USA-Belgium Open Thread
By 
Odd that we’re playing one of the few countries as famous for their fried food as the United States! Team USA is a slight favorite, based largely on home field advantage and the corrupt influence of the sitting US President. As Paul noted the Mexico-England match was an all-time great, so let’s hope that the quality of the tourney remains high. And of course it goes without saying that despite the intervention, Folarin Balogun is the kind of person that Trump and Stephen Miller emphatically believe should not be an American citizen.
In 2001, airline employees stopped a seven-months pregnant Florence Balogun from traveling home to London, deeming her too pregnant to fly. She stayed in New York, where she was visiting, eventually giving birth to a son, Folarin, before returning to London.
Twenty-five years later, Folarin Balogun has attracted global notice as a rising soccer star. Despite training in Arsenal’s youth academy and spending much of his career playing for England’s youth teams, Balogun — legally an American citizen, thanks to his Brooklyn birth — has emerged as a key contributor to the U.S. team’s attack at this year’s World Cup. The striker scored two goals in America’s opener against Paraguay last Friday, hoisting his team to a record-breaking 4-1 victory, the most goals the U.S. men’s team has ever scored in a World Cup game.
Photo Credit: By Jon Åslund – https://www.flickr.com/photos/jooon/4344695768/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14971242