USMNT

Let’s face it, women have faced inequality for as long as we have written history. Women’s soccer players are no exception. 

Today, the U.S. women’s soccer team — the No. 1 women’s soccer team in the world — has to deal with the reality that if both the men and women’s teams played 20 friendlies a year, the women would earn, at most, $99,000 while the men would earn an average of $263,320. That’s just ridiculous. It seems like some kind of sick joke, but I can assure you, it’s not. 

Concacaf announced the redesigned qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup on Wednesday. The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football has made it even simpler for the two heavyweights in the region — Mexico and the United States — to qualify for the 2022 tournament in Qatar.

It’s been just over eight years since Giovani dos Santos scored one of the greatest goals in Gold Cup history, putting the finishing touches on a 4-2 Mexico victory over the USMNT during the 2011 final. Fast forward to the present day and it’s his younger brother, Jonathan, who’s cemented El Tri’s continental dominance.

There may have been some doubt the last time the USMNT played competitive matches 20 months ago, but there is none now during the 2019 Gold Cup. Christian Pulisic is the USMNT’s best player, without question. He may just be the best player in all of Concacaf.

Pulisic, as he’s done all Gold Cup, played with fire, passion and purpose to help the U.S. defeat Jamaica 3-1 in the semifinals late Wednesday night and into Thursday morning in Nashville, Tennessee, after a 90-minute rain delay in the first half.

The USMNT advanced to the semifinals of the 2019 Gold Cup with a 1-0 victory over Curaçao, and it really was that close. A wonderful combination between Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie in the 25th minute proved to be the match-winner, and the U.S. had to rely on five saves from Zack Steffen to weather the storm from the tiny Dutch Caribbean island.

The opening 25 minutes of play had very little to due with what transpired over the final 65 — that opening period was really the only time the U.S. seemed to be in control. 

Twitter, like Reddit before it, was once a largely satirical, clandestine take on whataboutery — a safe place against the echo chambers of fallacy that invaded popular media sources with the power to turn Mahatma Gandhi into a cynic. In their absurdism, Twitter and Reddit remained far from the trappings of modern media. That’s no longer the case.

Our takes are now dictated by the reactionary, reward-seeking behavior that's seeped into all social platforms, contributing directly to the cacophony of noise that leads to the short-sighted negligence we all, supposedly, abhor.

For more casual U.S. Soccer fans, it might have come as a shock to see someone by the name of Tyler Boyd start for the USMNT against Guyana and again against Trinidad and Tobago. Sure you know the likes of Michael Bradley, Gyasi Zardes and Paul Arriola. But who is this Boyd character that has been playing so well and why haven't we heard of him?

It’s been a vengeful week for U.S. Soccer. Last night at FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, the USMNT romped to a 6-0 victory over Trinidad and Tobago, exacting a small fraction of revenge for that frightful night in Couva. The win came only two days after the USWNT had vanquished its own personal demons by defeating Sweden at the Women’s World Cup.

When the USMNT failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, Michael Bradley became a major target of vitriol from U.S. fans. The son of a former coach, Bradley has been booed across the country since that fateful night in Trinidad and Tobago in October of 2017. 

Bradley is too slow, too dumb, too useless, the critics say.

But the career Michael Bradley USMNT stats suggest he deserves more respect than he gets.