It's Not About the Goals and the Celebrations . . .

When the U.S. Women’s soccer team scored 13 goals against Thailand in their opening game at the World Cup, I celebrated along with them. Goal number 13 was no less exciting than the first. I was happy for the players who were able to score their first goal in a World Cup. I was happy for the veterans seeking to show the world that they can still play and that their age is irrelevant to their abilities, and I was happy for those on the bench being included in Megan Rapinoe’s goal celebration. It would frustrate me if I was Mallory Pugh and I just scored the 12th goal of the game, and the coach glared at me from the sidelines and told me I’m not allowed to celebrate. "Act like you've been there before." That is difficult when half of the team literally hasn't been there before. Mallory Pugh is the youngest member on the team, and this is her first World Cup goal. Who has the right to tell her that she can’t celebrate that accomplishment, or has to subdue her natural emotions simply because she scored later in the game? Pundits apparently. The outrage was swift. Then the backlash against the outrage. There’s a lot of outrage out there, and a sort of false pride that goes along with being the first to act outraged by something that other people maybe hadn’t thought to be outraged by yet. But more often than not, this outrage is misplaced and misses the bigger picture. Nowhere was this more evident than the U.S. team’s lopsided victory over Thailand. While we could argue all day about running up the score and whether or not the Americans should have celebrated after goal number 8 (or should it have been 6?), all of that is kind of missing the potential powder keg of positive change that could finally come to women’s soccer that this game highlighted. 

I don’t think anyone expected Thailand to get a win over the U.S. and that includes the Thai National Team themselves. They were simply proud to be there for the second time. Of course they were hoping to see a lower point deficit, but it's worth noting that veterans such as Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd sought out their opponents at the end of the game and gave them words of encouragement. This ultimately ended up in an amusing twitter exchange between Lloyd and the Thai goalie who seemed almost star struck that she had been approached by one of the greatest players to play the game. Point being the Thais were not offended by the 13-0 deficit, or the celebrations. Upset and disappointed? Yes. Offended? No.

You see, the Thai women have now been in two consecutive World Cup tournaments, and their male counterparts have never even qualified. And yet, the men’s team seems to benefit from more money and support. Sound familiar? When Alex Morgan was confronted by a reporter regarding the high number of goals, she responded that it would have been a greater insult to be playing "keep away" from Thailand during the second half and that FIFA and other world organizations weren’t doing enough to elevate women’s football clubs to a more level playing field. Many of these clubs are focused more on money than finding real talent or encouraging young women to get involved in sports, and the results are apparent. FIFA and corruption kind of go together like Donald Trump and twitter, so most of this is unsurprising. As shocking as it may seem, fixed matches still exist, and the players (often unaware of playing in fixed matches) are the ones who are the losers in the end (in more ways than one).

Radical change will not occur from a 6-0 final score. Thailand could, in theory, go home at the end of the tournament saying they "held their own" against the best ranked team in the tournament. A 13-0 score? Not so much. Will this motivate the Thais to put more energy into their women's program to avoid this kind of embarrassment in the future? I want to say yes, but realistically . . . no. The Thai women don't have a lot of leverage to demand greater support in their home country, but their opponents might be able to get something started.

The American female players have been fighting for equal pay for years now. The lawsuit was most recently elevated when U.S. soccer attempted to make the absurd argument that the men's and women's team could not be viewed as counterparts and therefore did not need to pay the women the same amounts because the pay structures were different. Uh, yeah, that's kind of the point. The women are salaried and the men are paid on a per-game basis. But this is a relatively insignificant difference because the disparities are still out of control. Both the men and women are required to play 20 international "friendly" games per year. If the men lose half of them, they still get paid over $180,000 for their "efforts." If the women won ALL of the games (including all of their bonuses for winning), they would be set to make $99,000 total. Even if the men lost EVERY SINGLE GAME, they would still make more than the women. The men's team is basically the Cleveland Browns of U.S. soccer. Everyone knows they're a joke, but everyone also seems to be ok with paying them a lot of money for their embarrassing performances.

For years it was argued that the men generated more revenue and thus deserved higher pay. Sure. Let's look into that. The women's World Cup final versus Japan in 2015 is the highest watched soccer game in U.S. history -- men or women. Thanks to that victory, revenues for the women have exceeded the men every year since 2015, no thanks to U.S. soccer's lackluster efforts to get the new jerseys out prior to the current World Cup. Nicole and I finally received ours after our return from France, having ordered them weeks earlier. The men failed to qualify for the World Cup last year after losing to Trinidad & Tobago. The women have won three world cups, yet the men play on better fields, get better treatment, fly chartered airplanes, and enjoy greater bonuses and per diem pay. Alex Morgan, the star celebrity of the American women, makes most of her money from sponsorships, not from U.S. soccer's laughable compensation structure.

