USWNT Dominates the World Yet Again

​Article by: Justin Imler 

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Welp, where do I even begin. Let's start with the fact that the U.S. Woman’s soccer club completely ran the field in route to their 2nd straight World Cup title this past weekend. The U.S. took home the gold against the Netherlands Sunday with a 2-0 victory led by a penalty kick score by Megan Rapinoe in the 61st minute. Shortly after in the 68th minute Rose Lavelle followed with a goal of her own to take a quick 2 goal lead, and it was smooth sailing from there. Now even though the U.S. Woman’s dominance was present throughout the tournament, the controversy surrounding this team’s championship run was something that equally shared the spotlight. 
 
As a team, their 2019 World Cup started out with them beating Thailand in record breaking fashion by a score of 13-0. Long story short, after every goal, the team was celebrating like it was their first, and shocker, people had a problem with it. My question is simple, who cares? They ran up the score? There is literally a goal differential factor in the group stage, so yeah, you score as much as you can. Did they celebrate after each goal? They most certainly did. This tournament comes around once every four years, and these players have been working towards it their whole lives, every single woman in the tournament should be celebrating every goal as if it is their last, plain and simple. I thought this was a ridiculous thing to have a problem with from the beginning, and I really don't think it is a biased opinion either. If it's a JV baseball game and they are running up the score after already being up by 15 runs, yeah that is a problem. However, this is not JV baseball, it is the world cup people! These women deserve to score and celebrate as much as they want, they have put in the work and surely have earned that right. 
 
At the helm of most of this team’s controversy however was Megan Rapinoe, who also ended up winning both the Golden Ball (essentially tournament MVP) and the Golden Boot (Tournament’s top scorer – 6 goals and 3 assists).  Controversy arose when she was asked in an interview if she would be interested in visiting the White House after the World Cup, to which she promptly replied “No, I’m not going to the f****ing White House.”, while also administering a silent protest during the National Anthem of each game. Obviously, this did not bode well with most fans, and Americans in general. However, she also had a massive amount of support for her right to protest, and her decision to not visit the White House. Rapinoe did however say she did regret cursing in her response but stood by what she said.

I'm glad she made this second statement because I do agree that there was a better and more professional way she could've gotten her point across. After all of this, the team won the title three days ago and no formal invitation has been made by Trump, who said in a response to Rapinoe that he was inviting her and the team to the White House win or lose, so we will just have to wait and see how this situation plays out.
 
Even with all the controversy that was surrounding this year’s World Cup team, their dominance should not go unappreciated. This is the U.S. Women’s 2nd straight World Cup title and 4th title overall. They were the clear favorite going in and they delivered, even after facing some injuries to Rapinoe and Rose Lavelle, who coincidentally scored both goals in the final, while also facing some tough opponents along the way like home country France in the quarterfinals. All in all, I have never been much of a soccer guy, but I really did enjoy keeping up with the World Cup this year, and watching this group dominate their way to another title.  USA baby, USA. 

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