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Politics

GOALLLLL! US Men’s Soccer Overcomes Garbage Red Card, Disallowed Scores to Achieve Epic World Cup Victory

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As I watched Wednesday night’s FIFA World Cup game between the United States and Bosnia and Herzegovina, I thought to myself, this is why so many Americans don’t love soccer. Disallowed goals, overly dramatic performances following minor injuries — and a bullshot red card that threatened to pull victory from the hands of the Americans.





By the end, though, I was a believer as the team pulled together and thrashed out an epic 2-0 victory, despite being a man down for over 36 minutes.

The red card is so devastating because not only does it result in the penalized player being kicked out, but you can’t replace him, meaning now your opponent has one more man than you do. Even worse, the player is banned from the next game, meaning the U.S. will advance to the round of 16 without one of its best scorers.

Does this look like an intentional effort by America’s Folarin Balogun, who had scored our first goal, to hurt another player, or an accident? I’d understand if he’d punched the guy, but this sort of thing could happen on any play:

The reason this bothers me so much is that, even if there was no dark intent by the official, the savage punishment at least gives the appearance of someone putting the thumb on the scale, just like California’s mail-in ballot system and endless vote-counting season raises questions.

But let’s move on to nice things, shall we? Not only did the United States not fold their tent after the massive setback, but they kept coming — relentlessly. Watch this goal. Watch this beautiful goal. How does Malik Tillman make the ball move like that on this free kick?!





Goalllllllllllll!

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Here’s Balogun’s goal earlier in the game. We will surely miss him in the next round. Thanks, VAR (Video Assistant Referee).

Watch the precise passing:

The game could have ended 4-0 in our favor, but two goals were disallowed on offside calls. Darn Euros, what the heck is with all this offsides? Let ’em play. (Soccer purists will almost surely drag me for that one, but offside calls feel like AWFLs crashing your party).

I remember in my ’20s realizing I’d never been to Europe, so I bought a Eurail pass and would just show up at train stations and pick destinations at random. It was one of the greatest trips in my life. What I did not plan on, however, was that the World Cup was underway. I decided I’d try to get into it, so I watched matches at cafes (and yes, bars) and tried to become a fan.

I couldn’t. It seemed like every game devolved into a keepaway sleepfest, and the final scores were often 1-0 — if not 0-0. I don’t know if I’ve changed or if the game has, because I’ve been trying to watch games when I can, and I’ve frankly been highly entertained. That’s almost certainly helped by the fact that the Cup is being hosted by the United States (fine, we’ll give a little credit to Canada and Mexico too, since they’re co-hosting), and the American team is doing well.





That and the fact that Americans are showing amazing patriotism and love for the country. Eat this, America-hating liberals:

On to the next, a round-of-16 battle with Belgium on Monday. Keep rocking it, USMNT!









Source
Las Vegas News Magazine

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