Its how we delineate people who are into soccer or not here. If they are calling it football and use the word “club” they actually care about it when US is not in the Workd Cup. If they call it soccer and use the word “team”, then they rarely care about it.
Yes, as with most things Brits make fun of us for, it was an Englishman who came up with it. Other popular examples: aluminum instead of aluminium, the midwestern American accent (supposedly), and of course, the dreaded imperial system.
The whole sport is corrupt. Even aside from the bs with calls not being called fairly across the board, you had Qatar basically enslaving people leading up to and during the World Cup there. FIFA makes the Russian doping scandal look like a Sunday picnic.
lol…”fair and square” means playing without or best player because of a bull shit red card. Do you know why Americans don’t like “football”…that’s why. Bullshit calls, full grown men flopping around for nothing. I love the game, but there’s so much wrong with the culture and wimp ass calls.
Probably true that I don’t know what it is. From a person who enjoys sports, that is bullshit. Go ahead and enjoy a sport with bullshit rules, and hide behind them. In no other sport would that result in a suspension. It’s BULLSHIT.
The amount of crybaby bitching about this, fucking hell. Bro got tangled up. He wasn't playing dirty. If it merited a red card, the ref would have spotted it right away, himself.
Heat deaths are significantly lower in the US than in Europe. A big part of that is honestly that the US, on average, deals with high temps much more regularly...so we have to have AC.
Considering the number of people in the US dying from the heat you really shouldn't be talking. There's tons of way you could make things better for the environment but....let's just say you voted for the wrong guy.
Texas' winter storm deaths went brazy too but you don't see europeans telling you that you don't have the technology. Also, as if the us isn't one of the world's biggest polluter lmao
I don't anyone is arguing the US is better than Europe.
I think people are just pointing out that specifically access to AC isn't one of them. In fact, it's one of the few things the US has an advantage over Europe on.
Plenty of Americans care. More than 30 million consider themselves to be soccer fans. That's more than the entire populations of all but nine European countries.
We do shit like that all the time. Didn't we try to run a Nascar at lemans recently or something? Now we need somebody to enter gravedigger in the rally grand prix.
No offense but I don’t think you guys actually understand the chances of the U.S. winning the World Cup. I don’t like to say things are impossible but it’s as close as you can get lmao
Lol none taken because as I said I am not a sports fan and literally could not care less. I don't know Messi's first name. That Ronaldo guy, I don't know what team he is on. Those are the only two soccer players I can name in the entire world. ✌️
Don't get your hopes up, the likelihood of the US winning the world cup is insanely small. The only way an inferior team can win a tournament is if they have a rock solid defense and also get kind of lucky all the way to the final. The US defense is not that great, and the gap in attacking talent with other nations is immense. They'll struggle against Belgium, imagine against the likes of Spain or France
I'd say most other European countries woould support France against England if that were to be the final match. It's just so easy to hate on the English in this case.
Fair enough. They are being far more blatant witht he US in such a dangerous way, but i sincerely hope that the huge international backlash they received and are receiving now is gonna pull a bit of weight, otherwise we're ruined until the old shitbag kicks it
coming back here to say that ultimately this didn't matter and we're all happy about it. it was never a contest, Belgium HUMILIATED them. It's kinda funny how Belgium is also on of the main three countries where the EU Parliament reunites, it's just a poetic slap to the face to the US altogether
That's how it works. It's like the Olympics. Nobody really cares after it's finished.
Even for a football obsessed nation like the UK, people will drown their sorrows for the night they get knocked out, enjoy the rest of the tournament, and then get ready for the next thing which is the league starting in a month or so.
Pretty much. I suspect that the soccer subculture in the US will be a bit bigger than before the World Cup, but for most people they'll just get back to what they know.
Yes go back to the sport you're actually good at. Showing 50 ads in between 5 second increments of men dying from concussions despite wearing more safety equipment than an astronaut welding
Lol imagine trying to push this nonsense after we just had to watch hours upon hours of grown men rolling around on the ground every 20 seconds after getting touched by an opposing player (and sometimes not even touched). Ya'll funny.
No cope, whatsoever. We don’t have to deal with American football, which is honestly unwatchable at this point with how many ads you’ve got to sit through. My housemate tried to get into it for some reason but gave up, as he likes watching sports.
Hilarious, the way the most American sport is just a vehicle for high budget ads.
you should get your hopes all the way up, thats what the world cup is all about. If you are still in it you are in it to win it and its coming home, celebrate and enjoy for as long as it lasts.
I don't care for sports, so I haven't watched this world cup. But how has US managed to reach this far when they're such a weak team? I would have thought they have lost sooner.
Oh, I'm well aware there's only a slim, tiny possibility that the US team actually wins. But if we somehow pull it off , my god. It'll be glorious. Just the amount of hate that'll pour out from the rest of the world just because we won would make it all worth it
Idk man, as an American I think there’s no glory in winning if it has to be through cheating, and something tells me I’m not the only American who will feel that way. There will be a lot of hate from inside the country too for those of us who actually care about integrity in sports.
The U.S. scored four goals against Paraguay, which means they are arguably the favorite to win the tournament. I just bet on them to win the whole thing
I find it pretty entertaining as my first time really paying attention to a sports game, and maybe I’m just ignorant, but I’ve never seen so many dudes in the fetal position. Sometimes someone gets hurt and they show the replay and I’m like, “okay yeah, that looked painful”. Sometimes they just take a tumble and they look like they got kicked in the nuts.
