Stephen A. Smith is not mincing words about Team USA’s World Cup exit, and the rant is doing numbers because he aimed it at two targets at once: the team that got run off the field, and the political interference he says helped set the whole thing off. In a video posted to his X account, he said the United States got whipped by Belgium and that Donald Trump had no business inserting himself into the tournament the way he did.
On the soccer itself, Stephen A. Smith kept it blunt. He said Team USA got their tails handed to them, that Belgium looked like the superior side, and that the Belgians played with an energy and a fire that the Americans simply did not match. The scoreline backed him up. Belgium beat the United States 4 to 1 in the Round of 16 on Monday night in Seattle, ending the run of the tournament’s host nation and making the US the last host country still standing to be knocked out.The loss did not happen in a vacuum, which is the part that set Stephen A. Smith off. Days earlier, US striker Folarin Balogun had been sent off with a red card in the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina for stepping on a defender’s ankle, a dismissal that carried an automatic one game ban. On Sunday, FIFA suspended that ban and cleared Balogun to face Belgium. Then Trump confirmed the reason the decision looked so suspect. He admitted that he had personally called FIFA president Gianni Infantino to ask for a review, saying all he did was ask for a review and that he did not think it was a foul. Infantino acknowledged the call but insisted the ruling was made by FIFA’s independent bodies without Trump’s influence.That is where Stephen A. Smith drew his line. He argued that a national leader has no business picking up the phone to lean on the head of a global sports organization, no matter how strongly he feels, and that offering an opinion is one thing while making the call is another entirely. He pointed out that Infantino, who has run FIFA since February 2016, seemed all too willing to appease Trump, and said the FIFA boss cannot afford to play favorites or ignore how the situation looks. In his view, that failure is exactly what turned a red card into a full blown controversy, and it handed Belgium all the motivation it needed to come out swinging.Belgium made sure the moment stung. After Romelu Lukaku sealed the fourth goal in second half stoppage time, several Belgian players broke into Trump’s trademark fist pumping dance, first on the field and then in the locker room. The team’s official account twisted the knife on social media, posting a photo of Lukaku and Timothy Castagne with a two word caption aimed straight at FIFA and the White House: “Overturn this.” Belgium midfielder Nicolas Raskin said afterward that his side felt a sense of injustice heading into the match and that justice was ultimately served.For Stephen A. Smith, the mockery was the final insult. He called it embarrassing that the United States not only lost on home soil but then had to watch a rival celebrate by imitating the same figure whose phone call had hovered over the entire matchup. His argument was that the scoreboard and the sideshow told the same story, a bad night for American soccer that the country brought on itself, and one that never should have been tangled up in politics in the first place.The fallout is still spreading well beyond Stephen A. Smith’s timeline. UEFA said FIFA had crossed a red line and put the integrity of the game at stake, and prominent voices abroad have called for Infantino to resign, though he has given no sign he intends to and is expected to stand for reelection next year. Belgium moves on to face Spain in the quarterfinals on Friday, while the United States is left to process an early exit and a controversy that Stephen A. Smith insisted never needed to happen.
