As my dad and I walked down a seven-lane boulevard in Los Angeles last Thursday, I suddenly noticed a police officer on a motorcycle pull up alongside us. I had one of those moments that a lot of people get when they realize an officer has their eye on you. That little jolt of “Was I doing something wrong? Am I going to have an issue here?”
The moment quickly passed as the first bus went by, then four more, in a blur of the distinctive red-and-blue U.S. Soccer crest. It was the team bus for the U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT) on its way to SoFi Stadium, nearby in Inglewood.
Over the course of those two-ish hours of the USMNT’s loss to Turkey, I saw what the promise of America really should be. Even now, in the age of Donald Trump.
It was the very last leg of travel for me and my dad, capping off a whirlwind travel day that saw us waking up at 2 a.m. at my parents’ cottage in Maine, driving an hour into New Hampshire to catch a bus to the airport for a flight that we very nearly missed, and then a cross-country flight in literally the last row of an Airbus jet.
It was an impromptu decision for us to jet across the country to watch our country play in the World Cup in a city that neither of us had ever visited before — with tickets that were also quite expensive, thanks to the greed of FIFA.
It was the experience of a lifetime, even though our seats were at the very top of the nosebleed section. (There were no more than two rows of seats behind us for the whole season.) But over the course of those two-ish hours of the USMNT’s loss to Turkey, I saw what the promise of America really should be. Even now, in the age of Donald Trump.
Something else was happening. Red, white and blue covered the stands, along with pockets of Turkey’s deep red. There were fans dressed up as eagles, the Statue of Liberty, the founding fathers and all other variations of patriotic cosplay. U.S. jerseys abounded, from the current team’s red-and-white “swoopy Waldo” shirts to the iconic Adidas denim stars kit from the 1994 World Cup (my choice of attire for the evening). In an era when even an American flag on a porch has come to signify, for people like us, a warning sign of the presence of MAGA-leaning pro-Trump bigotry, it felt remarkable to reclaim our flag and our colors — our country.
I have long maintained that the easiest way for lefties in the U.S. to show their patriotism was by supporting the men’s and women’s national soccer teams. Soccer fandom in the U.S. is largely an urban phenomenon, supporters of Major League Soccer teams will often hold a march to the match on game days, and weekend mornings frequently feature crowds gathered in bars to watch European club games.
But patriotism has been hard to come by for us liberals and lefties in the time of Trump. The president has turned our country into a hostile place for immigrants of color and trans people like me. This World Cup has been marred by racist visa management by the Trump administration that saw an African referee denied entry into the country; a demand that the Iranian team not spend a night in the United States, despite playing all its games in the country; and the denial of a visa to a Democratic Republic of Congo superfan who imitates a statue of a Congolese leader whom the CIA assassinated.
This is on top of, you know, the embarrassing war in Iran that Trump is losing and too many diplomatic flubs with our allies to recount here.
FIFA, the tournament’s organizer, is also deeply in bed with the Trump administration. For the past two years, FIFA has been renting a full floor of Trump Tower in New York City, without actually using or occupying it at all. In return, Trump’s Department of Justice tossed corruption charges against several FIFA officials — and then FIFA invented a “peace prize” to ingratiate itself with the president.
Before this tournament started, I declared in The Flytrap, an independent feminist outlet that I co-founded, that I would just tune it out because of the corruption of Trump and FIFA. That lasted about 10 minutes into the USMNT’s first match against Paraguay.
Which brings me back to Thursday night in LA. We booked our cross-country trip shortly after a Black player with the last name Freeman scored for the U.S. on Juneteenth in a 2-0 win over Australia. The regular starting lineup for this U.S. team features eight Black players. Famously, our star striker Folarin Balogun is a birthright citizen who was born in New York City after his mom was denied entry to a flight back home when she was nine months’ pregnant. His parents are Nigerian and he grew up in England, meaning he could choose between any of the three countries’ national teams to play for. After being developed by London club Arsenal and England youth national teams, Balogun chose to represent the United States in international play.
Tuesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Balogun could continue being a citizen based on his birthright.
I love that we live in a United States where anyone born here has a permanent home. I think this is what makes America great. We are the great melting pot, and no single entity shows that better than the USMNT.
Soccer has been a foreign sport for the past 90 years since FIFA meddling and the Great Depression ended the popular American Soccer League in 1933. In order to be competitive, the USMNT has had to recruit numerous foreign-born dual citizens just to compete at the international level. Going through the list is the ultimate exercise in the “remember a guy” game that bonds all sports fans.
Jermaine Jones, John Brooks, John O’Brien. There’s current team members Tim Weah, son of football legend George Weah, who is the former president of Liberia, and Sergiño Dest, who was born and developed in the Netherlands. Both had options to play for other countries and chose the United States. Midfielder Malik Tillman was born in Germany and has an American father and a German mother. Ricardo Pepi was born in the U.S. but could have chosen to play for Mexico.
The USMNT has always been a group of foreign talent cobbled together to put America’s best foot forward in the beautiful game.
The USMNT has always been a group of foreign talent cobbled together to put America’s best foot forward in the beautiful game. The team’s very existence is the antithesis of Trump’s nativist vision for the country.
Thursday night’s game against Turkey was a throwaway, meaningless match. The U.S. had already clinched first place in the group and Turkey was already mathematically eliminated. Try telling that to the enthusiastic pro-U.S. crowd, proudly displaying a patriotism of pure joy.
Way up there in the nosebleeds, my white, 78-year-old boomer father, and I, a middle-aged overweight trans woman, found community with the Asian and Hispanic families sitting behind us and the young Indian guys next to me. We were all there, bound together with our undying love for the beautiful game.
The crowd surged with every attack or desperate defense. This wasn’t the soccer-curious-yet-uninformed crowd of U.S. Soccer’s past but an educated group of screaming fans melted together with patriotism and a nuanced understanding of the sport.
Before the game started we realized that most of us, my dad and I included, were former goalkeepers, except for the poor guy next to us, who used to be a striker. My dad realized the guy next to me, whose name I never caught, grew up attending my dad’s alma mater’s archrival.
Here we were, two East Coasters, 20 hours into a cross-country travel day, bonding with people from completely different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds through soccer. It was an experience I will never forget.
Even on Tuesday, as the Supreme Court took away another right from people like me, the game made me believe even harder in the promise of America. That we can build a country that is welcoming to all, one that is worth celebrating.
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