When Alexi Lalas gave his now famous hot take criticism of the USMNT’s World Cup qualifying woes last Sunday, it dominated the U.S. Soccer social media universe. Fans were probably wondering what the current players thought of the situation. Well, United States captain and midfielder Michael Bradley offered thoughts Wednesday after Toronto FC practice to Canadian-based outlet Sportsnet.
Bradley, when questioned about Lalas’ rant that called out Bradley directly, responded:
“Part of being an athlete, a competitor is understanding that everybody has an opinion, especially in the world today. Everybody has a platform to fire off a hot take whenever they want. It’s life. You’re in the wrong business if that throws you off.”
When further pressed, the captain said that such criticism is used as “motivation” and summed up his thoughts with this: “One of the recent [sayings] that I’ve seen that I like is, ‘The lion doesn’t care about the opinion of the sheep.’ I’ll leave it at that. …. It’s pretty fitting.”
Looks like Bradley is focused on doing everything that needs to be done for the USMNT to beat Panama and Trinidad and Tobago next month to qualify for the World Cup and not worrying himself with hot takes from USMNT legends. The USMNT takes on Panama October 6th in Orlando, then travel to Port of Spain to play their final qualifier against Trinidad and Tobago October 10th.