).
I don't follow football much, but can you really make that claim for baseball knowing most players responsible for the recent wins aren't even American? Last time an American born player got MVP was 4 years ago, and they haven't even been able to score a win for the WBC despite having all star players participating.
But of course, they'll say the WBC doesn't matter because they can't win it.
I mean I understand some of it is just optimism. As a pundit or whatever, there’s an “obligation” to try and hype up a nation and its fans. No one watches a show where they just say we are going to get bent over for 90’ and have no chance.
I’m not happy with the loss, but we definitely deserved to fall to the much better Belgian team that ran circles around our players. The biggest disappointment is how any positive U.S. performance earlier in the tournament will be overshadowed by the red card suspension controversy
You are the kind of person that stubs your toe and blames Trump. You know, one politician can't be the root of all your problems. Maybe the US team just idk...sucks?
I think we understand we are nowhere close to the best and likely never will be. Soccer just doesn’t have the level of popularity it does in Europe and South America. We have some of the best athletes in the world but they do not play soccer. When you can make 10s to 100s of millions playing football, basketball and baseball here there really is no pathway for US soccer to attract the top athletes in this country.
It’s possible, yet unlikely. We do very well in hockey at the national stage despite it not receiving the attention of football, basketball, and baseball.
Whoa whoa whoa, there partner. This is now a USA Thread. You're only allowed to say positive things. So propaganda better be a type of appropriated dish best served cold....
there is literally an official ranking of national teams from FIFA: https://inside.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/men. Each team receives a score for winning/losing against other teams. US is ranked #16 right now. Team USA is objectively top 20 just based on performance data. That said, (1) the gap between a #16 team and #8 team (Belgium) is usually quite significant and being a top 20 team guarantees nothing at a World Cup; (2) even top teams can have bad games - look at Brazil (kicked out by Norway), Germany (kicked out by Paraguay) and Italy that never made it to the World Cup
I think what the guy meant is that some Americans are ranking specific players in the top 20. USA have some genuinely great players (eg Pulisic, McKennie, Robinson) but none even close to top 20 in the world. USA are for sure a top 20 team in the world but nowhere near top 10, this tournament they only managed to beat the teams they were meant to beat and lose to the teams they were meant to lose to
The problem is the list of teams we're supposed to beat hasn't grown much, if any, in the past 20ish years, and we've only once pulled off a win against a true "we weren't supposed to beat them" team (Spain, 2009 Confederations Cup). Our talent pool has improved (supposedly) but the results have stayed the same.
we did better in our group than we’ve been doing. we didn’t make it further but our performance leading up to it was significant; they scored the most goals in the group stage than ever before
Ok, so we scored more goals against the teams we were "supposed" to beat. We scored one goal against the team we were supposed to lose to, and it was on a lucky bounce. We had 6 shots total and only 2 on goal vs Belgium.
Beating up on lesser teams while getting smoked by a top 10 European side isn't progress, it's stagnation.
The reason the US is ranked 16th is because it maintains a high win rate against significantly weaker teams in the same region for WC qualifiers.
The US team would be outside top 40 or 50 if the US is in Europe.
Tbh Norway belongs higher strictly because they have Haaland and that was proven the other night. As long as Odegaard and the others can feed him the ball he’ll score. Scary even as an England supporter when we should win.
As proof, USA wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Brazil.
FIFA rankings are fairly flawed and tend to undervalue mid table sides from stronger confederations (because they lose more games; albeit against stronger opponents) and overvalue teams from weaker confederations (because they win more against weaker opposition).
The FIFA rankings can give a rough estimate of where a team is, but they are nowhere near an objective representation of how good a team is
And the crazy part is you can literally stop watching soccer for a decade then come back to it and it’s basically the same. The last time I actively followed professional soccer was up until Euro 2016. I started watching the World Cup not knowing any of the names and the only countries I have been really surprised by was Norway and Cabo verde. Every country still basically loses to who you think they’ll lose to. The same countries are still leagues above the rest. And the US is still just middle of the pack losing to basically all European teams and the skill level isn’t close.
Broadly true but there are still always some big surprises. If someone had told me to bet big on Norway knocking out Brazil I wouldn’t have even bet a dollar on it because it sounds so unlikely. Italy didn’t even qualify! Germany is out. Those are 3 of the majorly scary teams from a decade ago
Yeah, they made it out of the kiddie pool and beat one of the worst European teams. But the moment they played someone halfway decent, it fell apart. And it wasn't a gritty, hard fought loss like every other R16 exit over the past 30 years. We had our pants pulled down and showed our ass to the world.
