John Nieman
I have lived my life with a basic mantra that everything works out for the best. I tell students and family members a story that was told to me by a Chilean soccer coach back when I was running Rainbow Soccer that illustrates the point. I won’t bore you with it now but I find it instructive and fascinating.
That perspective has served me well. How else can we explain that I’m sitting out on a horse farm with my beautiful, talented, and extremely smart lawyer wife, proud of my successful son with his unbelievable wife and children, the three of us coming from a mobile home on Old Greensboro Highway. Everything works out for the best.
And so it is with this edition of the World Cup. Those of you who read last month’s installment saw where I made several predictions about the tournament. Now, I realize that predictions are not my strong suit, and that column clearly showed that.
But one prediction that I posted that I was hoping would not come to pass was that our president would figure out a way to insert himself into the proceedings and somehow mess it up. He did and he did. The Balogun red card was certainly not even close to being the worst call of the tournament.
These things happen. Those of us who are soccer fans and have a basic knowledge of the game understand that. When I was playing the game regularly, I was somewhat renowned—probably reviled—for protesting vigorously when I felt a call was made wrongly, but if I was not thrown out I played on and once the game was over forgot about it over blue cups at He’s Not Here. The game was over and we move on.
I guess the answer to how it is that the one American who clearly knows the least about the game was able to insert himself into the proceedings is that FIFA is run by a pure sycophant who has replaced the monetary greed of the past as the primary source of corruption with political and influence pedaling.
And so the ridiculous response to Balogun’s red card resulted in the narrative of the tournament wherein the American people were being celebrated by foreign fans for being welcoming and interesting and the American team being lauded for being more skilled than expected and playing with true heart and determination back to the old cliche of the Ugly American Bully.
As a card-carrying, dues-paying member of the American Outlaws, it put me in a terrible position. The only positive, beneficial outcome of the Belgian game at that point was for Belgium to thrash The Americans. And they did. And so, as best it could, everything worked out for the best.
The postmortem on the USMNT for me is that it was a qualified success. Take the red card mess out of it and the team won the group, got to the round of 16, and lost to a superior European team who had not only the arguably best goalkeeper in the world but also a talented group of experienced players.
The fact that it was a blowout can be somewhat attributed to the change in the narrative provoked by idiotic interference. Anyone who points out the fact that the USMNT were the betting favorites simply doesn’t understand how betting works. The unbridled enthusiasm that resulted from the group stage and Bosnia resulted in a lot of American money being bet on the USMNT. That moved the odds.
Without Trump’s interference, we would look much more favorably on the team’s performance.
Once the Americans were eliminated we were able to turn our attention back to all the other wonderful stories. The enhanced format was wildly successful. I daresay we could even go to 64 teams. In the group stages there were no horrible blowouts and there were some pleasant surprises. I need say no more than the words Cape Verde.
The aforementioned unbelievable daughter-in-law treated me to join Jeff and Burke and her on a trip to Atlanta to watch Haiti play Morocco. It was a transformative event. Fans from different countries coming together and enjoying the beautiful game. Thanks to her from the bottom of my heart.
I write this just after the quarterfinals wrapped up. What could be a better testimony to the success overall of the tournament than the fact that the four best teams are in the semi-finals? I can truly say that even as I look forward to the semi-finals and the final I’m a touch sad that it’s coming to an end. Even the Trump intervention hasn’t been able to tarnish the event. At least, so far.
I know there’s a place for this elsewhere in the paper, but just a quick word on the Fox broadcast. They had the good sense to bring in Rebecca Lowe from NBC and Thierry Henry, Peter Schmeichel, Clint Dempsey and others from Paramount and the fabulous Zlatan from his own world to balance out the unremitting positive happiness of Rob Stone and the annoyance of Alexi Lalas. Overall, an interesting experience. Just wish they would have been willing to share clips with other networks’ analysis shows.
Dream Final for me: France v England. I clearly can’t reliably and so I won’t make a prediction.
Fat Boy Index: 235. A number last recorded in 1988.