Friday night, the United States men’s national team walked onto the field at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles and beat Paraguay 4-1. Three goals in the first half. The first multi-goal World Cup win in 24 years. The crowd was raucous, the performance was dominant, and for a few hours, the most politically fractured country on earth united behind a group of young men who, taken together, represent a living, breathing constitutional argument. Yahoo Sports
I want to talk about that argument, because it matters more right now than it usually does.
Look at Who Scored
Folarin Balogun scored twice. Christian Pulisic was everywhere in the first half, splitting defenders and creating havoc. Gio Reyna scored in stoppage time to push it to four. Weston McKennie was involved in the opening goal. The crowd went delirious. NBC NewsMetro Philadelphia
Now let’s talk about who these people actually are.
Thirteen players on this 26-man roster are dual nationals. Folarin Balogun, who scored twice last night, was born in New York to Nigerian and British parents and grew up in England, where he came through the Arsenal academy. He could have played for England or Nigeria. He chose the United States. Cristian Roldan was born in California to a Guatemalan father and Salvadoran mother who immigrated after their home countries were gripped by violence in the 1980s. Malik Tillman, starting in midfield, plays his club football in Germany for Bayer Leverkusen; his family roots are in the American South. Antonee Robinson, the left back who was everywhere last night, is another dual national who could have waited on an England call that never came. Yunus Musah turned down England; Sergiño Dest turned down the Netherlands. They chose this. U.S. Soccer + 2
Gio Reyna’s father, Claudio, was on the 2002 USMNT squad that reached the quarterfinals. Sebastian Berhalter, who came on at halftime last night, is the son of the previous head coach, Gregg Berhalter, a man who grew up in New Jersey and built a career in European football. These are multigenerational American soccer families, and their stories trace the exact arc of how this country has always worked: someone comes here, builds something, and their children build on it. Yahoo Sports
The Constitutional Point Nobody Is Making
We are currently living through a political moment in which the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship are being treated as problems to be solved rather than promises to be kept. The argument, stated plainly, is that being born on American soil should not automatically confer citizenship if your parents arrived here without documentation or on temporary visas.
Here is what that argument cannot account for: a team like the one that played last night.
Folarin Balogun is an American citizen by birth. His parents were not citizens when he was born. Under the framework being proposed by the current administration, he would not be a citizen. He would not be on that roster. The goal he scored in the 7th minute equivalent last night, the one that set the tone for the entire game, does not happen.
But the argument goes deeper than any single player. The entire philosophy of what makes the USMNT special, the reason it can recruit from a global talent pool of people who have American roots, who were born here, who grew up here, who chose here, is inseparable from the 14th Amendment’s guarantee. Birthright citizenship is not a loophole that immigrants exploit. It is the legal architecture that turns immigration into belonging. It is how the child of a Salvadoran immigrant becomes Cristian Roldan, born in Pico Rivera, California, undeniably and completely American.
What “Real American” Soccer Would Look Like
Let’s be honest about what the alternative looks like, because the pseudo-nativist fantasy of a monoculturally American sports program has an actual historical record.
The 1990 World Cup roster, the first American team to qualify in 40 years, was overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly domestic, and went out in the group stage without winning a game. The 1994 team, playing on home soil, did better; but the transformation of the USMNT into a genuine international contender tracks almost exactly with the diversification of the player pool, the growth of immigrant communities producing athletes with dual eligibility, and the expansion of scouting into communities that earlier generations of American soccer administrators simply didn’t look at.
The team that won last night is what happens when you let America be America. Nigerian-British parentage, Salvadoran roots, German Bundesliga experience, families that came from everywhere and landed here. That is not a weakness in the national project. That is the national project. It is, in fact, the only version of the national project that has ever actually worked.
The Deeper Argument
I am a history teacher, and I have been thinking about this for weeks. There is a version of American identity that is ethnic and hereditary; and there is a version that is civic and propositional, grounded in the idea that what makes you American is your relationship to a set of principles and a piece of ground, not your bloodline. The 14th Amendment chose the second version, deliberately, in the aftermath of a war that was fought over exactly this question.
Citizenship by birth is only a genuine national promise if it applies to the children born here regardless of their parents’ paperwork. The moment you start creating hereditary classes of residents who were born on this soil but cannot belong to it, you have broken the thing the 14th Amendment was written to protect.
Last night’s game was a celebration, and it deserved to be. But it was also a pretty good civics lesson. The most American team on earth is built from everywhere. That is not an accident. That is the point.
The next time someone tells you the 14th Amendment is a problem, ask them which goals they would like to give back.
This is part of my Politics in the Classroom series, where I look at the importance of political campaigns, pop culture, sports, music, and geopolitics of the last 50 years and how to use them as resources in the classroom. To read more, check out my other posts in the series. (Link)
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