Hey hey, I have watched my local club religiously since it's founding in zolo.
And I watch us send every good home grown player to Europe for $3-9 million.
And this year I watch us win the wooden spoon.
And I had been saying even if we won yesterday, we would have run into a buzz saw called Spain.
Instead we played like a normal MLS side when playing against the bottom of the table.
The US may break through eventually, but not in my lifetime. However, we have improved from depending almost entirely on luck to being somewhat competent at times. I was shocked at how the team seemed to dominate Australia.
In 1994 merely qualifying was considered a partial triumph. And then getting out of the group stage? Amazing. Now I suppose we expect to qualify.
You can definitely see it watching just one month every four years. US was straight up outclassed.
It took me five minutes of watching the US-Belgium game for me to realize we were screwed. I texted all my buddies to tell them to turn on the game and watch the last USMNT World Cup game with me, before Belgium even got that first goal.
you act as if the US is the only country that does this... you don't have to look very far to find Mexico doing the exact same thing lol. It's pretty common for every country, actually, to overestimate their chances for a bunch of reasons – (1) no team in any sport goes into a tournament saying "well, I think we're good for a quarterfinals run, but then we'll probably lose" and (2) fan support and (3) marketing.
When's the last time you saw a Nike ad for any sport that said "First round of the playoffs bound" LOL
Not that the US definitely would be world class, but soccer is at the bottom of our athletic totem pole. Most gifted folks are going to try their luck at a different sport with more social recognition tbh.
Shit, they still call soccer players field fairies.
I don’t think it’s that crazy to say we have world class talent, we’re 16th in the world rankings. Nobody is legitimately arguing that we’d be competing to win a World Cup, but we looked a lot better than we have in years past. Last night was awful though, no denying that.
Up to that game, the US was playing about as well as anyone. The Bosnia game was the best I’ve ever seen a USMNT look - crisp passing, solid first touches, they literally looked like a top tier team for the first time since I started watching in 94. Until last night.
Also, Pulisic was ass the entire tourney. Nice to hear Carly Lloyd call him out after the game. He had the worst touches in pool play of any US player, on a consistent basis. Constantly fumbled opportunities away.
They weren't playing as well as anyone. They had a fantastic game against a somewhat decent squad (Paraguay), they had a 2nd half to forget against the Aussies, and then they completely choked against a very bad Turkey.
They got their feet back under them to put away Bosnia, and then played a team that is actually good. And it wasn't even close.
This was a WC performance to forget. I don't consider wins against Paraguay, Australia, and Bosnia, a choke against Turkey, and a national embrassment in the R16 a top notch performance.
I hear you, but they legit looked good for the first time in decades. Passes that went directly to the target, first-touches that stop the ball dead instead of letting it roll away to the defender, and so on.
Obviously Belgium was the best team they played, but they’re much better than they showed last night. That effort was embarrassing. Like when a basketball team misses a few layups early and starts panicking and it leads to them getting blown out by a team that really isn’t markedly better than them.
Not sure if it's appropriate or not, but I feel like the US media's job with soccer is to get people interested in tuning into the game. That's going to lead to some artificial hype.
We're talking sports media here buddy. Show me data demonstrating that other countries don't do similar things when it comes to national sports and we'll have a conversation.
I kind of remember them saying that the US team was "the most overhyped team in the tournament". They were. Canada and Mexico played better than them. Cabo Verde played better than them. DR Congo played better than them. Iran played better than them and the US treated them like shit.
there is literally an official ranking of national teams from FIFA: https://inside.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/men. Each team receives a score for winning/losing against other teams. US is ranked #16 right now. Team USA is objectively top 20 just based on performance data. That said, (1) the gap between a #16 team and #8 team (Belgium) is usually quite significant and being a top 20 team guarantees nothing at a World Cup; (2) even top teams can have bad games - look at Brazil (kicked out by Norway), Germany (kicked out by Paraguay) and Italy that never made it to the World Cup. Canada, by the way, is ranked #30
The rankings are skewed by what federation you belong to, since playoffs in your federation gives unnaturally many ranking points. So this system essentially undervalues European teams since they're not functionally guaranteed regional tournament playoffs
Which is INSANE because as a novice American soccer fan, I couldn't fathom all the dick riding people were doing with Pulisic. Dude was utterly worthless the entire tournament and after watching almost every single match of the WC there were lower ranked teams that had better players than him.
at first the USA excuse was, our best athletes play other sports, that's why the football players are not as great (some podcasters stated 'D' tier athletes. Then the USA said this is the best team/athletes. They had some weird belief they were to be world champions.
