Call It Football or Soccer. The U.S. Is Claiming It as Its Own.
(Bloomberg) – The U.S. national team has been claiming to be “America’s Team” since the 1970s, and in recent years, it’s only grown more insistent. There’s no way to call the U.S. women football team the best, of course, but the team has repeatedly contended that it’s better than other women’s sports teams in the U.S.—the men’s and women’s soccer teams, and the women’s ice hockey team and, yes, the women’s hockey team.
The U.S. women’s soccer team has a better record at the World Cup than the men’s team, where the women beat the men 4-1 on penalty kicks in the quarters in July and scored a late goal that sent the team to its first World Cup final. And the men’s soccer teams seem to have more success when they face their counterparts the women’s teams. The women’s soccer team was favored to win the gold medal in the 2008 Olympics, while the men’s teams lost in the first round. In the 2015 World Cup, the U.S. women also lost in the quarterfinals.
The U.S. is winning the most important international matches under the terms of what American soccer fans call the “M-word” — in the past it’s been called the “M-word” and “M-word” and “M-word” and “M-word.” And just as the NFL has been “the American league,” the team has been “America’s Team.”
At this year’s World Cup in Russia, the U.S. women’s team has lost only once in six matches, drawing two and winning one. The men have lost in four of six games, drawing only one, and lost the opening game of the group stage. Russia, by contrast, has outscored the