00:00Today, I'm going to explain why USMNT is the worst acronym in sports.
00:05I'm talking about the United States Men's National Team.
00:09Team for what? Team for soccer.
00:11Somehow the letter S didn't make it into that entire five-letter acronym.
00:15And that brings up the first problem.
00:17The acronym is just too long. Five letters, too many.
00:20Every successful sports acronym has three letters,
00:23whether it's NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB.
00:26Even in soccer, you have the MLS.
00:29USMNT is just too long.
00:31And it doesn't have enough vowels.
00:32The only vowel is at the beginning, and there are no vowels between consonants.
00:36So you can't turn the acronym into some kind of word.
00:39It's just unnatural.
00:40Nobody would say USMNT in the ordinary course of conversation.
00:44Second, why do we have this acronym at all?
00:47It is so that when you talk about the men's team, you have to think about the women's team.
00:50It's a nod, in a sense, to equality.
00:52Now, in fairness, the women's team has been much more successful on the world stage.
00:56They've won the World Cup four times.
00:58The men have never won it once.
00:59They've only advanced as far as the quarterfinal.
01:01But do you really have to think about the other half of the equation
01:04every time you're talking about one team or the other?
01:07If the women want to be called the USWNT, that's fine.
01:10But why don't we just call the men's team Team USA?
01:13It's just more natural.
01:14Third, we don't have a culture of winning.
01:17And USMNT is part of why.
01:19Every country that succeeds the World Cup has their own culture, their own style of play.
01:24The Spanish have their short little passes.
01:26The Brazilians have their rhythm.
01:28The English have the long ball.
01:29And so on.
01:30But USMNT is what the Americans have.
01:33We have a bunch of bureaucracy.
01:34We have a bunch of preconceptions about what this sport is supposed to be.
01:38We don't have the killer instinct for winning.
01:40The kind of instinct that allows a Messi to take over for Argentina in stoppage time
01:45and win 3-2 when they were trailing 2-0 just 10 minutes before.
01:48You need a culture that reflects a desire to win.
01:52And USMNT just gets in the way.
01:54Call them Team USA when they play on the international stage
01:57and you'll start to see the wins pile up.
01:59I guarantee it.
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