“What is Your Advancement to the Knock Out Round, to the Second-Class Citizen?”: A Man Without a Country at the World Cup
by Professor Charles F. Peterson
I have been having an interesting argument with my youngest son, about my inability to root or cheer, or support the USMNT (United States Men’s National Team), in ordinary circumstances but especially during the World Cup. I am an avid fan of Global football, having been exposed to the sport as it was both of my sons first organized sport. As a young father, I became the assistant coach for my oldest son’s team and initially studied the sport to be a better coach and eventually fell deeply in love with the “beautiful game.” As so many, outside the pitch supporters do, my investment in football evolved from curiosity, to interest, to focus, to obsession. I intentionally chose my favorite Premier League team (LIVERPOOL FC), learned the history of the sport (h/t to The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer), ingested podcasts, books and videos on clubs, strategies, tactics, managers and rivalries. The World Cup has become my quadrennial highlight, and during that golden month, I put much of my life on pause to immerse myself in the politics and performance of the world’s favorite passion play. I would argue there are more football fans than Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists combined. It is not only the world’s most popular sport, but also humanity’s most beloved religion. Billions organize their hearts and charts around their nation’s national team or if their team does not ascend, choose by regions, histories, traditions or players whom they will support. And there is where I draw a foul for delay of game.
I have never supported the USMNT. Never during the CONCACAF Cup, exhibitions, friendlies or qualifying matches. I support the MLS, the USL and the USL 2, enthusiastically. I proudly serve as the faculty liaison to my institution’s Men’s soccer squad. I love these leagues, despite my critiques of the business of soccer in the US, and roar with pride and weep with grief at each win and loss of my institution’s men and womens teams. But when it comes to supporting kits draped in the stars and stripes or joining chants of “USA, USA”, like an iconic scrivener, “I prefer not to.”
The source of the hesitation is ironically what largely attracts me to football. It is a sport that is marbled with historical memory, political meaning and national consciousness. England’s fans cry God for Harry (Kane), England and St. George. Haitian fans puff out their chests for the team representing the world’s first Black republic. The Black Stars of Ghana carry the weight of DuBois, Garvey and Nkrumah’s dream of a free Africa. Yet, similarly to Frederick Douglass on July 4th, 1852, I ask, “What is your [the USMNT’s] advancement to the knockout round to a descendant of the enslaved?” Supporting the national team feels like the thick patriotism and overbearing national pride of American exceptionalism. Soccer fans waving US flags and wearing the powdered wigs of the colonial era, to me carry the same baggage of the military jet displays at NFL games and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf punished by the NBA for refusing to stand for the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner”.
Don’t get me wrong, during the Olympics I cheer for the accomplishments of the African American track and field athletes. In the summer of 1984, I watched every episode of the “Michael Jordan Show” and in 1992, I tuned in for its sequel “The Dream Team”. In the last summer Olympics, the power of Steph Currie’s dominance at key moments elicited the deepest admiration from my childhood love of sports. I only watched Gymnastics when Simone Biles was competing and Tennis when the Williams sisters were playing doubles. I cheer the displays of Black excellence these athletes demonstrate. As a supporter I meditate on the struggles against segregation and marginalization that Black athletes have historically embodied. I cheer for these athletes putting paid to the lie that “Black people can’t ________”. Every sprinter is the child of the abused Jessie Owens, John Carlos and Tommy Smith. Each heavyweight knockout is for Cassius Clay throwing his gold medal into the Ohio River after having been refused service in a Kentucky diner and later Muhammed Ali stripped of his titles for refusing to enlist in service to an illegal and immoral war. Each US basketball victory salutes Bill Russell’s ability to rise above the ignorance and abuse of his time in Boston. The cheers of the supporters of the USMNT remind me of the cheers of the Boston fans that claimed Red Auerbach’s Celtics and s*** in Bill Russell’s bed when he and his family were out of town and later fought against integrating the Boston public school system. To be clear, I cheer for the Black American athletes who happen to be in a USA uniform.
My son counters that this USMNT represents the country that, is, not the country MAGA demands return. He argues, many of these players come from the Midwest, the Northeast and have international upbringings where the love of the game and respect for it transcends the solipsistic braying common to US chauvinism. He, unlike me, was raised playing soccer and identifies with these players as he intimately understands and celebrates what they have accomplished by diversifying the team and what they politically and culturally bring to it. He recognizes and respects that the team looks like football teams the world over. Yet, “I prefer not to” even as I understand these players’ specific backgrounds, recognize their skills and their struggles to raise the standard of US football on the global stage. I cannot escape or ignore anything that smacks of swelling national pride. As symbolically brilliant as it is that Black player Alex Freeman scored a goal on Juneteenth, and Nigerian-British-African American player Folarin Balogun scored two goals against Paraguay in the first game of the group stage, I realize I will not be watching any USMNT matches with many of my friends.
I acknowledge this is unfair to the national team, but it is difficult for me to separate these players from a certain type of fan or the national hubris that attends this. In the year of somebody’s Lord, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the bourgeois colonial rebellion against the monarchical tyranny of the United Kingdom, there sits in the Oval Office, a criminal president supported by a financial, political, cultural, commercial, media and technological cabal, who actively works to roll back every gain made by marginalized communities over the past century. This at its start was not an unpopular plan. The majority of white voters (men and women) have thrice voted for Trump and this program. Statistically speaking there are substantial numbers of Trump voters among the USMNT supporters. I prefer not to separate the USMNT and its supporters from that odious intention. I hear fans who roar approval for Alex Freeman’s goals but will not fight for his or Malik Tillman’s, Antonee Robinson’s, Haji Wright’s, Tyler Adams, Wes McKennie’s, et al’s communities right to elect their chosen political representatives if they lived in the former confederate states. I see fans that celebrate Falorin Balogun’s goals but will not support his or Tim Tarpeah’s Weah’s 14th Amendment affirmed right to citizenship.
