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# THE WORLD WORST CUP - World Cup Score, Belgium 4, U.S. 1
July 09 2026
Written by Bob Gelfand.
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GELFAND'S WORLD - The only worse thing I’ve seen in the past couple of years was Biden’s debate performance.
But maybe there is a lesson here, and it turns out that it parallels an analogous lesson in geopolitics. So, let’s consider.
You can read a lengthy analysis of the state of U.S. soccer [here](https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49298797/usmnt-failed-world-cup-players-no-coach-save-them). It comes down to this: Our players are not as good as their players. Bringing in a highly paid coach does not do enough to change the outcome.
It took a while to teach this reality-based lesson, but there it is. And remember that Belgium was considered to be fairly far down in the hierarchy of European soccer.
More about soccer a little later, but there is one more cold reality to consider as long as we are willing to consider such things at this moment.
Scott Lemieux, writing in the influential blog Lawyers Guns & Money, includes a transcript of an essay by economist Paul Krugman on the current state of international affairs and our place within the leading western nations. You can read it [here](https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/07/the-end-of-an-empire-is-messy-at-best). Lemieux titles his discussion “The end of an empire is messy at best.” And that conclusion is where Krugman’s essay and the surrounding discussion leads us.
Krugman suggests that European leaders have learned to ignore Trump’s threats and tantrums and bizarre behavior. They are learning to go their own way. Krugman is particularly direct in his description of Trump’s policy towards Ukraine – to deliver it to Putin – and how that policy has failed.
Back to the World Cup and a few more thoughts:
First of all, to dust off an old phrase: The late L.A. Times sports columnist Jim Murray used to have a term for the point in a tournament or a pennant race when the weaker teams were no longer pretending to be competitive. His phrase, based on an earlier economy, was “getting the ribbon clerks out of the game.” I guess a ribbon clerk was somebody who worked on the floor of a department store selling inexpensive items and therefore was not somebody who could compete in a high stakes card game. Well, the ribbon clerks are now out of the World Cup.
Every remaining team is one that survived the Round of 32 and then the Round of 16. It’s interesting that of all the nations that are still in the competition, there is exactly one from South America, one from Africa, and six from Europe. Still, we might pause for a moment and mention a few teams which are no longer in the running:
Brazil
Germany
Italy (didn’t qualify)
Uruguay
Netherlands
Croatia
I mention these because only the Netherlands and Croatia did not previously win the World Cup, and both played in the championship game at one time or another. One other tidbit: Of the 22 previous World Cups, 16 have been won by (in order of success) Brazil (5), Germany (4) Italy (4) and Argentina (3). If you had been a slightly naive bettor coming into this tournament, you would have expected Brazil and Germany to be at least competitive going into the Round of 8. It’s a weird year.
An aside: One thing I like about the English team is how many of its players have names of actors or movie characters of a bygone era: Pickford, Kane, James, Anderson, Henderson, and Rogers. (OK, so one was a television character.)
**Putting both stories together: The Trump Curse**
There are two famous curses in the history of baseball that I am aware of. The first, known to fans of the Boston Red Sox, was the Curse of the Bambino. After the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919, they went 86 years without winning a World Series. The other was Billy Goat’s Curse. You see, there is this tavern in Chicago (known to everybody in the newspaper business) that was owned by a guy named William Sianis, and one day in 1945 he brought his pet goat to Wrigley Field, but the management wouldn’t let him graze his goat on the outfield grass. The Cubs did not win a World Series until 2016.
So now, all of a sudden, we have Trump’s Curse. It differs from Billy Goat’s and the Bambino, because Trump seems to be trying to help. But every time he gets himself involved (going to the Knicks game or interceding in the U.S. vs. Belgium), it all goes to hell. Maybe we can get Trump to root for whatever team plays the Dodgers in the next World Series.
***(Bob Gelfand** writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at )*
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