If the U.S. women are able to pull off another World Cup victory (and there's no guarantee of this despite that impressive 13-0 score against Thailand), they may just have that extra bit of ammunition for their lawsuit. Most athletes wouldn't want a lawsuit distraction while playing in the biggest games of their lives, but that's precisely what the women have done. They've basically said, "No one will listen to us for the last four years, so now that we're back in the headlines, don't you find it reasonable to get equal pay for equal play?" They are fighting a two front war, on and off the pitch. Never has the threshold for victory been so high. 13-0? It's a start.

The last time I went to an LA Galaxy game, the score ended in a 0-0 tie. Needless to say, it was an incredibly boring game. The crowd (mostly filled with Galaxy fans) uncharacteristically booed them at the end of the game. With 30 minutes left to play, both teams played as if they were complacent with a scoreless game. We just watched both teams pass it around to each other with no attempt to score. It was a complete joke. We have not been back to an MLS game since that day. We now only attend games for the Women's National Team. They are always entertaining because they play every game like they're down. They have an intensity and dynamic style of play that is rarely seen in soccer. They make it . . . watchable. And in the stands are a lot of youths - boys and girls sporting the jerseys of players like Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd. It would have been unheard of in the past for a boy to be wearing  jersey with a girl's name on it. You have to look at that and think, maybe, just maybe this time there's a chance. It won't be easy, but if there's any group of women who could pull off such drastic change that has alluded so many before them, it's this team right now. So when Megan Rapinoe darts to the sideline to celebrate with the rest of the bench, you should probably be celebrating with them.

Off to the World Cup!

We began our journey with a healthy breakfast of pain au chocolats and juice, and then made our way through the entirety of Luxembourg, which took many an hour tops. We made a stop in Luxembourg city for a little exploration. I had been here when I was much younger - 13 to be exact. I remember buying a Swiss army knife at a market. While this seems silly, it actually makes sense now because everything in Switzerland is ridiculously overpriced. 13 year-old Brian was unknowingly a very wise consumer. We walked into the old part of the city and looked over the city walls. There were a few pianos placed around the city and in squares. I tickled the ivories for a spell with the few songs I could recall such as Star Wars and the theme to Apollo 13. . . the classics if you will. Our parking permit was only for an hour, so we weren't in the city too long.

We also wanted to make sure we got to Reims in France with enough time to chill before the upcoming match between Thailand and the United States. It was another two hours on the road to reach Reims. We weren't staying in the city, but rather in the town of Hermonville, about 15 minutes to the northwest. It's set in the heart of Champagne country, where they make . . . champagne. After watching the rain fall outside our windows, we got decked out in our various U.S. attire to support the American women. I was wearing a t-shirt with a profile of one of the player's, a defender named Becky Sauerbrunn, the unsung hero of the defense, who has never scored a goal. Nicole had an old jersey for Carli Lloyd, one of the veterans of the team, but layered it with a t-shirt for Tobin Heath because we thought it might be cold. Greg had purchased the new official jersey. Representing in style, we drove into town, parked, and had crepes for dinner. From there we walked across the bridge into the stadium.

We made sure to purchase some merchandise and I bought a sandwich since the crepe had not adequately filled me up. It wasn't long before the game was underway. The United States was well represented in the stands, but not just by Americans. There were many French in the stands cheering on the U.S. women, which I admit surprised me a bit. If any other team wins this tournament, it is likely to be the French. They benefit from playing in front of their own country as well as being well stacked with talent. Earlier this year, they beat the U.S. 3-1. While there were fans for Thailand, they were few in number. At first the U.S. looked a little sloppy, missing some passes, and it seemed like they were nervous for their first performance of this World Cup. Within about 15 minutes, however, they started finding their groove. First Alex Morgan, then Rose Lavelle scored the first two of the match. Having had a large Fanta before the game, I had to pee and wanted to beat the rush at halftime, so I decided to duck out with about 15 minutes before the half. I didn't think I would miss anything, but as it turns out Lindsey Horan scored while I was away. As we all settled in for the half, the score was 3-0, a fairly normal and expected score for the U.S. playing Thailand. What happened after the half however was otherworldly, and everyone around me began to notice. Every time there was a corner kick and the U.S. women began pushing toward the Thai goal, everyone brought up their cameras because there was almost a 75% chance that it would result in a goal. The game ended with a staggering 13-0 with Alex Morgan scoring five alone. It was a spectacularly entertaining game, one that of course ended up in controversy, because nothing's allowed to be fun anymore. I will get to this in a later post.

