U.S. right-wingers turn on women’s soccer team

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This article was published 04/08/2023 (812 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By virtue of their repetitive, tiresome and, admittedly, intimidating dominance, the United States women’s soccer team should be a difficult rooting interest not only in Canada but pretty much anywhere that’s represented at an Olympics or World Cup.

Of the seven Olympic Games at which women’s soccer has been an official sport, they’ve medalled six times — four times gold. They’ve also won half the World Cups to date — four of eight — and have never finished lower than third. Combined, their goal-difference in the two competitions is +143.

They’ve always been good, and they’ve always known it — playing with that confident American swagger which is all the more irksome because it’s justified.

Their top players down the years, from Michelle Akers and Mia Hamm to Carli Lloyd and Megan Rapinoe were, and are, household names, with compensation to match. Alex Morgan, who plays for San Diego Wave of the National Women’s Soccer League and ranks fifth on her country’s all-time goalscoring chart, earned about US$5 million in endorsements last year. And as Winnipeggers well know, the team has a very large and very loyal fanbase.

So it’s not like they need additional, international support. If anything, these women should be villains.

But that’s the thing. They are. Just not where you might expect.

“The US Women’s National Soccer Team has once again refused to honour the national anthem of the country they claim to represent,” wrote Christopher Bedford in The Telegraph this week. “An international embarrassment [sic],” raged former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik.

“They were born in the freest, fairest country in the world,” opined Nikki Haley in a tweet, adding: “They should remember that blessing & the men & women (like my husband) proudly defending it the next time the national anthem plays.”

Well, they won’t. And, as the First Amendment warrior Ms. Haley purports to be, she shouldn’t expect them to. Although, given the folks moaning loudest about Rapinoe, Morgan et al, it goes without saying that intellectual rigour doesn’t exactly figure into their resentment.

If this U.S. squad has been villainized back home, it’s only because the American far-right has identified them as soldiers in the woke army. That the players couldn’t care less about them only antagonizes their detractors further.

Haley, of course, is a former South Carolina governor and current nominee to lead the Republican Party into the 2024 presidential election. Kerik, meanwhile, was granted a full pardon for a suite of felonies including tax fraud and lying to White House officials by former president Donald Trump.

Bedford, for his part, is executive editor of the ultra-conservative Common Sense Society and sits on the board of The Daily Caller, a website co-founded by Tucker Carlson. In a recent tweet he remarked that “diversity is a great weakness.”

You get the picture.

One can assume, given extreme right-wing America’s suspicion that soccer is some sort of communist plot (if it sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is, but the notion has also been publicly espoused by Ann Coulter), that the Bedfords, Keriks and Haleys of the world only watched the sport for the first time late last month.

You can almost imagine them gathering at Chick-fil-A for the soccer edition of their two-minutes hate, after which they inevitably reset their stopwatches for higher education, various beer brands, poor people, the NBA and the letters “L” “G” “B” “T” and “Q”, as well as the “plus” sign.

New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick summed up the loathing July 27 in which he referred to the U.S. national team as “conceited,” “vulgar,” “selfish,” “creeps,” “Team Obnoxious,” “nauseating,” classless” and, tellingly, “a literal turnoff.”

The sexualization was a hint; the man — among many — talking down to women, telling them what they can and cannot do, was the giveaway.

Placed in the context of a country hellbent on eviscerating women’s healthcare, you could forgive the players watching Tik-Toks or doing jumping jacks while the anthem plays. Or, applaud them.

There are any number of reasons why the back-to-back world champions could choose — individually, no protest or demonstration has been uniform — to abstain from singing The Star-Spangled Banner, to remove their hands from their hearts, or to kneel during those 115 seconds.

Racism, police brutality, the loss of agency over their bodies — take your pick. It’s also no one else’s business, and it’s both admirable and brave that the players neither feel the need to explain nor take the conservative bait.

“Ultimately, every player has the choice,” remarked defender Naomi Girma, who plays with Morgan in San Diego, ahead of her side’s Group E match with the Netherlands. “I think that’s what I would say.”

Incidentally, that Wellington, New Zealand encounter was the most-watched group stage contest in tournament history. So the hyper paranoia south of the border hasn’t exactly translated into reduced viewership. And while Sunday’s round of 16 showdown with Sweden (4 a.m., TSN) isn’t exactly a scheduling dream for the North American market, the TV and streaming numbers will nevertheless be eye-popping yet again.

In a sport, and from a nation that seems to constantly find new methods of intimidation, the United States women’s national team, as ever, has been unbowed. If anything, they’ve stared straight back at the haters, smiled, and just kept playing.

And that, no matter which country you happen to be watching from, is extremely hard to cheer against.

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