Tag Archives: football

Open letter to the US Soccer coach

July 9, 2026

Coach Pochettino:

You blew the single greatest opportunity you ever will have as a coach and worse yet you failed not only your players but our country.

After President Trump intervened causing FIFA to overturn the ban on Balogun, you should have called a news conference and said the following.

Although I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the extraordinary efforts exerted in order to reverse the Red-Card ban on Balogun that now allows him to play in our next contest against Belgium, I am here to announce that he will not be playing in this game and we are honoring the initial call made on the pitch. While I believe the call was wrong, it nevertheless stands in the absence of outside influence and even the appearance of impropriety is bad for the game and our mutual association as footballers. Preserving the integrity and spirit of honest and fair competition is more important than winning under a cloud of doubt.

I’m genuinely curious if the thought of doing what I suggest ever crossed your mind?

Had you done this, you would have galvanized your role as a great coach while ensuring the positive impression the United States has made on the world. You would have taught your players a life lesson they would never forget while burnishing the credentials of what we are as Americans.

As it stands now, not only did we get our asses handed to us, but we appear to be bad sports that will go crying to daddy when things don’t go our way. Just think of the difference our loss to Belgium would have been if we had taken the high-road. Perhaps we still would have lost, but who knows, maybe accepting that Red-Card penalty might have energized players and fans and just maybe a different outcome, but even in defeat, had we done as I suggest, we would have been universally cheered in our defeat and respected for our sense of fair play.

I played an Olympic sport at a high level on 3-US teams, captained the team against Mexico and also served as an Executive in the national governing body authoring the sports successful application to the US Olympic Committee so I know and understand sports at the level you are coaching. That said, you failed to see the single most important moment in your tenure and because of that failure, you should resign.

Standard

DETOUR: Hi-Road CLOSED

The World Cup Soccer coming to the US and North America is a gigantic bright spot in a world sometimes not so nicely glistening.  So far, the US has enlightened, charmed and otherwise impressed the hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors experiencing the magic of what it means to be fortunate enough to be within or borders.  The opportunity to continue that charming winning streak is about to come to and end I’m afraid.

As I write this, the match between the US and Belgium is about 60-minutes away.  As you probably have heard by now, our star scorer was prohibited from playing in this game because of a Red Card violation in the prior game, requiring him to sit this one out.  Long story short, President Trump intervened in the situation and now, miracle of miracles, this player is back on the pitch, ready to play tonight.

What a monumental mistake.

If I were the US coach, I would call a news conference and announce that even though we are able now to play our best scorer, thanks to presidential interference, we are not going to do so and that player will remain on the bench for this game and not play.  I would further declare that I was resting him for the next match and that even though we could play him, we understand the optics are bad and in the interest of fairness and the appearance of manipulation, we choose to take the original penalty and carry on.

If we did that, the world would admire our sense of fairness and our sportsmanship and even our harshest critics would be hard pressed to find fault with our choice.

If we prevail over Belgium without our best scorer, that really says something.  If we lose, we lose, fair and square; we go home heads held high.

We have a chance to demonstrate to the world what it means to be an American, in the spirit of fairness and the perception of it, we can show the world that we walk the walk not just talk the talk, but it looks like we will not take that path.  What a shame.  We saw an opportunity to interject something into the system and we took advantage of it.  Now we can’t win for winning and we can certainly be assured of losing something much more important than a soccer match.

I hope we lose to Belgium, just so the criticism stops because the further we go into the finals of this tournament with the albatross of inside dealing hanging around our neck; the worse it looks for America and her supposed sense of fairness.

We had a chance to make a real statement in doing the right, but hard thing but in a few minutes, we will blow that opportunity.  What a shame.

Standard