AIBU to think it's right useless and cheating USA team has left World Cup, defeated by mighty Belgium?

[nepkoztarsasag]

AIBU to think it's right useless and cheating USA team has left World Cup, defeated by mighty Belgium?

The USA team defended so poorly before the third and fourth goals that they deserved to lose for that reason alone.

The Belgian manager spoke to Folarin Balogun and recognised that he was in no way to blame for what happened. Which was a sensible and considerate thing to do.

No footballer should be held responsible for Donald Trump.

@BravasPatatas You said the decision to play him was down to Pochettino. I think that’s unfair, as I explained.

They could have not played the player and respected the rules and the spirit of the competition.

I said the players are unable to make the decision, and the only person who can make the decision is the manager. That is true. Just because it would be a difficult decision, or other people wouldn’t like the decision, doesn’t change that the players can’t make the decision but the manager can. Which is what I said.
I gave no opinion on what Pochettino should have done.

Splitting hairs!

It’s not the players fault. They have been shoved under the bus by their mad man President.
There are no limits to his corrupt nature.

No, you just misrepresented what I said in order to make your point.

The Belgium team doing the Trump dance in the locker room was hilarious. That’s probably why he is hunting Greenland again. Another project, does he complete anything.

What do you mean is it ‘right’? A team lost a match in the knockout stage so they are out of the tournament. It’s not an ethical dilemma, it’s sport.

I live in America and have an American fiancé and I thought Belgium deserved to win because they were the much better team. I wish people would leave politics, xenophobia and god knows what else out of football - it cheapens the beautiful game FFS.

Exactly. They deserved to lose because they played a worse game than their opponents. Nothing more, nothing else.

wish people would leave politics, xenophobia and god knows what else out of football
So do we, then along came Donald fucking Trump (and Infantino).

Hence the world is delighted at the US's loss.

Hopefully, Infantino somehow gets ousted and the US gets rightfully banned for at least the next tournament.

But what’s all this karma nonsense? When quite clearly Belgium played a far, far superior game and therefore deserved to win. Someone upthread attributed the win to ‘the whole world being behind Belgium’. Fuck that. USA played shite and Belgium were a better team therefore they thrashed them.

Why would this be unreasonable?

Yes I am loving Belgium

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cly77en9z9lo

This was interesting... The American man for example saying "it was our responsibility to ask". Its probably partly embarrassment/defensiveness but maybe also the fact Americans follow football less than the rest of the world (I know some Americans are very keen and knowledgeable). It's not that other countries fans are squeaky clean and honourable. There have been cases where referees made dodgy decisions/players got away with things they shouldn't and the teams/supporters that benefitted were still happy to take the win. There's lots of room for interpretation anyway. But this situation was so unusual and all the Americans interviewed seemed to unanimously support Trumps intervention and the result. I don't think other countries would have done that so blatantly
Maybe it's just a MAGA thing?

I don't think we can ever know, for sure, whether Trump's meddling and the general injustice impacted the mentality of either team (though it sounds to have been the best performance Belgium have put in for a while, and the US were, by all accounts, unusually abysmal).

Obviously I don't think anyone actually thinks "karma" or some other form of divine intervention produced the results, they are just expressing how highly satisfying it was to see the US lose. You're splitting hairs that barely exist (Trumpesque ones, if you will).

And on your general point re. politics. Sport is inherently political and given how the US has treated much of the world under Trump, they were always going to attract some additional degree of negative sentiment. It's quaint to pretend otherwise.

And that's before we get into the FIFA peice prize (which is why I made the political choice of not watching a single game of this tournament), and the political/corrupt meddling re. the red card.

One part American exceptionalism, many parts (understandable) ignorance of football's norms and rules.

Mate, there was a home crowd. How much ‘mentality’ do you think the USA players need? And no, they weren’t unusually abysmal - they played as poorly as in previous games, it’s just they weren’t up against a shite team this time so got thrashed. Honestly the amount of bollocks that gets spouted just so people can squeeze Trump into every goddamn discussion and ruin a good thing beggars belief. I’ve heard more about Trump in this tournament than the actual football FFS. Enough already.

Trump is such a whiny tosser..If he had any self awareness he'd know how stupid he looks, but sadly he is unaware.

Infantino is currently unopposed for yet another term as president of fifa. What needs to happen is only 2 terms - like Trump. The embarrassment is Fifas too. They should have stood firm. That’s where the difficulty really lies. Football is an alien sport to most Americans. More are now interested but at what cost? Meddling and lack of basic understanding. Belgium were the better team but the USA played like the life had been drained out of them. I don’t believe this would have happened to the same extent without this argument. It also fired up Belgium.

By not watching, Trump wins. It’s a stupid protest. I believe in supporting what’s good and watching great sport and Trump is not taking that away from me.

Trump inserted himself into this - I dont know why you're pretending otherwise. His intervention was the top story on all the American news sites, so it's not just anti-Americanism either.

And the US thrashed Paraguay, who are absolutely no slouches - and its not as if Belgium are a fantastic team by any stretch.

Maybe the US just bottled it on the day, but it's naive to think that Trump's meddling or the backlash to it couldn't possibly have had any negative impact on their mentality or further fueled Belgium's.

Double post

@11AndCountingI Agee. Nearly every pundit thinks this. They had been ok in other games. No, they are not full of top players but neither is Belgium. This issue could well have caused issues in the team that were a distraction and not what was wanted at all.