A few quick soccer thoughts for the quarterfinals

(1) The England-Mexico game had 44 million viewers in the US. For context, that’s 50% more than the most watched college football game of last season — the national championship game — and two and a half times more viewers than the most watched regular season game — THE Michigan-Ohio State game naturally. Even more shockingly to old person me, who grew up in a country where soccer basically didn’t exist as a spectator sport — the World Cup wasn’t even on TV until my 20s! — it’s essentially the same viewership as the NFL conference championship games! Now of course in güeroland all this doesn’t “really” count because it includes the viewership on Telemundo, which is watched by millions of Mexican-Americans, which in the MAGA cinematic universe is an oxymoron, not that they know what that word means. Hey I just realized that oxymoron is a perfect description for a Trump voter from JD Vance country.

(2) I think there’s a reasonable chance that soccer actually overtakes American football as the most popular spectator sport in America in a generation or two, especially as the CTE crisis gets worse (yes I know soccer has its own CTE problems but they’re nothing as bad as those in concussion ball). Lots of people under 35 are already as likely to watch the Champions League final as the Super Bowl, and if MLS ever turns into a real league as opposed to a hyper-profitable tax shelter for plutocrats things will really take off.

(3) My theory which is mine is that the USMNT played so horribly against Belgium because of all of Trump’s red card suspension shenanigans. All the post-match commentary about how oh you see what happens when they play an elite UEFA team is ex post facto bullshit — the betting lines in both the US AND Europe had the US as a slight favorite over a talented but rapidly aging Belgium. I’m not saying the US would have won but for the Trump bullshit but I’m convinced he played a major role in fucking the game up, because that’s what he does. He fucks everything up, constantly. Komm, Trümptod.

(4) Just for the heck of it, I summed the xG totals for the eight remaining teams, which produced the following ratios:

Spain

6.54 to 1

Argentina

3.65 to 1

France

2.89 to 1

England

2.37 to 1

Morocco

2.36 to 1

Switzerland

2.14 to 1

Belgium

1.71 to 1

Norway

1.15 to 1

xG says Argentina dominated the Cape Verde and Egypt games which is why their ratio is so good despite the close calls. Spain and Norway are huge outliers in each direction. Spain’s is driven by having given up a total of about three good scoring chances in five games. Norway got badly outplayed by Brazil by this metric, which really hurts them in this analysis.

Enjoy the games, I know I will.