The USA was knocked out of the World Cup today. That's a shame; I was cheering for them. That was partly out of the novelty of American underdogs, and to represent North America well on the world stage.
The US in soccer is always surreal, but it seemed extra weird this time around as Americans started to take notice, and even care about their team.
Of course, you don't want to read too much into the fandom of one tournament. Ann Coulter's screed against soccer has made the rounds of the internet, with much laughter at its Colbert-esque hyperbole. This article in The Atlantic is more analytic, but also bites off more than it can chew by paralleling soccer and Obama support. But it does summarize the uniqueness of soccer amongst American sports: it's not the sport itself, but America's place in it. The US is just another country in soccer, not unique or dominant. Today's massive clash was against Belgium. Where else had the US ever been on even terms with Belgium? And their nemesis over the last three World Cups has been Ghana.
This may not seem like a big shift, but it's it's remarkable how unusual it is for Americans to see themselves as being on a level with other countries. We have a tendency to think American exceptionalism is exclusively practised by far-right thinkers like Coulter. But really, the attitude infects all parts of the political spectrum, with the more international-friendly pundits seeing themselves as friendly but still special.
Accepting the World Cup and the U.S. role as just one of 32 shows that many Americans are ready to take a less-hierarchical international perspective. Losing in the Round of 16 may challenge that new-found acceptance; we'll see if it sours their view of the competition, or if they see their team's good-play-but-no-championship as the positive achievement that it was.
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