Parity Does Not Exist in Soccer

American Exceptionalism expects U.S. men's soccer to be better than what they are, and we can write endless think pieces with valid critiques about what the problem is, but the truth of the matter is, the World Cup is really hard to win.  

In 23 World Cups, there have only been eight winners. 

Brazil has the most wins with five, but they haven't won in 24 years. They also went 24 years or 6 World Cups between their 1970 and 1994 win.

The gaps between Germany's four wins are 20, 16, and 24 years, and this year's Round of 32 result is their best since their last win in 2014, meaning they didn't even get out of the Group Stage in 2018 and 2022. 

Despite also having four wins, Italy hasn't even qualified for the last three tournaments, and they have gaps of 44 and 24 years between wins.

Before Argentina's latest win in 2022, their last victory was in 1986, a gap of 36 years. Messi himself had to play in five tournaments before winning. 

France didn't win their first of two World Cups until 1998 after not qualifying the previous two, and their resurgence is in large part thanks to one player, Mbappé, who helped them win in 2018, 20 years after the first win.  

Uruguay's two wins were in 1930 and 1950, and England, despite being home to the Premier League, has only won it once in 1966, which negates the MLS argument. Their second-best finish? Third. This year. 

Spain is the newest winner, and they took 16 years to win it again. 

Statistically, that's 8/84, or 9% of teams that have qualified for the World Cup.  

In comparison, 20/30 teams have won the NBA Finals, 20/32 NFL teams have won a Super Bowl,  25/30 MLB teams have won a World Series, and 22/32 NHL teams have won a Stanley Cup: at least half of all teams.

Sixteen out of 32 MLS teams have won a title, which is the lowest percentage among major American sports leagues, but when you dig deeper and look at the world's top soccer leagues, you will see how staggering the disparity is and much it parallels with the World Cup statistic:  7/51 (13%) teams that have competed in the Premier League, 13/58 (22%) Bundesliga teams, and 9/63 (14%) La Liga teams have won championships.

In contrast, the EuroLeague, Europe's top basketball league, has produced 22 different winners with 20 active teams. Soccer is the difference: it is the hardest sport to play and win, and the World Cup is the biggest and best display of that excellence because in order to win, you truly have to be the best. 

The Realities of Post Grad Life

1. You have bills to pay-rent, utilities, property taxes, mortgages/loans, everything costs money, and you get kicked off your parents’ health insurance at 26. 
2. Because you have bills to pay, unless you’re unemployed or have sold your soul to a corporation for PTO, you have no more free time. 
3. The next big step in people’s lives is to get married and have children. That is why they go to college for a good-paying job. We make fun of teenage pregnancies and women looking for their MRS degrees, but people are having babies with their college partners. That was their goal all along. If this is not your life path, you will be very alone. 

10 Year Reunion (1 Year Late)

No one prepares you for the reality of post grad life.

There are no dining halls to feed you, no undergrads to swipe you in, no restaurants within walking distance.

Go to college they say. UVA is a good school they say. But I can’t find a job. I have my Bachelor’s degree, and I’m scrubbing the toilet at Gymboree. 

There’s no one to talk to about this because the friends you saw every day are now four hours away. You never learned to talk on the phone because you didn’t need to. They were just a walk away. 

Eventually you find a job on Craigslist of all places and have a place to live thanks to an old childhood friend, but you eventually grow apart. All your old friends disappear because you’re not the same person anymore. You’re vegan and don’t want kids.

Eventually you go to grad school because your 9-5 isn’t fulfilling and you need to run away from a boy. The word situationship was not alive and well yet. 

At grad school, you don’t open up because you’re surrounded by white girls again and of course make friends with the only other Asian. They see this and exclude you even more. They eventually accept you through the power of morning meeting, but by then it’s too late: they’ve already developed a lifetime bond. 

You graduate and skip the lawn ceremony because you’ve “been there done that” but again it’s so hard to find a job. There is serious racism no one talks about: it feels like only white people get hired by good schools, but the public school system is so bad, they eventually quit too. 

You glaze over your teaching career because it was so traumatic and your 5-month relationship, and eventual dissolution of all your friendships. 

Every month, March still feels sad because the body remembers the score, but eventually it goes away. However, your depression creeps up during holidays when you have more time alone with your thoughts.  

COVID saves you from having to teach in-person for the last 3 months of school. 

You move back home because you’re done with NOVA and pay a year’s worth of mental well-being and no personal space to live with your parents again. 

Eventually, your sister gets into a MFA program, so you follow her, and life finally looks up again, but men continue to haunt you-not in a scary way, although it could be, but in a crush is such a waste of time kind of way-but finally you are free because they move away and leave you alone. 

And buying a house is stressful but you get through it somehow and you meet your first ever bestie you share with your sister. Life is finally stable after five years in one place, but you’re constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop like how in two months your best friend will move away for grad school. 

You look back at your high school yearbooks because your high school employee wants to know what you were like and realize two boys gave you their phone number-all this time, you thought you were undesirable, but you didn’t think anything of it back then because starting a new life at UVA was your only goal. And you did. College was the best four years of your adult life. But it ends, and you have to figure out the rest on your own because no one prepares you for the reality of post grad life.

Ear Piercing

Because I was feeling depressed, I got my second lobe piercings today, something I’ve wanted to do for the last year, and the 6-8 weeks recovery time is giving me anxiety. I can’t sleep right now because I’m a side sleeper and I’m afraid of messing everything up.

I don’t remember it being this long as a kid when I got my ears pierced not once but twice after the first one closed up.

I am dreading having to clean it twice a day yet the task was so easy for me as a child. Shouldn’t I be more competent as an adult? 

But as an adult I know too much now. I am too aware of what could go wrong, but is that a simple result of growing old or having too much access to information via the internet? Is getting your ears pierced with a gun at Claire’s or a mall stall bad if you don’t know it?  Without hearing stories about people’s piercings not healing, I wouldn’t even know it was a possibility. 

Or is it the fact that I am my sole protector now? If anything goes wrong, I have to solve the problem. The mental load to keep me alive is no longer my parents’. 

Or is because I paid for the expensive piercing myself, knowing what I know about Claire’s, so if it doesn’t heal, I have to spend more of my own money to fix it? 

Or am I just simply mentally ill now as my sister put it. Mentally ill from what? Living.