Here's the actual problem. The US team did quite well during the tournament as a whole. They outperformed what most actual football fans would consider their ceiling. Yet, the media and especially the Americans here on Reddit hyped them up so much that they were bound to not meet expectations. The simple truth is that the US football team is around top 20 in the world and is not even close to the actual good teams. But media hype always kills good performances because they're hidden behind the expectations of insane performances.
I think round of 16 was the expectation, it would have been a major disappointment if they didn't make it past the group stage especially with how favorable our group was for us.
They did quite well for sure, but they really didn’t exceed any expectations. They didn’t play a team ranked higher than them in the competition until Belgium. They had an easy run, and a home ground advantage.
I think it’s just Americans glazing due to ignorance. I’m sure they also looked at Belgium, couldn’t identify it on a map, and thought ‘yep greatest country in the world we got this’. ðŸ«
Statistically second highest average ranking but when you lose people rewrite history. They performed to expectations, won their group for the first time in a while, then earned their ass beating from a much better Belgian side.
Highest average ranking lol. There is no actual football fan that gives a fuck about Fifa ranking. It says nothing and bringing that up in a conversation shows you don't actually follow the sport.
Because they are a pot two team and because of being hosts are given pot 1 status.
Because of this depending on which sources they were in one of the weakest groups. The only way you define that group as second hardest is when you are comparing the difference between the existing rankings ie the margin between teams is small, that however could be the same for a team that had 1,2,3,4 and one that had 21,22,23,24.
Opta had groupB as the weakest group based on power rnakings and group D as the 5th. Group D was classed as tightest but as above this doesn't equate to strong opposition just equal level opposition.
Because your opposition were not top countries no matter what Fifa ranking says.
 Case in point: Italy. 12th in Fifa ranking but weren't good enough to participate. Norway is 19th in ranking but is in the quarter finals. So who is better? Italy because they're a higher ranking or Norway because they achieved top 8 in the world cup?
Yes we do. We know France is a top team because they have Mbappe and other world class players that play for the best clubs like Real Madrid on almost every position. Same for Spain or England. We know the US isn't that good because they have mediocre players that play for clubs like Fulham. We know Curacao is even worse than the US because their players play at an even lower level.
That’s a terrible way to look at it. Brazil has a very high talent level but terrible team play. The same can be said for Italy. You are completely ignoring coaching.
Yeah yeah, Paraguay and Australia are decent teams, turkey is too but they shit the bed lmao. Dont want to follow a sport too closely where inbred Europeans from villages 30 minutes apart from each other regularly get into fistfights over who is less trash.
The men's US team results FAR exceeded anyone's (realistic) opinion/prediction going into this World Cup.
The newfound US fans should rally behind the US women's team, who have dominated their competition for quite some time.
Trump sucks (not an opinion, but rather, a grounding point).
Trump's "involvement" was a national embarrassment, as well as (obviously) unethical and inappropriate; par for course, unfortunately.
Trump's "involvement" resulted in a lot of people from the States rooting for Belgium. If nothing else, had the US won, there would have always been a black cloud over the win, which would have negated any perceived benefit of a US win.
The Trump calling Fifa chairman to overturn a red card was imo the biggest problem I was kinda cheering the U.S team on before that as they did much better than I thought and after that happened I just wanted them the fuck out of the tournament.
The gap between a team ranked 9th and 15th is alot bigger than alot of people realize.
US created some good chances in the 2nd half, but Pulisic was dogshit and until the half, we couldn't win the midfield. We finally got some chances in but Belgiums defense had only a few mistakes and we didn't capitalize.
well, that performance was particularly terrible and embarassing though, especially since belgium has not been a good team this tournament other than the last 10 min against senegal.
They were completely outclassed, and it really puts a damper on how good they looked vs lesser competition. I think they took paraguay by surprise, I would guess if they played again the us would lose.
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u/DaKingballa06 Jul 07 '26
F that. Congrats on them for winning, they were by far the better team