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Growing up in hockey-mad Michigan, Jack Hughes had to have assumed that anyone who led the U.S. men’s hockey team to its first Olympic gold medal since 1980’s legendary “Miracle on Ice” team would instantly become a national hero. Pretty much every American would have thought the same. So in February, when Hughes scored the winning goal in overtime to beat Canada in the gold medal game — a game during which his front teeth had been knocked out, no less — he must have imagined he’d be adored in America for the rest of his life.
He ended up getting about two hours.
The problem, of course, was that during the locker room celebration afterward — with lightning-rod FBI Director Kash Patel pounding brewskis a few feet away — President Donald Trump called in to congratulate the team and ended up, in his uniquely Trumpian way, insulting the gold medal-winning women’s team. Hughes, and the rest of his team, laughed in response — which wasn’t a great way to handle it. But I’m also not sure how they were expected to collectively compose a sudden, spontaneous defense of women’s sports while shouting into a cellphone. Instantly, they went from conquering heroes to unwitting combatants in the ever-expanding, utterly relentless American culture war. Hughes and his teammates spent the next week defending themselves, to little effect.
Welcome to the perils of representing an American national team in 2026, Jack Hughes. At least you don’t have to worry about who plays you in the movie.
This is worth remembering as the U.S. men’s national team, or USMNT, begins play at the World Cup this week (its first game is Friday against Paraguay, followed by Australia on June 19, Turkey on June 25 and, hopefully, the knockout round matches after that). The U.S. men’s national soccer team isn’t as good as the U.S. men’s hockey team — if it somehow won this World Cup, it would be a far bigger upset than the “Miracle on Ice” was — but it’s still talented. More to the point, it’s playing on American soil.
Trump is certain to put himself front and center throughout the event. Trump is close with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who clearly created the FIFA Peace Prize in order to give it to the president, and he rather awkwardly posed for photos with FIFA Club World Cup winners Chelsea last year. Trump knows the World Cup will give him global exposure that exceeds even the Olympics; he’s going to attach himself to every part of it he can.
And that extends, especially, to the U.S. team, which puts the team’s players (like just about any American athlete, and increasingly any citizen) in an impossible position. Express support for the president — or, really, do anything less than publicly lambaste him to his face — and you are complicit. Say something negative about him — or even just look a little uncomfortable in his presence, like American players such as Weston McKennie did — and you’re un-American. You’re Jack Hughes, or you’re Hunter Hess, the U.S. Olympic skier who Trump turned into a Fox News villain for daring to say he didn’t “represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.” You can’t win.
You have already seen this with the current USMNT roster. Star forward Christian Pulisic took heat for doing the “Trump dance” celebration after scoring a goal shortly after the 2024 election. McKennie, a key midfielder, got similar heat from the other direction not just for scowling while next to Trump but also for saying Trump could be called “racist” in 2020. It is no wonder most athletes, after a period of outspokenness and activism that peaked around that time, now stay out of the political fray: Even the once highly active LeBron James has learned that steering clear of politics saves you a lot of headaches. Even Aaron Rodgers, once on the short list to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential running mate, is pretty quiet these days. But that’s harder to do when you’re actually representing the country, whatever the country even is right now. Simply having “Team USA” by your name puts you in the fight, whether you want to be or not.
It’s a shame, because this is a very likable team, and one that, despite some recent struggles, might be the most purely talented in U.S. history. (And they looked much better in their send-off matches against Senegal and Germany.) I’ve long argued that rooting for the USMNT is particularly fun because they actually are what Americans consider themselves to be but rarely are: underdogs. We’re the Empire, but we always tell ourselves we’re Rocky Balboa. The United States is an up-and-coming soccer nation, a growth stock, and this team, which should be favored to advance out of its group, has multiple compelling personalities. I happen to love both Pulisic and McKennie, and you should, too.
It will also be playing at home, in front of its own fans, in the first World Cup to be held in the U.S. since the 1994 event that essentially launched soccer’s popularity in this country. This is a fun team to root for! If you let yourself, you will absolutely love them unreservedly.
But I’m not sure we can really let ourselves love something unreservedly anymore. At least not in this country, not right now. The American team, this American team, is something that we could all rally around, something we could collectively support, as one. But we’re too busy fighting with each other to give them, or ourselves, much of a chance.
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