If the enthusiasm for the USMNT among majority Americans equaled or even rivaled an enthusiasm for a truly inclusive multi-racial democracy, or economic fairness or justice, I could see the block of ice riven disappointment around the heart of my national identity begin to thaw. I could begin to build a base upon which a reasonable hope for a more perfect union could stand. But a recent article in the New York Times has exposed how cosplaying Macho Ken doll, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has been quietly and unilaterally denying high level promotions to experienced and qualified African American and women military officers, often forcing them out of the military. Trump, Hegseth and their ilk, represent the nation. This is who governs the nation. They are not outliers in the national consciousness. These are the people elected and appointed to impose the national will. These people of course do not absolutely represent or reflect every citizen in the United States. There are millions who believe in what Bruce Springsteen refers to as “that land of hopes and dreams,” that have voted, donated, marched and protested in support of the US of their highest aspirations. Trump and his incompetent junta probably do not reflect who the members of the USMNT see themselves as or who they see themselves as representing, despite Christian Pulisic’s celebratory imitation of Trump’s Giraffe Dance. I am willing to believe that the members of the USNMT see themselves as symbols of a hopeful, inclusive, and optimistic nation, like the team itself. Yet Trump, Hegseth and the other aspiring sons and daughters of Gilead, are also symbols of the nation, its majority’s intentions and the revival of its most desolate heart. They do not necessarily reflect what many people believe. But that is the problem with symbols, once established, they have no say in who they represent, how they are seen or what purpose they serve.
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Charles F. Peterson is Professor of Africana Studies at Oberlin College.
A very powerful and all too familiar accounting, this is my resposne from across the pond:
Professor Peterson, your essay resonated with me because, although my history is British rather than American, I recognise the emotional distance you describe.
For many Black Britons of my generation, football was never simply "the beautiful game." It was one of the places where the nation most openly announced who belonged and who did not. I grew up hearing Black players and supporters being greeted with chants of "there's a nigger over there" and "nig-nog," of monkey noises echoing around stadia, of terraces chanting, "Everton are white," and of banana skins being thrown at John Barnes. Actor David Harewood has spoken movingly about attending a Leeds United match as a young boy, only to be confronted with such visceral racism that he left the stadium in tears. These were not isolated incidents. They formed the moral landscape of British football for an entire generation.
Looking back, what astonishes me most is not simply the racism itself—tragic though it was—but the extraordinary courage of those Black footballers who continued to perform at the very highest level while carrying burdens that most of their teammates never had to bear. They were expected to absorb insults that questioned not merely their ability but their humanity, yet they continued to produce moments of brilliance. Their resilience deserves to be remembered as much as their goals, tackles and trophies.
I am now over sixty years old. I have never attended a football match, and I never will. It is not because I dislike football, but because I remember too clearly what football once communicated to Black people: that we could entertain, but we did not truly belong.
The overt racism of the terraces has undoubtedly diminished, but prejudice has not disappeared; it has adapted to a new age. We have repeatedly witnessed Black players subjected to racist abuse after missing decisive penalties, while even during this tournament Dutch players have reportedly been abused online after missed penalties. Criticism is part of football; racist abuse is not. The medium has changed, but too often the prejudice remains.
If football has become genuinely inclusive, one would expect that transformation to be reflected not only on the pitch but also in positions of authority. Yet, despite the extraordinary contribution of Black players to English football, Black managers remain conspicuously underrepresented. Inclusion still seems to stop where power begins.
That is why I understand your inability to separate the national team from the nation it symbolises. Symbols carry memory. Institutions carry memory. They cannot simply ask those who were excluded to forget the history that gave those symbols their meaning.
Progress should be acknowledged. English football is unquestionably less openly racist than it once was, and many people have worked with courage and conviction to bring about that change. But trust, once broken over generations, is not restored simply because the faces on the pitch have changed.
Like you, I admire the Black players who wear their country's colours. Their talent, professionalism and resilience command my respect. Yet I cannot give my emotional allegiance to a game whose institutions once told people like me that we were unwelcome. Football may have changed, and I sincerely hope it continues to do so. But for some of us, memory enters the stadium long before we ever could. That is why I admire the players, but the game itself is not for me.
I like your take and it was a very good read. My feelings on the World Cup are, I don’t always listen to the USA‘s feet or broadcast. I tried to listen to outside outside networks for example, Telemundo, Univision, and even CBC for their coverage. The reason being is, I want to hear what other countries are thinking about us plus it helps my cultural understanding of this world. This World Cup for me has been enjoying however, I have not been naïve to understand that we have political strife and a wealth gap, not just in the USA, but in the world in general. I would love to go to a World Cup one day, but I would have to sacrifice one month salary just to go to one game and that would be in the nosebleed seats
Till then, I would like to do the above. If there’s been one thing that has impressed me so far in this World Cup and that is how far the African nations have come. It’s been an enjoyment to see these countries on the world stage where they have more passion, and they have a very strong understanding of the world game and their politics don’t always tie with their play.