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The hierarchy of American soccer fans is constructed in tiers of legitimacy, with all the pride and fussiness that entails, so let me come clean up top and say that I am not one of the die-hards—I'm just some guy who has really enjoyed this World Cup. The global spirit always makes the tournament fun, but this year it was heightened by the inspiring play of the American team, which even won the support of international fans who separated the team from their view of our government, and the goodwill we generated for our country among those visitors (thank you to the grandeur of Buc-ee's, Waffle House, and free soda refills). It all felt like an oasis—brief, yes, but exciting and aspirational.
And then, less than 48 hours before our round of 16 match against Belgium, we got slapped across the face with the cold fish of reality, and shoved right back into the political morass that seems to shadow every facet of our lives. The only silver lining to the disaster that unfolded is what can be learned from it, and the moral of the story extends, yes, to the American Ryder Cup team.
First, the background: U.S. striker Folarin Balogun was issued a red card in the round of 32 that looked very harsh, and meant he'd miss the Americans’ next match against Belgium. By Sunday morning, though, FIFA had rescinded the one-game ban and cleared him to play. President Trump told reporters Monday that he had called FIFA president Giovanni Infantino to advocate for Balogun, and The Athletic reported that the administration’s involvement actually went a lot deeper than a phone call. It remains unclear what influence the administration's actions had on FIFA's decision, but the wider narrative that emerged was crystal clear: The U.S. received favorable treatment because its president called in a favor.
Let's focus on that concept of "narrative." Two things happened next, and my point is that they are inextricably connected and—bringing this back to golf—have parallels in recent U.S. Ryder Cup history:
1. The perception of interference by Trump ended the separation between our soccer team and our national politics. How you feel about what he did is likely tied to how you feel about Trump himself, and the reactions ran the gamut, from pride that he'd defended the team and achieved a favorable result, to disgust that he'd used his influence to pull strings that other nations could never pull. Outside the U.S., there was very little debate—this was an example of blatant corruption, and it was time to circle the wagons and root against America. Regardless of each individual opinion, though, the team was no longer distinct from the government; the U.S. 11 were now a political entity, tied inextricably with our current administration. It didn’t even matter if Trump’s impact was real, so quickly did the narrative take hold.
2. The team played like absolute trash against Belgium, who suddenly looked like the best and most dominant team to ever walk the planet. It was a debacle from the start, lowlighted by a blunder in giving up the third goal that would have embarrassed a middle school team. Compared to what came before, it was a shocking and disheartening effort, and a rotten end to America’s World Cup.
In the aftermath, you heard a lot of this sentiment, especially from U.S. supporters who didn't want to contend with the notion that they'd benefited unfairly in the first place: "Belgium are just way better." Which was clearly correct on Monday night, but American fans who have weathered one Ryder Cup disappointment after another will recognize its first cousin from the aftermath of our own disasters: "The Europeans just putted better."
True, sure, but it conveniently bypasses the question of "why," and in the process ignores the pesky notion of accountability. As in, why did the U.S. putt so poorly when all the statistics said they should be Europe's equal or even superior? Or why did the national team look so hapless against a team that Vegas thought we would beat? In short, how are the two realities—the narrative shift and the loss—connected?
For me, it's simple: The American team was not stupid. They understood how the momentum had changed, and this put an almost unmanageable burden on them. Had they never appealed the Balogun red card, or had they refused FIFA's reversal (unlikely as that seems in real life, I still think it would have been the honorable choice; sometimes you have to live with bad officiating), they would have been viewed as the aggrieved party instead of the global superpower who bent the rules to their will. The pressure on them to perform in these new circumstances, where outside forces had utterly changed their perception among the world at large, was immense, and I believe it shattered the team psychology and made them tentative and afraid. They became victims of circumstance instead of potential winners. (When your coach has to literally say, “we’re not the bad guys,” you’ve already lost.) At the same time, it gave Belgium both the moral high ground and the impetus, and woke them up from an enfeebled state to play their best match of the tournament.
And I have to mention the irony one more time, because it's so rich: All they had to do was nothing after the Balogun card, and their underdog status would have been bolstered. Instead, it was atomized.
Now, this is just one person's opinion, but it's my good luck that Golf Digest's Sam Weinman has studied and written about sports psychology extensively, including this exact topic. As it turns out, there's real science behind this. Here's what he wrote on the topic:
“Polyvagal Theory,” is Dr. Stephen Borges' provocative explanation of the nervous system’s role in how we interpret and confront all sorts of challenges, including in sports. In a comfortable state, Polyvagal Theory says, we see a task one way. When threatened, we see it another. And it’s not as simple as deciding what to think, or going by what we see and hear. Through an involuntary process he calls “neuroception,” Porges says we constantly acquire signals in the background without knowing.
"Provocative" though it may be, it also seems to me incredibly logical and in tune with my own experience. It's being used now by performance coaches in major professional sports, and if you accept that neuroceptive influence can happen on the group level as well as the individual level, what happened to the national team is that they went from a comfortable state where they could play with aggression and confidence, to a threatened state where everything became defensive.
