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By now, you’ve seen Alexi Lalas’s outburst on the state of the USMNT. Much like his career as a pundit and multiple stints as MLS executive, it was high on emotion and low on anything constructive. But hey! That’s tv, right? He’s there primarily to drive up ratings and keep interest high around a floundering U.S. men’s team. And sure, those guys are overpaid! And their tattoos! How can you expect to win a soccer game with all of those tattoos getting in the way? So sure, these guys are definitely soft, and maybe a kick in the pants from someone who knows what doing things the hard way actually feels like is just what they nee—
Alexi Lalas blasts U.S. national team's 'soft, tattooed millionaires'
— radamel foucault (@hancxck) September 12, 2017
alexi lalas literally went to cranbrook that's a private school
Wait wait wait. Do what now?
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Oooooh man. Oh yes.
For the uninitiated, Cranbrook Kingswood is a cultural touchstone due to the 2002 movie 8 Mile, the semi-biographical movie about Eminem’s upbringing in Detroit. The film’s main source of tension and eventual climax occur in freestyle rap battles at the Shelter, in which main character Jimmy (Eminem) goes from choke artist who can’t think of anything to say to grand champion. He does so by beating a group of jerks who call themselves “Leaders of the Free World,” a group who also happened to beat the crap out of him earlier in the movie. In the final battle, Jimmy uses the fact that Poppa Doc, the Leader of the...Leaders...can only insult him with things the audience already knows. Namely, Jimmy is poor, white, and lives in a trailer with his Mom. But Jimmy lets slip that Poppa Doc isn’t as hard as he likes everyone thinks he is. He actually went to Cranbrook. That’s a private school!
On the level of roasts to hit the silver screen, this one is a ghost chili pepper. Clarence can’t come back from it. He’s ruined. He knows he’s ruined; look at his face. His carefully constructed persona comes crumbling down like the old, ivy-covered facade of a private school.
So, yeah, we all kind of agree with Alexi Lalas. The U.S. didn’t play well.
But never forget that Alexi Lalas’s real name is Clarence. And you can’t trust Clarence.