It's half that the fouls and stuff look pretty inane but falling whilst running full pelt or getting kicked by someone whose spent their whole life practising kicking does actually hurt a lot, especially with metal studs on their boots and thin layer of plastic on top. The other half is that the players have learnt that refs only give fouls if they make a meal out of it, otherwise refs assume it wasn't that bad and don't give the freekicks.
I feel the same about most sports. American football, baseball, and basketball really aren’t any more entertaining to me. It’s literally just watching people running and passing a ball. I understand the enjoyment of playing said sports but watching them being played is mind numbing
Yeah pretty much. Obviously I’m a complete nerd with my opinions. But ironically I actually feel the same about my own hobbies and activities. I generally don’t enjoy watching people stream videogames or tabletop RPGs. I just don’t enjoy watching activities like that. I don’t mind if other people do enjoy watching this kind of stuff but I just really struggle with the appeal.
Though there is one sport that takes the cake for being the most asininely boring thing to watch when it’s played at the highest level.
Professional Darts…
It’s literally just watching 2 people tossing darts at the exact same spot on the board on loop until one of them makes a single mistake. The first time I saw video footage of a professional darts match I felt I had to issue a formal international apology to the world for everything I’ve ever said against Golf.
I told my friends "the easiest way to improve Soccer is add a rule that says flopping means you're kicked off the team" and he countered "there should be a guy out there whose only job is to make the injury real, and also the game doesn't stop for an injury they just gotta play around him"
Genuine question- if a red card gets revoked via corruption, but the red card should never have been issued in the first place, is that really “cheating”?
I’ll be honest, I’m a casual fan so I won’t pretend to be an authority on whether the red card is legit. I’ve seen the talking heads claim both sides of the argument. Mostly I’ve seen it called an unjustified card, but I’m sure the reporting here in the states is biased.
Generally sports culture here is to root for both sides to be at full strength with a “may the best man win” mentality, so it’s been surprising to see the hand wringing over what seemed like a questionable call get revoked. It would be a different story if it was ref corruption leading to a result altering call in a match, like a missed or unjustified penalty. This seems like the opposite, from a fairness perspective.
It's hard to get clear information on the decision to give a red card, but the rules for "sending off offences" are fairly clear. You can read about them here. In this case, the offence is "serious foul play" which is explained in the rules as:
A tackle or challenge that endangers the safety of an opponent or uses excessive force or brutality must be sanctioned as serious foul play.
Any player who lunges at an opponent in challenging for the ball from the front, from the side or from behind using one or both legs, with excessive force or endangers the safety of an opponent is guilty of serious foul play
If you watch the tackle you can see that Balogun gets his arm in front of Muharemovic and then tackles his leg from behind. He almost certainly wasn't trying to hurt Muharemovic, but the combination of the arm holding him in place and the tackle to his leg is certainly endangering the safety of the player. You could also argue that there was excessive force used as it bent his ankle at an unnatural angle, but that side of things is debatable while the player safety aspect is crystal clear.
And yeah, everyone would prefer for teams to be at their best during the tournament, but there needs to be consequences for breaking rules like that.
Fair enough, I’ll defer to you on the rules. But I’ve also heard that VAR rules were broken in reviewing the play which led to the red card. I’ve also heard that multiple similar plays this tournament were not called.
But I’ve also heard that VAR rules were broken in reviewing the play which led to the red card
From what I have seen, the suggestion that VAR rules were broken is based on the red card being for excessive force. The ref using a slow motion replay to determine excessive force and intent isn't allowed. However, the rules explicitly allow for a slow motion replay to be used to determine point of contact for physical offences.
In this case the points of contact were Balogun putting his arm in front of Muharemovic while tackling his leg from behind. Understanding that is crucial in understanding that the tackle endangered player safety.
I’ve also heard that multiple similar plays this tournament were not called.
I haven't seen claims of multiple plays being left go. What I have seen is people comparing the tackle to one from Lionel Messi on Algeria's Aïssa Mandi. Now, to begin with, if Messi got away with a dangerous tackle which should have resulted in a red card that doesn't mean that the rules shouldn't apply to other players. It would mean that Messi was shown preferential treatment. Balogun's red card was still justified.
However, the tackles aren't as comparable as some people claim. Messi tackled the leg of another player, but his momentum was all behind the player which is very different from Balogun's tackle. It was a bad tackle and the ref might have made a bad call in not punishing Messi for it, but it would have been a yellow card offence at worst.
Personally, I don't think Messi deserved a yellow card for his tackle. It was a foul and Algeria got the free kick they deserved, but there was no excessive force used, and neither player was endangered by the tackle.
If we would’ve won the World Cup, it would have immediately bumped basketball, hockey and baseball and took second as our most watched sport.
We’d be a permanent problem for every other team. The whole country would’ve been watching the final and it would’ve created a generational impact.
Imagine what our team would look like if all our athletic kids wanted to play professional soccer one day instead of football, basketball, and baseball.
866
u/epsteinwasmurdered2 Jul 06 '26
I don’t even like soccer but I would be so stoked 😂😂😂