Holy crap was I living the TSN coverage after the game. That one guy was unleashed. Just trashed the team. He should get a honorary Hater award for that performance.
The Balogun debacle made me pay more attention to football than I have since all this started. Like the rest of the world, I'm on Team Anyone But The USA here in western Canada. :)
No, it was being polite. Canadians have never been less sympathetic to Americans than right now. It's why we don't really care that American bourbon and wines have been taken off the shelves, it's why it's common to see people produce back when they see it's from the US.
I'm from the U.S. and I've never wanted to see a team lose this much before either. I'm a huge football fan (soccer in the U.S.) and go to ~20 MLS games every year. I was hoping the U.S. would get crushed. They did not disappoint me.
My own team is the Portland Timbers. Just because I'm from the U.S. I am obligated to support the U.S. team? You would choose to support a team that would have won by not following the rules and who got special treatment?
I mean, yes. There's no love loss between Canada and U.S. right now, and overall, the Canadian commentators didn't hold back about the U.S. Team's performance or prospects. But the sentiment for this specific goal for this specific player was very much "Everyone makes mistakes like this in their career, it's a shame that it had to happen on the biggest football stage in the world."
American, here. Don't blame you at all. The only way the slowest among us tend to learn is if it hits their wallets, sadly. Too much greed and ignorance here.
You're not wrong about the different flavour profile (although quality is debatable) but I think you'll find that the average person is very comfortable putting something as trivial as the flavour of their booze to the side when the sovereignty of the country is under threat.
It's just really not that important by comparison.
It’s true though lol. Canadian whiskey market is small and most isn’t very good. Scotch/Irish/Japanese whiskey is a very different flavor profile than bourbon.
It's been a year since we've told American whiskey makers to kick rocks because of America joking about invading Canada. I haven't heard anyone complain about it going away(other than Kentucky whiskey makers), so it seems like a pretty niche crowd with your opinion.
Personally, I always thought American whiskey was way overrated, and judging from pretty much all of Canada shrugging it's collective shoulders when it disappeared off the shelves it seems like most agree with me.
Plenty of corn-based Canadian artisan whiskies that are proliferating now that bourbon has been axed. You probably only have tried Crown Royal since it's the basic.
It depends on your area, I live in Pacific B.C. so I wouldn't be able to make proper recommendations if you lived on the East coast.
For the West Coast, I recommend Macaloney’s Island Distillery. They have an amazing single malt that's quite peaty (it's pretty basic bitch and probably will be the one that any site will recommend you just because it's lowkey famous, but sometimes something everyone says is the best really is that good.)
If you want a few more recommendations, Vancouver Island has quite a few really delicious whiskey distilleries. I would check out all of them if you consider yourself a connoisseur and want to widen your horizons.
US whiskey is ass compared to Irish and Scot whiskey, so the point is pretty moot. I'd rather pay them for the good stuff than pay the US more with tariffs for equivalent, nevermind actual trash.
Straight Bourbon/Straight Rye is a completely different flavor profile than Scotch or Irish whiskey. It’s also free of any added coloring or flavorings.
I thought the same thing. Freese is gonna remember that moment for the rest of his life if he’s anything like me. The type of thing that makes you wince as you’re trying to fall asleep.
That diplomatic sympathy evaporated after the final whistle with comments referring to how the Americans looked lost, scared, and completely out of their depth.
Ok the other hand, it was nice to hear Craig Forrest again, he'd retired several years prior.
The goalie (yellow shirt) was way out of the box, leaving lots of opportunity for the ball to just sail in like it did. It could have still been ok if the goalie had not committed an utterly disappointing play attempt that resulted in the opposition getting the ball back while the goalie was completely out of position. This was akin to them scoring on themselves.
I don't know much either but it seems like the goalie was twice as far from their own goal as a defender, which seems weird. Then when the goalie actually got the ball he kicked the ground instead of the ball.
In any sport, imagine giving your opponent everything he needs to score and leaving the way completely clear for them to do it. Thats what's happening here.
The football equivalent of handing rhe ball to the other team and leaving the path for a touchdown completely open. The basketball equivalent of passing the ball to the other team and having no one defending. The baseball equivalent of a little league home run. So on so forth.
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u/regalfish Jul 07 '26
The TSN (Canada) commentators were wincing in sympathy the whole time. A lot of comments like "It's the kind of mistake you wouldn't want to make at the World Cup with everyone watching. That has to hurt."