We got dusted. There is no other honest way to say it. Belgium beat the United States 4 to 1 in the Round of 16, and if you strip away the goals and just watch the runs of play, the gap looked wider than the scoreline even suggests. Two goals came off our own defensive mistakes. A third came off a goalkeeper hesitation that will be shown in coaching clinics for years as an example of what not to do.
It still makes me shake my head even thinking about it, just awful…that ended the game.
Malik Tillman scored a beautiful free kick, and God bless him for it, but one moment of brilliance from a player who loves Jesus and plays with real joy could not undo four moments of Belgian precision.
I have listened to the commentators plead with America to keep caring about this sport now that we are eliminated. I understand why they are pleading. I even understand why the plea is necessary. But I don’t think it will work.
We are not as good as Belgium. We may never be. And that is okay.
This was not a fluke or a bad night. Belgium beat us 5 to 2 back in March, in a warmup match, and exposed the same defensive problems that showed up again in the Round of 16. Two results against the same opponent, months apart, both lopsided. That is not an upset. That is a pattern, and patterns tell the truth better than any single game does.
Losing to a team that is wearing pink and blue that hasn’t been relevant to the globe since King Leopold was pillaging a continent (and I recommend “King Leopold’s Ghost” for those who don’t know history) is painful, but we may not surpass Belgium.
Here is why. Belgium is a country of about twelve million people. It does not have football teams pulling away its fastest, strongest, most competitive athletes. It does not have basketball programs doing the same. It does not have baseball diamonds and track ovals splitting the pool further still. Whatever raw athletic talent Belgium produces, an enormous share of it gets funneled into one sport. Ours gets scattered across five.
Kevin De Bruyne is a generational talent, but he is also the product of a talent pipeline that has no serious competition for the country’s best athletes. Romelu Lukaku, Jeremy Doku, Youri Tielemans, Charles De Ketelaere, the two goals he scored against us were not luck. These are players whose national federation gets first pick of Belgium’s best, every single year, with no rival sport pulling harder for the same kids.
America does not work that way, and I do not think it should. I am glad we live in a country where a gifted fifteen year old athlete has to choose between football, basketball, baseball, track, and soccer, rather than having that choice made for him by scarcity. That diversity of opportunity is a feature of American life, not a flaw. It also means we will probably never assemble a soccer player pool as concentrated as Belgium’s, or France’s, or England’s. The math simply is not on our side, and pretending otherwise does not help anyone.
Look at the money if you want proof this is not sentiment. Belgium’s top five earners make something in the range of double what our top five earners make, and it is not because European fans are more generous. It is because the market for talent has priced in a real quality gap between the two player pools. Wages follow ability. Ours have grown. Theirs have grown faster, because more of their best athletes are competing for the same handful of positions.
None of this means our team is without hope or without real talent. Christian Pulisic has been a joy to watch as an elite soccer talent and this tournament was not great for him. In a tournament where Kane, where Messi, Mbappe, Haaland all showed up as the stars, our star was hurt and never played like a star.
Weston McKennie brings a fight that this country will always love.
Balogun was fun to watch and did not deserve the red card.
Malik Tillman was my favorite player of the tournament. Absolute stud. On and off the pitch he was a leader and I love how open he has been as a Christian and the prayers he leads.
We have better coaching now than we have ever had.
If you think coaching was the problem, I would submit you do not know much about soccer, and that is okay as well.
Now we have belief. What we do not have, and may not have for a very long time, is ten players who could have played for a stronger footballing nation instead. Folarin Balogun would not get off the bench for England. Malik Tillman may not have started for Germany. When your depth chart is built partly from players other countries were willing to let go, you are still building. You have not yet arrived.
I do not say any of this with bitterness. I say it the way I would tell one of my own kids the truth about a talent gap in some other pursuit. Effort matters. Coaching matters. Heart matters. And sometimes the other guy has simply been given more, has poured more into it for longer, and you lose to him honestly. There is no shame in that.
I loved hosting this tournament. I loved watching my country welcome the world and, for a few weeks, see X posts cut through the noise and show us that Europeans enjoy our nation and feel lied to about its greatness.
I did not love the flopping, and neither did my wife. You kind of get theater and athletics at the same time, but men who act like they were shot with a rifle who are back up 30 seconds later if the call does not come should be ashamed of themselves.
My wife has also never once forgiven the offside rule for existing. I do not expect most of my kids to develop a deep and abiding love for this sport just because the commentators wish we would. We will keep loving football in the fall and basketball in the winter, the way most of this country always has.
But I will keep an eye on this team. Because a nation that pours only a fraction of its athletic talent into a sport and still fields a team that competes, that occasionally wins, that produces a player like Malik Tillman who plays with joy and gives glory to God when the cameras find him, that nation is doing something right even in a 4 to 1 loss.
If we ever do break through, it will be as David, not as Goliath, and that is a fun angle.
We are not the best in the world at this. We were beaten by a better team, fair and square. That is simply the truth, and truth, even losing truth, is worth telling plainly.
What were some of your favorite memories from this World Cup?
Are you going to keep watching?
Who are you rooting for now?
Would you trade a championship in basketball or football for your favorite team for a World Cup championship? Yeah…me neither.
Clayton Wood is a Knoxville lawyer, pastor, avid sports fan and TriStar Daily contributing writer.
