Perch wrote:
I can understand why some people might dislike the opinions of some of the players but I can’t understand the delight some people get from seeing the team lose. Nor can I understand how some people fail to see how all the attention paid to those opinions detracts from the team’s performance. If another country decides to kneel in solidarity with the US’s protest that hardly compares to living and breathing that protest every practice, every game, every day.
It goes deeper than this…soccer is not well liked by most Americans. In the US soccer is dominated by upper middle class suburban white kids, due to the expensive club system. What should really be a game for everyone is just not in the US and at the high school level and above it is a pretty exclusive sport in the sense that unless you’ve been playing club soccer for many years the typical kid won’t be able to make the high school team. This is one of the (many) reasons the US men’s team doesn’t do very well internationally (lots and lots of talented kids are left out).
So on top of that you add what is perceived by Americans as a bunch of privileged, grown, white women, who came up through the pay-to-play system in the US, demanding more money and it leaves little for the typical American to root for.