Lessons From the Game: Motivation
Not Giving Your Opponent Extra Incentive to Want to Beat You
Let’s get this out there: the United States’ men’s soccer team lost to a better team on Monday night. Belgium is higher ranked than the United States. Belgium has had far more success, and Belgium seems to have a much healthier view of youth sports.
But that said, the United States made things much easier for Belgium than they should have been. And they did so in the most ridiculous, preventable way possible.
We can debate Folarin Balogun’s red card against Bosnia all day long. Maybe you think it was a red card. Maybe you think it was a yellow. I don’t think anyone besides Donald Trump is ridiculous enough to try to claim it wasn’t a foul, but we’re also talking about a man who doesn’t know soccer well enough to know what a red card is. Nobody should have taken his opinion seriously on this topic.
But of course, FIFA did. And while Rule 27 is a real rule and FIFA could have applied it, Trump getting involved made sure that it would both become a controversy and motivate Belgium’s entire roster.
That’s exactly what happened, as Belgium flattened the Stars and Stripes, scoring a 4-1 win in Seattle that wasn’t even that close. It was the United States’ worst match of the 2026 men’s World Cup, but it was Belgium’s best. And it can’t be proven, but there’s a good chance that the reason it was Belgium’s best was because of Trump’s interference.
One rule in sports is that you never want to give someone motivation to kick your butt. Anger is a powerful motivator, and in sports, anger can make a big difference. In the 1980s, Duke’s students found that out the hard way.
Duke Serves As NC State’s Sixth Man
In 1984, Duke was coming off a tough loss to North Carolina. The Duke students had actually been very funny in their loss to the Tar Heels; they’d decided to be on their “best” behavior. This was in response to criticism that previous games had seen the students be too obscene in their taunts, crossing the line as to what was acceptable and what wasn’t.
In response, Duke students held up signs saying “Please Miss”, presented North Carolina coach Dean Smith with roses and chanted “We beg to differ” when they disagreed with the officials’ calls. It was a superb response, and shows how creative the Cameron Crazies can be when they want to be.
The next game was against NC State, and the Duke students weren’t anywhere near as welcoming. Previously, NC State big man Lorenzo Charles had been accused of attacking a pizza delivery man, stealing two pizzas in the process. The story had meant some embarrassing publicity for the State program, but nothing more.
The Duke students decided to make it more. Before the game, someone allegedly called Domino’s in the Durham area and placed an order for pizza to be delivered to Cameron Indoor Stadium. Having been to Cameron, I’m not quite sure how the delivery driver pulled that off, where they would have parked or how they even got in the building, let alone to the court. But the driver apparently announced their presence to NC State coach Jim Valvano, claiming he had a delivery for Lorenzo Charles.
Valvano, always one to appreciate a joke, paid for the pizzas and passed them out to the Duke students. But inside, the Wolfpack were seething. And when the Blue Devils came out to center court, the look on Charles’ face told them that they were about to pay for the students’ behavior.
Charles dominated the Blue Devils inside all night, NC State won the game 79-76 and Duke dropped to 1-4 in the ACC with the loss. And then Valvano added insult to injury by saying that the Wolfpack would have Domino’s on the bus back to Raleigh. He went further, saying that if he’d had game balls to give out, he would have given out three — Charles, Domino’s and the Duke students.
In the Duke locker room after the game, the Blue Devils were irritated that the students’ humor had backfired on them. One Duke player said in response, “Sometimes you just need to let sleeping dogs lie. The ‘Please Miss’ signs would have been a better call.”
Fortunately for the students, Duke rebounded from that loss and made the NCAA tournament, setting the stage for Mike Krzyzewski’s dynasty. Had the Blue Devils missed the tournament again, Krzyzewski’s career could have been derailed before it began.
Belgium’s Motivation
Back to Belgium. The Red Devils’ performance in the group stage was subpar at best. Belgium was handed a manageable group, as it got to play Egypt, Iran and New Zealand. Belgium practically sleepwalked through the first two matches, getting two draws. They then unloaded on New Zealand, in part because they needed to. Another draw would have left them on three points, which we now know wouldn’t have been enough.
Belgium instead left no doubt, routing the All Whites 5-1. That made it rather clear what Belgium were capable of when motivated. They showed it again in the Senegal match in the round of 32. Senegal controlled the play for 80 minutes, building a deserved 2-0 lead. Belgium overturned it, tying the match and getting to extra time, where it found a winner on a penalty.
That made clear that the last thing the Americans needed was a motivated Belgium. This Belgium side is caught between generations, and it hasn’t quite figured which pieces go where. It needs a motivator to reach its best, and Trump provided it.
And to hear Belgium’s Nicolas Raskin say it, it made a difference.
“There’s always a justice somewhere in life,” he said. “The fact that something happened like that, we don’t think that was fair. And today, I think it just brings us a little bit of [motivation] that we needed to win the game.”
Politics Ruin the Moment
The saddest thing might be that Trump’s blatant attempt to cheat ruined any good feelings about the World Cup. It’s been a real mixed bag, as the tournament has brought several positives. Cabo Verde, Africa in general and Canada have all been bright spots. But whenever politics got involved, the results were ugly.
We’ve seen it three times. Somali referee Omar Artan should have been refereeing matches, but the United States denied him entry. Iran was forced to make camp in Mexico while playing all of its matches in the United States. And then Trump got involved in a sport he knows little to nothing about, handing the USMNT’s opponent all the motivation it needed to kick their butts.
Truth be told, the USMNT should have sat Balogun on principle. They invited controversy that didn’t need to happen, and they did it in a completely avoidable manner. That might be the worst part of this for American soccer: the United States threw away any goodwill from this tournament.
Losing to Belgium on its own wasn’t a bad exit. But losing a match and losing your integrity is a far worse combination. And unfortunately for men’s soccer in the United States, Trump’s interference cost the USMNT both on the pitch and beyond.