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We Didn’t Lose to Belgium Because “Our Best Athletes Don’t Play Soccer”

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jul 8th, 2026 · 10:32 AM EDT

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One of the things you hear all the time is that America’s best athletes don’t play soccer.

BUT WHAT IF THEY DID?!

What if we had LeBron James and Aaron Judge out there against Belgium? Would we have won 4-0?

It’s an interesting topic, if tiring. You have to start by defining “athlete.” It seems like a portion people who throw out this generic line on social media are talking strictly about physical traits like speed and strength and height and agility, a take which is immediately rendered null and void because Lionel Messi is 5’7″, 160 pounds soaking wet, and the best of all time.

So that part of the argument doesn’t make much sense.

Which means we expand the definition of “athlete” and include technique and tactical awareness. Could we have been better in that department on Monday night? Yeah, sure. Every team can be better in that department. Maybe Alex Freeman, for instance, should have played that Tyler Adams diagonal pass one-time across the box instead of trying to bring it down, which is something he’ll learn with more experience under his belt. Maybe they should have tried playing Flo Balogun in the channels between the center backs and fullbacks or gone a little more direct to bypass a clogged midfield. But, if you recall the second half, before Matt Freese committed the backbreaking schoolboy error, we made a tactical shift and started to look a lot better both with and without the ball.

So that part of the argument is probably legitimate.

You can go further, though, and say that “athlete” includes undefinable traits, like clutchness, mental fortitude, and dawgness, which isn’t a word. I just made it up. But you know what I’m talking about; it’s that Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan killer instinct in which you walk onto the court and say “we’re not losing to these motherfuckers, not tonight.” It’s the edge, the innate competitive nature, and the unteachable ability to play your best when the lights are brightest.

That’s what I think the USMNT was missing on Monday. They didn’t lose the game because they lacked speed, or strength, or height, or technical chops, or tactical acumen. They just didn’t play very well.

Malik Tillman, Balogun, Weston McKennie, Dest, and the disappointing/injured Christian Pulisic all normally have good attacking traits. We have guys who play for Milan and Juventus and Monaco, and in the Premier League and France. Some are young, and need more minutes and more big games under their belt, but they were playing against a Belgium team that started players from Rangers, Lille, Brugge, Fulham, Brighton, Benfica, and Atalanta. Those are good teams, but not elite, top-tier clubs, so I don’t think the talent gap is as big as people would have you believe.

If you look at the goals the U.S. conceded, the first one was the product of ball watching. Sergino Dest should have just gone up and headed it out. Would better “athletes” have prevented that goal? Eh, probably not. What they needed at that point in time was to be locked in and focused, which they weren’t.

The second goal – Tim Ream gets dunked on. Would more size and strength have helped there? Better positioning and awareness? Sure, but Leandro Trossard was 1v2 against Dest and Freeman and that cross should have never come in in the first place. I think there’s a lack of aggression in defense there, which again comes from the “focused and ready to play” part of the game. They let their guard down after scoring an equalizer and got burned.

And the third goal, well, I don’t even know what to say about that. It was possibly the worst brain fart of all time. Inexperience more than anything, overthinking a big moment instead of just hacking the ball clear and sensing the high level of danger.

They overall did not play with a sense of urgency and got themselves embarrassed, compounded by President Trump’s decision to get involved with the Balogun red card situation and turn the entire world against a group of players who had nothing to do with the controversy. I’ll always believe that had a tremendous negative affect on the team, even though I can’t prove it.

So ask yourself honestly – do we win that game if we have better athletes? Maybe, but I think we already have good athletes. They play for good European clubs and a decent amount of them came through American youth systems. I think they just need to play their best game when it matters most, and they shrunk under the bright lights. I don’t think it had anything to do with speed, strength, height, weight, technique, or tactics, I just think the dawg mentality wasn’t there, and we can discuss further whether or not dawgness is included in the definition of “athlete.”

EDIT – one thing to add: we have something like 350 million people in this country now. we have more than enough young athletes to be elite at football, basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey, tennis, curling, dressage, interpretative dance, air rifle, and whatever else at the same time

EDIT 2 – Tim Ream plays in MLS? Yes, he does. But he has something like 400 career appearances for Bolton and Fulham and ~120 for New York and Charlotte. He’s much more of a European player than an MLS player. And Freeman, if we’re being honest, has played what, 9 games in Spain? He’s more of an MLS player than a European player.