How U.S. Soccer Lost Its Hipster Cred
In 2013, I was covering a soccer match in Columbus, Ohio, between the U.S. men’s national team and Mexico when a man dressed as George Washington ran up to me and screamed, right in my face, “America! America! Motherfuckin’ America! Fuck yeah!” He did it because he was happy and he wanted me to be happy with him. And I was!
One of the primary joys of cheering for your country in international sport—at the Olympics, the World Cup, or a particularly rowdy curling championship—is the opportunity to be nationalistic in a (mostly) harmless way. Chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” in a stadium is dramatically different from chanting it at, say, an insurrection. But the Trump years made it hard for Americans alienated by the former president’s particular brand of “America First” politics to be overtly, and loudly, patriotic. Maybe
