u/UNCLE_NIPPLES_

That was an embarrassing, insanely disappointing way to go out. Pretty much every single player on the squad had a terrible or at least below average game. When the sting of such a massive bummer wears off, I hope we keep backing our players.

PLEASE keep showing up to home games, convincing friends to tune into competitive matches, and don't fall into the negative discourse that the internet makes so easy to participate in. People's feelingsball about previous World Cup squads who barely got a sniff of the ball in the round of 16 but "cared", or "hustled", or "were dawgs" is nothing more than nostalgia (we scored 1 fewer goals and had the same amount of wins in this World Cup as the 2022, 2014, 2010 World Cup teams combined).

Like it or not, we'll need a lot of these players to tee it up again and keep grinding, improving if we want a shot at getting over the round of 16 hump in 2030. Singling out players or tearing down the squad is not productive. Don't be like the embarrassing Argentina fans who even turned on Messi prior to 2021. We are the ones who get to decide how to build OUR soccer culture, and I think it would be a shame to waste the positive momentum we built during this World Cup prior to last night.

Despite the relatively short tenure of the league, I am now fully comfortable saying that MLS teams have proper American sports fanbases.

How do I know this? We are now achieving levels of homerism and delusion present in other sports. RSL fans are lobbying for a 19 year old with like 30 professional appearances to make the World Cup roster when they already have another player who has had actual good performances for the USMNT already (Luna). Sounders fans will tell anyone that will listen that Roldán deserves minutes over Johnny because Johnny "never looks good for the US" and just willfully ignore about 40 mediocre-to-disastrous USMNT appearances from Roldán, and we even have Sounders fans stumping for Jesus Ferreira(!) to play at the 10 this summer.

I think this is SO AWESOME. True fandom is basically turning into Paul Finebaum talking about the SEC as soon as it's time to defend your guys. Just as long as you're not an Inter Miami fan 😉

PS I also recently went to a game in Atlanta -- what an absolute blast