I Never Thought I’d Do This

 If you’ve been reading some of my recent posts, you know that I am very critical about the history of the country in which I’ve spent most of my life. At least, I have (some would say more-than-) healthy skepticism about the stories we’ve been told, whether in school or elsewhere.

That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t appreciate what the United States of America offers, or even love much of what makes it unique. I’ll even admit that in international sports competitions, I root for American teams and athletes, especially the women. And, yes, I was as happy as any fellow countryperson (No sexism here!) when Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France. At least, I was a fan of Lance and, yes, even wore a Livestrong bracelet (remember that?) until I learned what a cheater and pure-and-simple bully he was.

Yesterday, however, I put my loyalty on pause.  Perhaps it wasn’t entirely fair, as I also found myself rooting against innocent people who worked very hard to achieve what they did.

So what, exactly, was my breach of sports patriotism—or, more accurately, nationalism? I hoped that Belgium’s national football team would beat their Yankee counterparts in their Round of 16 World Cup game.  And I was happy when they did.

Now, I want to make this clear:  I have no more love for Belgium than I have hatred for the United States. I enjoyed my one brief trip through the county, as part of a bicycle tour that took me into northeastern France, southwestern Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The people treated me well and, for such a small country, it offers a lot historically and culturally. But I don’t imagine that I will ever develop the kind of bond with it that I have even with France, let alone the US.

I also want to make something else clear: I don’t feel the same joy over a Red Devils victory that, under different circumstances, I might’ve felt if the USMNT had won. Rather, I thought, if anything, the outcome was a kind of vindication. 

Folarin Balogun was issued a red card late in the USMNT’s victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina’s national team. I won’t get into whether or not he actually deserved it; that will be a point of debate for some time to come.  He did, however, accept his penalty, which would have meant that he wouldn’t have been allowed to play in the game against Belgium.

The USMNT appealed, as was their right—though, it must be said, such decisions are rarely reversed.  The last word of the previous sentence is the operative one and the current FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, is, shall we say, not seen as an ethical man, which is really saying something in a sports federation that isn’t exactly viewed as a paragon of high moral principles.

So, perhaps, it’s no surprise that he’s a friend of the Fake Tan Führer, a.k.a., the White House Squatter. In a fashion that’s so typical of him, he “influenced “ his compagno to “suspend” the decision for a one-year probationary period.

Perhaps it didn’t matter, at least in sporting terms, as having Balogun in their starting XI wasn’t enough to hold off a team that’s looking for a monumental triumph before its current “golden generation” of players retires. And I feel bad for the rest of the US team, as they won’t be able to enjoy further triumphs on their home turf. (Sports journalists usually say that teams are “going home” when they lose.  Where is the USMNT—or, for that matter, Canada’s or Mexico’s team, who also lost in the Round of 16–going?)

And, more to the point, where is this world going if FTF can bully, not only sports officials, but the rest of the world? That he is the face (literally) my country made me, at least for a day, ashamed to root for something else that represents it.

Gooooal?

The World Cup football tournament starts in a couple of weeks.

Perhaps even the US, which didn't qualify, is getting ready:

Will the "ball" go through the" posts"?  If it does, and Andres Cantor isn't there to announce it, does it count as a goal?

Interesting, what you can see on a bike ride in the Bronx!

Cycling, Football And Sociology

In an earlier post, I noted that some of the best teams in the World Cup football (soccer, to Yanks) tournament represent some of the world's top cycling nations--and that the US is in ascendancy in both sports.

In following the tournament and the opening stages of the Tour de France, I realized another striking parallel between the two sports.  In the traditional powerhouses of cycling and football, the top players and riders come from the ranks of the poor or working class.  Much of the peloton could just as easily have been working in a factory or farm had their cycling talents not been discovered and developed.  In fact, at the beginning of his professional career, at least one journalist wondered whether Eddy Mercx had the desire or discipline to win because he was "bourgeois"?  How bourgeois was he?  His father owned a grocery store and had just acquired another.  In purely Marxist terms that indeed made Mercx pere "bourgeois", but hardly made his son a "rich kid."

Adonia Lugo, a bike advocate and anthropologist in Los Angeles

Football players have traditionally come from backgrounds similar to those of cyclists, although there is a greater presence of immigrants, or children of immigrants, on the pitch than one finds in the peloton. Still, one rarely finds someone in football or cycling team kit who had the opportunity to do other things.

Here in the US, things are different.  Both sports are seen as suburban and middle-class.  It's true that not many of our cyclists or footballers have come from the inner cities or farmlands.  Rather, the hotbeds of both sports are found mainly in middle-to-upper class suburbs on the two coasts rather than in the Rust Belt.

Ironically, the teams that represented the US in the three prewar World Cup tournametns were primarily blue-collar industrial workers.  They were immigrants, or the children of them, who lived in the sooty enclaves of New Jersey and New England factory towns.  Their last hurrah came in the first postwar tournament when they pulled off one of the biggest upsets in the history of sport:  They beat the mighty British team in the tournament's opening game.

Belgian Training: Bicycle Kicks

OK, I have to take back what I said in a couple of earlier posts.

In them, I noted an interesting paradox:  The countries that have dominated the worlds of cycling and football (what Americans call soccer) are roughly the same.  Yet, even within those countries, the ball and the wheel almost never cross paths, so to speak.  Almost no one from one sport can be found in the other.


But it seems that in Brazil, the Belgian team that will face off against the Americans tomorrow has made cycling part of their training regimen:

Axel Witsel and Laurent Ciman riding in Sao Paolo

USA Today reporter Nick Schwartz describes their, and their teammates', rides as "casual".  It's hard to imagine a bunch of world-class athletes on their sport's greatest stage being "casual" about anything!





I mean, look at Axel Witsel in this shot.  He's ready to take on the world!


Here, Dries Mertens gives new meaning to the term "bicycle kick".  He seems to be giving a clinic to his teammate and Red Devils' star Eden Hazard:





Somehow it makes sense that these players would come from the same country that gave us Eddy Mercx.