No one likes to see Americans win. No one outside the United States that is. They're already the world's biggest economy, have the world's biggest military, poke their noses into every part of the globe and dominate world culture through everything from Hollywood to LOLCats. And they also have this pesky belief in American exceptionalism, the idea that there's something particularly special about the United States that other states, united or otherwise, can't profess to having. And they've produced some pretty great athletes over the years.

So, like Australia in cricket or Japan at general weirdness, America is the world's Goliath – and we're all left rooting for the underdog. But there is one team that you can support without coming off like a bandwagon fan, the guy who would root for Real Madrid, Manchester United and the New York Yankees all at once. And that would be the United States Women's National Team for football, or soccer as they call it there.

Here are five reasons why this is the one American sports team you can and should support:

*Women's football is America's hockey (i.e. we all say it's important, but no one watches)
The United States is a bit of a sports crazy country. They have a lot of sporting events to pay attention to. There's American football, basketball, baseball, ice hockey, NASCAR and then football, not counting tennis and athletics in general too. In reality "soccer" is doing pretty well, thanks mostly to a growing Hispanic population, but that's still men's football. Aside from tennis, women's sports don't get anything close to the support they should be receiving, whether in America or outside, and so it's hard to look at any women's team and see an overrated Goliath whom you hope to see felled by a David. Worse, over the years, women's teams have often had to cope with issues of gender and sexuality rather than getting to focus just on their athletic achievements.   

*FIFA is trying to screw them over too
If your question is of Davids and Goliaths, the big bad villain here continues to be FIFA, the world's governing body for football. Drenched in corruption and questionable decisions, FIFA has also done a lot less to support the women's game to the extent that they've actually endangered the women athletes. The body refused to install natural grass in three of the four stadia being used in Canada for Women's World Cup, forcing women to play on the inferior quality and more dangerous artificial turf. The organisation also put players from opposing teams in the same hotels, something they would never do to the men's teams. They also gamed the seeding system to give FIFA the most money, while ruining the chances of having the best play the best. Admittedly, this is a reason to support any women's team, not just the US one, but seeing them successful in the face of FIFA is something to cheer.

*They did this in a final
Four years after Japan beat them in the penalty shoot out, the US Women's National Team got their revenge, and it was glorious. In one of the most legendary 16-minute stretches in any cup final in football, the US captain Carli Lloyd managed to score an amazing hat-trick right off the bat, including one absurd halfway line poke that got past an aggressive goal keeper and the US finished that period up 4-0. The entire stretch will go down as one of the greatest, most dominant performances of a team in a final ever.



*The athlete who won it is frustratingly weird
Carli Lloyd has already gone down in history. She has a hat-trick in a World Cup final, including one wonder goal. She captained her team through a difficult tournament and managed to come out of the shadow of America's legendary 1999 Women's World Cup winning team. And she's also proudly weird. SBNation declared Lloyd the "weirdest world class professional athlete ever" because for the most part Lloyd looks like she has no idea what she's doing on the field, she's earnest, she loves ice baths, she is a "challenge" to coach but when she finally does come through, it certainly pays off.



*After the final, one of the winners did this
Right after winning one of the great cup victories, Abby Wambach, one of the US team's stars, ran to her spouse for a celebratory kiss, just like any other American couple would. Except her spouse is her wife. Since the US Women's National Team has no choice but to bear the burden of identity politics, it might as well be a wonderfully positive approach through the site of a same-sex couple experiencing joy out in the open on what is surely one of the greatest days in Wambach's life.