Fair or Foul? Canadians rip US women's soccer team for "disgraceful" celebrations in 13-0 rout.

Some of the lower ranked teams already have points in the tournament (#15 Italy beat #6 Australia and #37 Argentina tied #7 Japan) and a number of lower ranked teams have been competitive (#46 Cameroon lost to #5 Canada 0-1, #39 Chile gave #9 Sweden all it could handle in holding them scoreless until the 83rd minute before losing 0-2). So the 24 team tournament is plenty competitive.

*stipe wrote:

Scoring was fine.

Celebrating was obnoxious.

That’s just me.

Yep, once you're clearly going to win, act like you've been there before, like it's no big deal. Class and grace, more valuable than winning.

It's hard to take this sport seriously when such dramatic blowouts are evidently fairly common.

I think it is "sexist" in some degree to complain about the celebrations. We would certainly complain long and loud (and more important mock incessantly) a professional men's team for behaving like that, but I'm not sure the culture in the men's game need be expected to be the same as with the women. Or in other words, we are applying the norms from the men's game (general unwritten rules) to the women's game, and doing that is, by definition, sexist.

Some things are different between men's and women's sports. As another familiar example, men don't fall down at the end of cross country races as a general rule, and women (girls anyway) often do.

I'm not judging these differences, just observing them. Which is probably sexist… :-)

Achilles Tear wrote:

Canadians cheered Durant’s injury last night, so they do not have the moral high ground here.

The entire country of millions cheered?

My distaste is less a matter of sympathy for the beaten team and more a matter of secondhand embarrassment for the celebrator. When you celebrate goal number 8+ over a clearly inferior team with a full on dance party, you just look like an unprofessional buffoon. Just cringey to watch.

Sorry, the celebrations is sports are becoming ridiculous, act like you have been there before. You scored a goal or TD, run whatever, you did not cure cancer or save a life. Get over yourself....

No issue with the score line. But celebrating goals after going up 8-0 by sliding around like you scored a 90th minute winner are not cool. That was cringe to watch.

Germany was playing in an elimination game. US women are in the group stage. Goal differential matters here-in Brazil, it did not.

some user name im too lazy to type out wrote:

Okay now a real post.

Obviously the women's team should be happy this was "a major victory" there. If you can't act like you belong then your actions will put you where you belong.

Does Hope Solo still play from the team? This is the attitude I'd expect from her classless act.

Really? A "real post" by someone that doesn't even know if Solo still plays for USA? Move along, son.

Ok. I found a video of what really bothered me. The following celebration when the US goes up 9 to 0 with a goal by one of its veterans was way over the top for me:https://twitter.com/FOXSoccer/status/1138547110079369216 If the World Cup isn't going to cap goal differential, I've got no problem with the goals but celebrations like that are absurd. A poster in the game thread nailed it when he or she wrote:

trollism wrote:

The scoring of the goals isn't the problem for me, it's the giving it the big one after every goal that I think gets on people's nerves.

Yeah, well done, you've just scored the 11th goal against an amateur team - no need to celebrate beyond a smile and a handshake.

If you have been involved in high school for a soccer you will understand this.I

The girl star players have been treated like primadonnas all their lives. Their parents live their lives around their stars games, travel tournaments and managing their budding caeers.

They are crazy on the sidelines.

What’s really disgraceful is that Thailand sent such a trash team to the World Cup. This isn’t little league.

They should absolutely score as many goals as possible.

But celebrations are context-specific.

This type of thing for the first 4 goals? Fine.

Afterwards? Poor taste.

You're a 4:10 high school 1600m runner. You show up to your district meet where the next best kid has a PR of 4:45. You cruise to a 4:25, easily demolishing the field. You then celebrate like you just broke Alan Webb's HS record and do a victory lap high fiving spectators, fist pumping, and doing backflips down the backstretch before sprinting into the infield and doing a knee slide across the turf.

What I see from the USWNT is about as ridiculous as the above.

Used to play soccer and I agree. Once you get past a certain threshold lead, it's embarrassing for both sides. Celebration is really unnecessary.

The complaint that anyone criticizing this is sexist is absurd.

Here's an exercise for you:

Imagine if this was basketball and a bunch of predominately black American men were doing crazy celebrations after 3 pointers and alleyhoops when we were up by 65 on some hapless foe. People would be outraged.

Rojo, this is one time I completely agree with you.

I have played, coached and refereed soccer for years at many levels up to college level.

I have no problems with the team scoring as many goals as they can.

I feel that the celebrations showed a lack of class, especially for the last few goals.

Sex has nothing to do with it.

I do have a problem with a team like Taiwan actually being in the World Cup.

I think this actually hurts their argument that they deserve equal pay to the men.

There is very little competition on the women's side.

There are high school teams in the US that could beat Taiwan.

Taiwan is not the only really bad team in this tournament.

There is an issue of sexism, but it comes from a different angle than Wombach. The men do not celebrate when they have a decisive goal differential because the players on the winning team may have pro teammates on the losing team or may one day end up on the same pro team. The professionalism on the men's side is due to the fact that men's pro soccer is a massive worldwide professional sport with tons of money and the national team play is not the center of their professional universe. For the women, it is the exact opposite. None of the players on Thailand's team play pro on a team outside of Thailand. And women's pro soccer is tiny compared to the men's leagues. So, the world cup and olympics are epic for the women because it is really the only time their sport is on a national or international stage. They are going to live it up on every goal because once the world cup is over, no one is going to care about women's soccer until the Olympics.