FAILED LEADERSHIP: US Women’s Soccer Suffers Humiliating 3-0 Loss to Sweden on Biden’s Watch

Snaps 44-game winning streak after kneeling in protest

Andrew Stiles • July 21, 2021 12:40 pm

Two years after President Donald Trump guided the U.S. women’s soccer team to a World Cup victory, the American women embarrassed themselves and their country Wednesday by losing 3-0 to Sweden in the Olympic opener in Japan.

The lopsided defeat, which occurred on President Joe Biden’s watch, came after the U.S. players took a knee in protest after the opening whistle. It’s not entirely clear what they were protesting, but they certainly weren’t ready to compete.

The humiliating result snapped a 44-game winning streak for the U.S. women’s team, which had not lost a game since January 2019. It was also a blow to the credibility of the New York Times, which had days earlier published a profile of Vlatko Andonovski, the U.S. women’s coach who “can’t lose.”

To put the magnitude of the U.S. defeat in context, losing 3-0 in soccer is the equivalent of losing 42-0 in football. It was a dramatic setback for the team, which is hoping to become the first women’s squad to take home an Olympic gold medal after winning the World Cup.

It wasn’t the first time the U.S. women were felled by a Swedish opponent. Sweden knocked the United States out of medal contention during the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, one of several American sports disasters brought on by the failed leadership of former president Barack Obama.

Women’s soccer isn’t the only organization suffering under Biden. The U.S. men’s basketball team lost its first two exhibition games to Nigeria and Australia despite the fact that basketball was invented in America.