The World Cup highlights cultural differences between continents and countries.
Korean fans shocked the world with how they cleaned up after themselves. The rest of the world isn’t so fastidious.
Americans shocked the world with how welcoming and friendly we were. Most of the world isn’t so welcoming and kind.
European fans impress Americans with how enthusiastic they are and with the camaraderie they show. American fans are a bit envious.
But now the flap over an unwarranted red card and a suspended suspension has brought another cultural difference to the fore.
American striker Folarin Balogun was wrongly given a red card in the Round of 32. The U.S., playing a man down, nevertheless held on to and expanded its lead, defeating Bosnia and Herzegovina. The red card meant Balogun would be suspended for the Round of 16, though, perpetuating the injustice. FIFA has since suspended the suspension, allowing Balogun to play against Belgium in the Round of 16.
A wrong was righted, and now both the U.S. and Belgium can play at full strength. Belgian soccer leadership is responding by complaining.
This is startling to American fans, even those of us who think Trump shouldn’t have made the phone call to FIFA officials about Balogun’s suspension.
The Belgians don’t believe that Balogun is dangerous — they just want him suspended. This is at odds with the American view.
For instance, during the NBA Finals, Knicks fans thought Spurs star Victor Wembanyama should have been called for a foul, even a flagrant foul, for assaulting Knicks’ star Jalen Brunson. But we knew one obstacle to such a call: The NBA rules would have required Wemby be suspended for a game if he were assessed another flagrant foul.
A flagrant foul would have been the right call, but suspending Wemby would have sucked. If the Knicks had beaten the Spurs when the Spurs lacked their best player because of a debatable call by a ref and an ill-considered NBA rule, that would have placed something of an asterisk on the Knicks’ win.
We want to beat the other team at full strength. Belgians are different, it appears.
This difference shouldn’t be shocking: You want to beat their best team is a cultural attitude. Our attitudes about competition are different.
Interestingly, another Belgian attitude I learned about in a different soccer tournament almost cuts in the opposite direction: Rooting for the favorite.
My older brother lived in Brussels more than 20 years ago. He was in a bar during some match that didn’t affect Belgium. Maybe it was Spain vs. Korea in the 2002 World Cup. Maybe it was Spain vs. Georgia in the 2004 Euro Cup. Whatever the matchup, there was a clear favorite and a clear underdog.
My brother, being an American, was rooting for the underdog. All the Belgians in the pub were rooting for the favorite because they were the favorite. They wanted the better team to win because that would mean better matchups in subsequent rounds. Who doesn’t want to see higher-level soccer?
You can see the logic to this Belgian position, but if you’re an American, it just grates on your sensibilities. We tend to root for the underdogs.
You can argue about which view makes more sense, but such arguments won’t be very productive. These are not really logical propositions, but cultural sensibilities. Cultural sensibilities are inherited, even absorbed throughout one’s life. It never even occurred to me that I should make an argument for rooting for the underdog.
Similarly, it seems obvious that you don’t try to disqualify your opponents’ starting players unless you really think that player did something egregiously wrong.
A final point: I have played sports or coached youth sports my entire life. The most embarrassing losses my teams have suffered often came after we hoped or tried for some sort of lame or cheap advantage. A couple of times, the other team was late, and we started counting on a forfeit win. We thought the other team’s ace pitcher had hit his pitch count, but we were mistaken, and so we sat around waiting for the reliever. We had a rain delay while leading, and we hoped the game wouldn’t restart. In these cases, our coaches tried to prevent this anti-competitive mindset from taking hold, because it’s a loser mentality.
Belgium now has that loser attitude. They have an excuse to lose, and they convinced themselves that playing against a full-strength U.S. team is not a fair match. I think this helps the Americans.