...and no they shouldn't have stopped celebrating
On Tuesday afternoon this week, the USWNT opened up World Cup group play by obliterating Thailand in historic fashion, 13-0. Our team only scored 3 goals by halftime, and by all accounts the game was over by then.
However, after halftime, our team put on a goal-scoring clinic in unbelievably dominating fashion. Alex Morgan finished with 5 goals and 3 assists, and Rose Lavelle scored an additional two goals to lead us to a victory. I was wildly entertained because this victory reminded me just how dominant our national team is.
There seemed to be a surprisingly negative backlash to our team scoring 13 total goals against Thailand. Most of the logic behind arguments against our Women’s Team was that it was unsportsmanlike and that we should have laid off because we were clearly superior talent-wise. Former Women’s Canadian team players for TSN called the move “classless” and to that I say they are absolutely wrong!
I had absolutely no problem with what happened on Tuesday!
It would have been wildly more insulting and classless to just stop scoring goals and kick the ball around the middle of the field until time expired. As professionals you want to compete at the highest level and our U.S. Women’s Team is the pinnacle of competition. Our team plays at a level every country should strive to reach.
Also if you have a problem with our team scoring too many goals, try to stop them! It’s not easy to do, but the Women’s Team wasn’t exactly being super aggressive on offense in the second half either. They were just getting easy looks because of their superior talent and play. Do you want them to not shoot the ball at a wide-open net when they have the opportunity?
Women’s Soccer is divided into tiers (in my opinion):
The top tier is: the U.S., France, Canada, Japan, Germany, England, Australia, and Brazil.
After that is Korea through Mexico (10-20 or so)
Then it’s everyone else.
Just like in high school and college sports, there are massive talent drop offs in tiers so there are going to be blowouts due to superior talent. I have been on both ends of major blowouts and every time I’m on the losing end of one, the team we were playing (whether in basketball or football) never took their foot off the gas and I would be insulted if they did.
On top of all this, the Women’s World Cup Group Stages have a goal differential component to them so if you want to win your group you need to win the most matches and score the most goals. You can’t afford to take a risk and not score as much as you can when you know that you could have an easier matchup in the elimination stages if you have far and away the best record/goal differential.
Another argument against the Women’s National Team is, “if I was in their position, I wouldn’t have done that” – this in regard to our team celebrating every goal and scoring “too many goals”.
That argument is weak for multiple reasons. First, you aren’t in their position so you have no idea if you would or not. Until you are on either end of a blowout and you actually act in that situation, you don’t know how you’d act. Secondly, you have to have context for the goals and celebrations. For example, when Alex Morgan scored her 5th goal, she tied Michelle Akers’ 1991 record for most goals by a single player in a women’s World Cup match! Of course you celebrate that goal! Then there were other players like Mallory Pugh and Rose Lavelle who were playing (and scoring) in their first ever World Cup games. These are things that players work their entire lives towards! I’d be celebrating like crazy too.
Finally, everyone who is hating on our team is just jealous because they aren’t as good as us!
This overabundance of goals probably won’t happen again after the elimination stages begin and it isn’t uncommon for blowouts to happen early on in tournaments like this. This game was like the equivalent of a 16 versus a 1 in the NCAA Tournament. Those games almost always end in blowouts.
One final, final note. Can we just get our women’s team equal pay with the men please? They are most exciting, they’re better, and they make more headlines than the men which generates more content – because they are way more successful.
*Cover image taken from USA Today
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