Andrew Redington
To illustrate this concept from the positive side, Weinman pointed to a fascinating piece from 2023 about the case of Trea Turner, the highly paid Phillies star, recently signed from the Dodgers, who was in the midst of a bad slump and getting booed mercilessly by his own fans. One of those fans, influential within the base, managed to convince the entire stadium to give him a standing ovation at every at-bat—a true miracle, if you know anything about Philadelphia fans—and voila, Turner snapped out of his slump...and wound up buying billboards to thank the fans.
More from Weinman:
“What Polyvagal Theory brought to the table is optimizing our physiological state,” says Michael Allison, a performance coach who applies Polyvagal Theory to his work with professional and college athletes, including ATP tennis players and the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies. “It’s understanding what emerges when we are in a trusting or playful relationship. So the goal of all of this is to get your body in that same state, even with challenge and uncertainty.”
What we saw with the national team was the opposite—a group thrust into a negative state, with a simultaneous galvanizing effect on their opponents.
If you have an agenda that runs contrary to these sorts of psychological performance theories (even if that agenda is simply, "I don't want to think about it"), you can cast doubt easily enough by scoffing and attributing results to a bad day or bad luck, or to imply that the narratives are being constructed in hindsight, or to take refuge in small-picture statistics.
But if you believe this stuff matters, and might even be critical, you'll recognize parallels from the Bethpage Ryder Cup, when a major narrative ahead of the event was the U.S. players winning the right to be paid for their play. As someone who thinks they should absolutely be paid, and that it was laughable for Europeans to criticize them after an entire generation of their own stalwarts had forfeited future captaincies to take money from LIV, I watched with fascination as the European team, seemingly in concert with the British press, made this the biggest story leading up to the week. Not only that, but they managed to set the terms of the debate, and the U.S. had no plan for how to respond.
I don't want to overstate how much effect this had on the final result, either at Bethpage or at Rome two years earlier when the story first emerged. There were plenty of other organizational reasons the U.S. lost, and it may have been more ammunition than Europe actually needed, but it shows how much one side valued the power of narrative as a weapon for heaping pressure on your opponent and forcing them into a defensive state, and how the other side was caught completely off-guard. It's just another way Europe is ahead of the game.
For the leaders of the American team going into Adare Manor, for Furyk and his vice captains, what happened to the U.S. national team should be instructive, because it was the "pay for play" situation blown out to epic and far more impactful proportions. Once you get stuck behind a narrative, it's hard to get in front again, and it can lead to disaster for your team. There's plenty to worry about with Ireland looming, but this one should be near the top of the list, because while it's not true that perception is reality, it's too often the case that it becomes reality.
Continue reading...
And then, less than 48 hours before our round of 16 match against Belgium, we got slapped across the face with the cold fish of reality, and shoved right back into the political morass that seems to shadow every facet of our lives. The only silver lining to the disaster that unfolded is what can be learned from it, and the moral of the story extends, yes, to the American Ryder Cup team.
First, the background: U.S. striker Folarin Balogun was issued a red card in the round of 32 that looked very harsh, and meant he'd miss the Americans’ next match against Belgium. By Sunday morning, though, FIFA had rescinded the one-game ban and cleared him to play. President Trump told reporters Monday that he had called FIFA president Giovanni Infantino to advocate for Balogun, and The Athletic reported that the administration’s involvement actually went a lot deeper than a phone call. It remains unclear what influence the administration's actions had on FIFA's decision, but the wider narrative that emerged was crystal clear: The U.S. received favorable treatment because its president called in a favor.
Let's focus on that concept of "narrative." Two things happened next, and my point is that they are inextricably connected and—bringing this back to golf—have parallels in recent U.S. Ryder Cup history:
1. The perception of interference by Trump ended the separation between our soccer team and our national politics. How you feel about what he did is likely tied to how you feel about Trump himself, and the reactions ran the gamut, from pride that he'd defended the team and achieved a favorable result, to disgust that he'd used his influence to pull strings that other nations could never pull. Outside the U.S., there was very little debate—this was an example of blatant corruption, and it was time to circle the wagons and root against America. Regardless of each individual opinion, though, the team was no longer distinct from the government; the U.S. 11 were now a political entity, tied inextricably with our current administration. It didn’t even matter if Trump’s impact was real, so quickly did the narrative take hold.
2. The team played like absolute trash against Belgium, who suddenly looked like the best and most dominant team to ever walk the planet. It was a debacle from the start, lowlighted by a blunder in giving up the third goal that would have embarrassed a middle school team. Compared to what came before, it was a shocking and disheartening effort, and a rotten end to America’s World Cup.
In the aftermath, you heard a lot of this sentiment, especially from U.S. supporters who didn't want to contend with the notion that they'd benefited unfairly in the first place: "Belgium are just way better." Which was clearly correct on Monday night, but American fans who have weathered one Ryder Cup disappointment after another will recognize its first cousin from the aftermath of our own disasters: "The Europeans just putted better."
