F**k You Alexi Lalas.

On the bigoted, sexist, double standard, and schadenfreude of the USWNT's early exit from the World Cup.

It is my great shame that I am not much of a soccer player. I grew up playing tackle football since age 10. I don’t regret this choice, but I would have played soccer were there not always a conflict with football.

Since coaching my son’s soccer teams, I have made a careful effort to study the game closely. Reading books, learning about tactics, learning the fundamentals of coaching youth soccer. I watch as many Manchester City games as possible and my appointment viewing is always the USWNT games.

No one was happy with our ladies’ performance against Portugal.

It was an awful showing.

It was obvious, even to a still-novice soccer analyst (like myself), upon whose feet the responsibility of our three goal debacle of a tournament lay:

Vlatko Antonovski.

Against Portugal, the players lacked cohesion, their body language indicated confusion and frustration about their positioning on the field. Runs were disjointed. The back line defense allowed way too much space, Crystal Dunn performed particularly poor at the left wing. Vladko would have been well-served to take her out. He subbed in Megan Rapinoe too early, didn’t make any substitutions until the last minutes of the game. He played it safe for a tie, and we very nearly lost as a result. Playing it safe isn’t USWNT play.

Even through all that incompetence, we still managed to tie. Yes, I wasn’t happy, my sons weren’t happy, my cat wasn’t happy. Who was happy with that performance? The immediate post-game analysis, was your standard fare of “fire” takes.

Rob Stone started up the fire with this beauty: “These are not the images we should be expecting to see from a team that survived Portugal. I appreciate them taking care of the fans, but let me tell ya’ Carli Lloyd’s butt would be back in the locker room kicking things, throwing things.”

It was your typical hyper-masculine sports take, as if performing angry histrionics, blowing past the fans would somehow, well—I really don’t know.

Carli Lloyd then interjected with “I have never witnessed something like that. There’s a difference between being respectful of your fans and saying hello to your family. But to be dancing, to be smiling, the player of that match is that post.”

But the LVP all through throughout the tournament was, and forever will be, Vlatko Andonovski. Uncreative tactics, staid lineups, and a baffling refusal to use our deep bench to make meaningful substitutions and in-game adjustments.

Due to the unprecedented success of Jillian Ellis, I do think it’s fair to ask: why won’t the US Soccer Federation exclusively hire a female coach to helm the women’s team? They only hire male coaches for the men’s team. Why do us men get the privilege of coaching both genders, yet for women, this is out of the question? You can’t tell me Jill Ellis wouldn’t have done a better job than our other disaster over at the other gendered team: Gregg Berhalter.

To be fair, Carli did indicate some fault with Vlatko’s leadership, pointing out that Kelley O’Hara was the first to speak to the team, imploring them to do better. She has since continued to suggest that Vlatko isn’t up to the task. However, after the Portugal game, Carli never really articulated the difference of “being respectful of fans” and well, she doesn’t complete her thought shifting to “saying hello to your family.”

What constituted “respectful?”

This well-worn idea that angry histrionics on the field is the only appropriate action during a loss (and apparently a tie) is not only an empty, performative expectation—the question still remains, what does stomping off the field angry and blowing off fans accomplish?

Hell yeah, when you get to the locker room throw things! Flip over the post-game spread if you must, get fired up, challenge each other to perform better and well … for my and the fans’ sake PLEASE yell at the head coach and challenge him to do better.

I covered UCLA Women’s Soccer for The Daily Bruin in 2002. I witnessed first hand the base elements of where women’s soccer continued to ascend to the place and popularity of where the game stands now. It took years to get where they are now. Back then, UCLA games were sparsely attended, usually only family and friends—except on weekend day games—when young girls from toddlers to high school seniors attended games with their families—watching their role models, and seeing the model, the example, and legacy for their own futures.

Male, female, or non-binary, everyone needs role models: people to pave the way for the next generation. After those games in 2002, girls often sought autographs from the UCLA players, the Bruins were their heroes: the players always dutifully signed autographs and posed for pictures with their young fans after games. It was a very small community back then—a sport that was largely ignored. The seedlings of the sport’s growth were there, but all players took the responsibility to grow the game, inspire the young female fanbase to play soccer and continue to grow the women’s game. It is ingrained in the female soccer player to reach out to fans, even after disappointing results.

In fact many of the USWNT on the squad were of that very age demographic from when I covered the sport for The Daily Bruin. Now as professionals, for them now to huff past their fans, would not only go against everything that has been tasked for them to do in order to pay it forward: it’s disingenuous, performative, lame, and that could hurt the sport’s growth. Who cares if insignificant hot takers get upset? The example athletes set for sportsmanship is far more important.

