Former U.S. women’s national team star Megan Rapinoe explained on Thursday how the “circus” surrounding the men’s World Cup team after Donald Trump’s intervention with FIFA may have contributed to its crushing 4-1 round of 16 defeat to Belgium.
On her podcast, “A Touch More: The Beautiful Game,” Rapinoe said the controversy over Folarin Balogun’s red-card suspension — which FIFA later rescinded after the president controversially pushed for a review — created unnecessary distractions at a time when the team should have been focused solely on soccer.
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Rapinoe compared the situation to the scrutiny that she and her U.S. teammates faced during their victorious 2019 Women’s World Cup campaign.
That tournament began after the team filed its equal-pay lawsuit, and she said the players were “a little bit more prepared” for the attention when Trump began criticizing them.
The men’s team, she suggested, was not ready for the drama and pressure.
“I think the distraction got to the team for sure in some type of way. Whether it was, you know, this red-card situation, whether it was being in a public discourse with this president, all of the shenanigans and chaos that comes with that, the feelings on both sides of that. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s just a lot to contend with,” she said.
Comparing the two teams’ experiences, she continued:
“So, not only does this [men’s] team not have like a core of older players who are used to that, but none of these players talk about anything, ever, like, for the most part. I think in men’s football, just like in general, there’s not a lot of players who are choosing to use their platform or to, you know, broaden their scope of pressure and responsibility.”
“I feel like this is the first time that most, if not all, of these players are having to even think about something off of the field that is controversial,” she added, suggesting they lacked experience in compartmentalizing the off-field noise and channeling their nervous energy.
“It’s impossible to say how much all the discourse with the president, all that, it’s immeasurable. You don’t know. We’ll never know what it would have been like for this team if that hadn’t happened,” she said.
Rapinoe also suggested U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino’s teams often thrive as underdogs and argued it might actually have “been better for us to play without” Balogun.
Turning to the match itself, she praised Belgium as “a really, really, really good team” that “have legends sitting on the bench,” while acknowledging the U.S. men’s team has been “sort of up and down” in recent years.
“I’m just bummed for them and bummed for us because it was a really fun run and it’s always fun to have the host country in and obviously as an American I want our boys to stay in as long as possible,” she said.
“But I think in general they didn’t handle the pressure of the quarterfinal well,” Rapinoe added. “I don’t think they handled just all of the circus that was around their team very well.”