True, sure, but it conveniently bypasses the question of "why," and in the process ignores the pesky notion of accountability. As in, why did the U.S. putt so poorly when all the statistics said they should be Europe's equal or even superior? Or why did the national team look so hapless against a team that Vegas thought we would beat? In short, how are the two realities—the narrative shift and the loss—connected?
For me, it's simple: The American team was not stupid. They understood how the momentum had changed, and this put an almost unmanageable burden on them. Had they never appealed the Balogun red card, or had they refused FIFA's reversal (unlikely as that seems in real life, I still think it would have been the honorable choice; sometimes you have to live with bad officiating), they would have been viewed as the aggrieved party instead of the global superpower who bent the rules to their will. The pressure on them to perform in these new circumstances, where outside forces had utterly changed their perception among the world at large, was immense, and I believe it shattered the team psychology and made them tentative and afraid. They became victims of circumstance instead of potential winners. (When your coach has to literally say, “we’re not the bad guys,” you’ve already lost.) At the same time, it gave Belgium both the moral high ground and the impetus, and woke them up from an enfeebled state to play their best match of the tournament.
And I have to mention the irony one more time, because it's so rich: All they had to do was nothing after the Balogun card, and their underdog status would have been bolstered. Instead, it was atomized.
Now, this is just one person's opinion, but it's my good luck that Golf Digest's Sam Weinman has studied and written about sports psychology extensively, including this exact topic. As it turns out, there's real science behind this. Here's what he wrote on the topic:
“Polyvagal Theory,” is Dr. Stephen Borges' provocative explanation of the nervous system’s role in how we interpret and confront all sorts of challenges, including in sports. In a comfortable state, Polyvagal Theory says, we see a task one way. When threatened, we see it another. And it’s not as simple as deciding what to think, or going by what we see and hear. Through an involuntary process he calls “neuroception,” Porges says we constantly acquire signals in the background without knowing.
"Provocative" though it may be, it also seems to me incredibly logical and in tune with my own experience. It's being used now by performance coaches in major professional sports, and if you accept that neuroceptive influence can happen on the group level as well as the individual level, what happened to the national team is that they went from a comfortable state where they could play with aggression and confidence, to a threatened state where everything became defensive.
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Andrew Redington
To illustrate this concept from the positive side, Weinman pointed to a fascinating piece from 2023 about the case of Trea Turner, the highly paid Phillies star, recently signed from the Dodgers, who was in the midst of a bad slump and getting booed mercilessly by his own fans. One of those fans, influential within the base, managed to convince the entire stadium to give him a standing ovation at every at-bat—a true miracle, if you know anything about Philadelphia fans—and voila, Turner snapped out of his slump...and wound up buying billboards to thank the fans.
More from Weinman:
“What Polyvagal Theory brought to the table is optimizing our physiological state,” says Michael Allison, a performance coach who applies Polyvagal Theory to his work with professional and college athletes, including ATP tennis players and the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies. “It’s understanding what emerges when we are in a trusting or playful relationship. So the goal of all of this is to get your body in that same state, even with challenge and uncertainty.”
What we saw with the national team was the opposite—a group thrust into a negative state, with a simultaneous galvanizing effect on their opponents.
If you have an agenda that runs contrary to these sorts of psychological performance theories (even if that agenda is simply, "I don't want to think about it"), you can cast doubt easily enough by scoffing and attributing results to a bad day or bad luck, or to imply that the narratives are being constructed in hindsight, or to take refuge in small-picture statistics.
But if you believe this stuff matters, and might even be critical, you'll recognize parallels from the Bethpage Ryder Cup, when a major narrative ahead of the event was the U.S. players winning the right to be paid for their play. As someone who thinks they should absolutely be paid, and that it was laughable for Europeans to criticize them after an entire generation of their own stalwarts had forfeited future captaincies to take money from LIV, I watched with fascination as the European team, seemingly in concert with the British press, made this the biggest story leading up to the week. Not only that, but they managed to set the terms of the debate, and the U.S. had no plan for how to respond.
I don't want to overstate how much effect this had on the final result, either at Bethpage or at Rome two years earlier when the story first emerged. There were plenty of other organizational reasons the U.S. lost, and it may have been more ammunition than Europe actually needed, but it shows how much one side valued the power of narrative as a weapon for heaping pressure on your opponent and forcing them into a defensive state, and how the other side was caught completely off-guard. It's just another way Europe is ahead of the game.
For the leaders of the American team going into Adare Manor, for Furyk and his vice captains, what happened to the U.S. national team should be instructive, because it was the "pay for play" situation blown out to epic and far more impactful proportions. Once you get stuck behind a narrative, it's hard to get in front again, and it can lead to disaster for your team. There's plenty to worry about with Ireland looming, but this one should be near the top of the list, because while it's not true that perception is reality, it's too often the case that it becomes reality.
Continue reading...