In any event, it was an amazing thing to watch and we walked back to the car. On the way, a French man asked who won. I responded in French and gave the score. I don't think he believed me, but he congratulated us and said it was great. The following morning, our hosts at our B&B-style mansion joked that it would not be the same result when they played France. We, of course, agreed. I doubt the rest of the tournament will see anything quite like that record-breaking performance.

As we left Reims, we reflected on the previous evening like it was some kind of dream. We had actually watched a game at the world cup, and not only that, a historic one. We drove a bit around Hermonville and the surrounding villages where we saw vineyards and poppy fields. After this,
we drove steadily north until we reached the town of Leuven in Belgium, just outside of Brussels. It is a college town, but a historic one with very pretty dormitories along the river and an old town square that was ripe for photographs. As we exploring the town, we got caught in a massive downpour. It lasted for about 15-20 minutes, and then we were able to continue our stroll about town. We ate at an outdoor cafe where I had some Belgian fries and a chicken sandwich (and of course a beer). The town was not large, so we were able to see a lot of different parts of it without too much effort. We did not encounter many (if any) tourists. Nicole did a fantastic job of getting us to some relatively unknown locales that gave us a more authentic experience as a whole. While incredibly brief, it was a very memorable trip.

BeLux

After a stressful day of nonreving that resulted in about five changes to our original plan, and an unfortunately long sit at Heathrow, we somehow ended up in Brussels on British Airways to meet our old friend Mr. Poopers (sometimes known simply as "Greg"). He had been on a direct flight from O'Hare and had arrived early in the morning. He had the chance to make a day of it and explored Brussels in a big way. We arrived sometime around 7pm. We got a rental car and drove into the city. We had one stroke of luck for the day, it was some kind of national holiday, so parking was free on the streets. But for the exact same reasons, there was not a lot open for dinner. We had burgers and a much-earned beer. The three of us crashed without much effort.

The following day, we began our drive south out of Belgium, but first made a stop at the very cute town of Dinant. We parked on the opposite side of the river from the town's main church. It was a very scenic vista as the church is positioned below a sheer rock face. The nice part about this town of Dinant was the lack of tourists. While they existed, they were few. We didn't have to bob-and-weave like most other places in Europe. We walked across the bridge to look inside the church and also do a bit of beer shopping. Belgium is well-renowned for its beer making and we capitalized. While in the store, it began to rain outside. This allowed us to take more time in choosing our beers. We ended up getting four different bottles and a chocolate bar for Nicole because she was on her best behavior. By the time we finished our transaction, the rain had mostly subsided so we walked back across the bridge and back to our car.

From there we drove toward Luxembourg, but first made a stop at Bastogne, a town known for its role in the Battle of the Bulge during World War Two. We went to the largest museum there, but we had to wait a bit to get in due to numerous tour groups cutting us off. I don't care much for tour groups in case that wasn't already apparent. Ultimately we got in and were shown a movie with an unnecessary use of 3-d glasses. We ended up ducking out of the movie early since it was just a drawn-out intro to the entire war. It wasn't the best museum from that perspective. There was kind of an over-the-top use of technology without it being used effectively. Audioguides that played automatically when reaching a certain area was about the only feature that was worthwhile. Nicole expressed her disappointment in the lack of a ride. All the best museums have rides. Outside the museum was a memorial to the Americans who lost their lives in the besieged town and the battles in the surrounding area to push the Germans back.

From Bastogne it was a short drive to Luxembourg and from the border, a mere 20 minutes to the town of Clervaux. It is also closer to Germany than Belgium, which demonstrates just how small the country of Luxembourg is. It was a grey evening in the town, but we were able to explore the chateau and the small pedestrian area of the town before it started raining. We took refuge inside our hotel's restaurant where we had beers and pizza. We briefly retired back to our rooms, which by the way were larger than our apartment in LA, and then reorganized for another walk around town. We learned about more about the history of Clervaux and discovered that an American Sherman tank on display just outside the chateau overlooking the town is the actual tank that defended the town from a German attack. It would quickly drive out from behind a building, fire a round at the Panzers attempting to advance down the road, and retreat back behind the building. Shockingly this tactic proved to be fairly effective, and it suffered only a glancing blow during the battle. For whatever reason, the Army elected to pull it from action and it remains pretty much where it was left...a fascinating piece of history.