Watching Christian Pulisic score a goal for the United States yesterday – which turned out to be the only goal of the match, sending the team to the next round (and Pulisic out of the game with an abdominal injury) – I thought that here was an argument for young Americans to take up soccer: It is a game that allows you to become a national hero like no other. In baseball, football, basketball, you can be admired around the country (see: LeBron James) but you are a hero only to a city (like Bryce Harper now is to Philadelphia) or at best a region (as Tom Brady once was to New England). There is no international stage for your heroics. (For basketball players, the Olympics pale in importance to an NBA championship.) When they put on their national uniforms, players like Messi, Ronaldo, Kane, and Lewandowski carry the hopes and dreams of their countrymen in a way that’s unknown to American athletes. It is the global aspect of the World Cup that makes it so epic, and its stars like homegrown gods.
