A Modest Proposal for Replacing the USMNT with the Women's National Team

The United States men's national soccer team is, and always has been, a collection of mediocre malcontents who are widely regarded as our nation's deepest shame. The richest country in the world, with enough resources to produce obscene quantities of leisure time for hundreds of millions of people, should be able to maintain a better all-time winning percentage than .521. The opinions of their players about how much money their morally superior and objectively more successful counterparts on the women's side should rightly be tossed into a garbage can with a charcoal fire burning at the bottom. A fire that's not too hot—you don't want to melt that garbage can—but burning just hot enough to thoroughly kill the weak and feeble opinions that might otherwise infect the discourse.

American society loves to lick the iron boot of capital, because there is a weakness in the hearts of men. These men believe what they have always been told, which is that money is the source of glory. It plainly is not. The source of all glory is honor, as it has ever been. There are several ways to attain honor, and in all facets the American man is derelict to the point of embarrassment in these arenas. Victory in battle? The United States offer only irresponsibly adventurous quagmires. The production of great works? Our bridges and tunnels are collapsing because we have decided not to care about them. Dominance in sport? Sure, but only in the sports that Americans personally invented. American Men, vile, smelly morons that they are, can't even dominate in hockey.

This recent wave of pathetic support for a hopeless, empty institution like the USMNT is an example of this. Our garbage squad, which is viscerally loathed by even its most devoted fans, is in no way worthy of the attention and emotional investment that it has received these past few years. Every single "I Believe" chant is undone, at bottom, by the certainty that the dudes bassing up their voices to bring the chant home don't really believe that these doofuses will win.

Jurgen Klinsmann has done what he can by importing a slightly better class of man, a more enlightened man, to try and temporarily prop up this paper house until it collapses under the weight of the American Male's deeply inlaid weakness and stupidity. He has received nothing but grief from the stinky pit of growling, unwashed American men for his efforts. My friends, it is very bad—all of it.

The United States women's team, on the other hand, has conducted itself with honor and been rewarded with glory in the process. They are models of a better American future, one in which men are allowed to do simple work, argue incessantly about things like "brother codes" and the towing capacity of trucks, debate the relative qualities of Quentin Tarantino movies, and otherwise leave complicated tasks to their betters, women.

Right now, though, the women's team is, naturally, getting paid much less than their super-shitty counterparts. This week, they filed a lawsuit that aimed to redress that.

While the legal process plays out, though, there is a solution to this problem: the USMNT should not be allowed to play games against the rest of the world. The United States Government, with the full support of our American polity, should quarantine their useless asses in a giant dome filled with soccer fields and other such equipments until they figure out how to kick the dang ball good. The members of this quarantined team should be required to attend every USWNT match, carry their counterparts' bags, pay for their meals, clean their cars, and remain in absolute silence until they learn how to properly conduct themselves on the world stage. That or they should quit soccer, which is too complicated for their feeble, underachieving minds. They could perhaps pick up a new and less complicated hobby, like playing with blocks.

Of course, we live in a civil society, and an ideal solution like this is probably out of our grasp, legally. So, we must pursue another method. If the United States men's national team, aromatic dump truck full of relative nobodies that it is, is still getting more money than their morally, intellectually, and result-ily superior counterparts on the women's side—the side with players that average American sports fans actually, you know, recognize—then we have to turn our backs on their garbage until this pay dispute is resolved. The solution is clear, and also totally pleasant to consider: just stop watching their loser asses on TV. Don't pay for tickets so you can watch them lose. Don't make tifos celebrating their nonexistent accomplishments. Just don't. Watch the women instead. They're way better.

For some, this will be difficult. Nike has planted their golden stake in their brains, and the only way that American Men can show loyalty, what with their insanely limited emotional range, is to spend money and time on things. But once they leave this house of horrors they have convinced themselves is a friendly bungalow, when the drugbag of fake-ass nonconviction that the USMNT is or will ever be good at soccer is unhooked from their brains and hearts, they will find themselves happier and healthier than they've ever been.

Men's soccer in America will die, which is sad or whatever. But the Glorious UNITED STATES WOMEN'S TEAM will take its rightful place in the corridors of honor. Soon, the idea of a "USMNT" will seem like a silly joke—a passing fad, something like the 19th-century mountebank, or bread machines. Embrace it. The future is coming, and we WILL enjoy living it.