It was that 2002 team that I covered that caused me to fall in love with women’s soccer. I have skin in this game. I’m not some “Johnny Come Lately” jumping-on-the-bandwagon now because women’s soccer is now hip, or makes me a sensitive “cuck” or “woke”—or whatever, misogynous, racist, and or homophobic language is disseminated.

Carli is right, the MVP was the goal post. But her, Stone, Lalas somehow chastising them for their post-game behavior just reeks of “now Megan, you must be a good girl” by doing this and not that.

This is the plight of the American woman. Always expected to behave in accordance to shifting, arbitrary, and capricious male-driven expectations—sometimes (read: often) it appears that women can’t win—even when they do win, and especially when they outperform men, they still simply can’t win.

However, the gold medal of horrible, sexist takes, of the tournament belongs to Alexi Lalas. In his prime, Lalas was at best an average defender. While the USWNT was busy winning World Cups in 1991 and 1999, he was part of the semi-embarrassing generation of American male “try hards” of those early to late 90’s American teams. If anything as a young fan, I found these players hard to identify with as a young Latino male.

I don’t recall the 1998 USMNT team as being particularly woke when they were able to by try, try, trying hard again to manage ONE goal in an utterly embarrassing ‘98 last place tournament finish. That they managed to do this all the while behaving like petulant brats during the World Cup: engaging in a very public mutiny against head coach Steve Sampson, they set the growth of soccer in the United States back for years.

The only reason I can possibly think of as to why anyone paid attention to Lalas back then and mistook him as “cool” is because he bore a stark resemblance to a young Chris Barron of The Spin Doctors in the 90’s.

Yes, kids—this was considered a hip look back in the day:

I see no other reason why Lalas still harasses my television with his mouth-breathing, corny, boring analysis. He has the personality and insight of a card board cutout. I mean, at least The Spin Doctors had one hit song. Alexi Lalas reminds me of Trinity’s Rodman’s father during his cultural apex: just by attention-seeking dress, dyed hair, and on court histrionics, “the worm,” played many of us into assuming Rodman actually had anything of consequence to say. Truth is, neither Dennis Rodman or Alexi Lalas are actually interesting people, however; Dennis doesn’t have a national forum, outside of North Korea, with which we are condemned to listen to him.

That Lalas claims that the USWNT is now “unlikable, for the team’s extremely ‘woke’ politics,” and “is at risk of becoming irrelevant” speaks to a minority population of (mostly) angry men. If woke apparently means fighting for equal pay, acceptance of the LGBT community, racial equality, well then—what is actually relevant from a cultural standpoint?

Lalas might actually want to do his job as a commentator and submit viable evidence for his Jordan Peterson-esc wails. He could check the actual ratings for the USWNT games (spoiler alert: they’ve reached unprecedented numbers)—but why do that? Serving up flaming hot takes of bullshit are a far easier and more effective in drawing the attention that he has always craved throughout his career as a player and now as a commentator.

Sure, Lalas is a better player than I, and perhaps he deserves his National platform to spew his impotent hot fire.

I do have something in common with Alexi Lalas.

Neither of us won a World Cup.

However, I do have something over Alexi Lalas.

I have witnessed first-hand the burgeoning growth of women’s soccer. I have a more than a sneaking suspicion that he didn’t pay a great deal of attention (or respect) to the women’s game until he was paid to do so by ESPN and Fox Sports.

Evolution can never be stopped, therefore a particular population unwilling to accept the growing voice of female soccer players fighting for social justice, will cause little harm, if any, to the continuing growth the women’s game—the women’s game involves women and men who are allies, not angry men who view a progressive society of equality as a loss of their most precious of inheritance: male privilege

Frankly it appears that sexist males like Lalas are taking a sick enjoyment on our team’s early exit, that he was waiting for a disappointing World Cup performance so he can rail against “woke” politics. Just an offensive, jingoistic and unpatriotic schadenfreude on his part. Lalas may believe the USWNT is unlikable, but he’s loathsome for railing against the sharing of societal agency, for women, for people of color, for the LGBTQ community, for equality and social justice. He’s willfully myopic and his obsolete, macho jock brain cannot see the larger picture of the special cultural significance of the women’s game. His comments suggest that he’s incapable of understanding the perspective that advocates for inclusivity and social justice for everyone.

He speaks for a diminishing, dinosaur population that would agree with him. If you want an idea of who this population is—check the comments under social media posts with regard to players of the USWNT.

It is a bitter irony that a male head coach was responsible for this debacle. That “Little Miss, Little Miss Can’t be Wrong,” aka Alexi Lalas would use the women’s subpar performance as a platform to whine about “woke” culture is both predictable and so, so very deeply boring.

The evolution of women’s sports will not be stopped—regardless of whether the “loud minority” can handle this societal evolution makes zero difference.

And you know what Alexi?

The Spin Doctors sucked.

You suck.

FUCK YOU.