So the Women’s Soccer Team Lost the World Cup? No Biggie

Photo by Emilio Garcia on Unsplash

Honestly, I’ve never felt a need to root for either US soccer team. If I’ve watched enough Good Place, I think it’s utilitarian ethics (right or wrong being dependent on doing the most good for the most people) at play here:

For the men’s team, we don’t care about Soccer, so it would produce more net happiness for Netherlands, Ghana, and Belgium (the last three teams to eliminate us from the World Cup) to have won those games. For us, we would have thought of it as mere news oddity like Florida Man (“hey, we beat a country we’re not supposed to beat at a sport most of us hate, that’s bizarre, ok, moving on to the next news story”)

For the women’s team, the women’s team is a source of pride, but think of it this way: we are so utterly dominant at the sport that only four other countries have ever won a World’s Cup or Olympic title. Three of those four countries have already been eliminated this year, so odds are that will make someone very happy to have won their first tournament. Also, there’s the whole “we don’t care about soccer” argument.

I’ll even admit that I never watched the Women’s World Cup until this year except for the occasional highlight. It was admittedly very sexist of me to think that women’s soccer wouldn’t be interesting, but lo and behold, I am here. I eat my words. But I can…