Diego Luna, you do you.
Go ahead and win for Real Salt Lake — score a goal and roll up three assists, like you did against Atlanta United the other night in a 5-2 RSL victory — and ignore the blowback you’re getting from those who are criticizing you for turning down an alternate position on the U.S. Olympic soccer team.
They wanted you as an alternate?
Puh-leease.
Some of those folks are saying you are “selfish” for refusing the call, a call that never should have been made in the form it was in the first place. You should have been named to the team outright, as a frontline player, not as a backup to a backup in a subordinate role buried so deep that you likely would have sat around as insurance in case injury to less-gifted, less-accomplished, less-worthy players would have necessitated your use.
All while your high-flying club team in Utah would have continued to benefit from your significant contributions on the pitch, while you wasted away in Paris.
Critics are saying you should have deemed it an honor to be wearing the U.S. kit as a scrub, representing your country while you sat idle as an alternate on a team you would have helped advance at the Olympics with your stellar play had you been properly named. It can be argued without your stellar play on the U-20 squad that the United States wouldn’t even have qualified for the Olympics.
Critics are saying, in so many words, that you’re being a baby with your hurt feelings, regardless of you knowing full well that your contributions of the past have already proved your deserved place on this Olympic team. They say, no matter, you should bend the knee in front of the very people who disrespected you by not inviting you on as you should have been, that that would have somehow, some way demonstrated your great competitive character.
You know the opposite is true. You stay and play your guts out where you are valued and needed and utilized as the force for your team that you are. That’s what you hold in high regard, not some supposed distinction as somebody’s third-row player who gets to find enthusiasm for making the squad, but not really. They wanted you to do nothing more than pick up the pompoms.
Critics, some of them, anyway, also say your refusal to be a scrub on the U.S. Olympic team, made up mostly of younger players, will hurt you in the future. That tomorrow’s selectors will remember this and hold it against you as you continue to grow and progress, ignoring that growth and progression in favor of breathing life into an ongoing grudge against you for what you’ve done here and now. Any person in a position of power who would do that, keeping you off future national teams when your talent screams otherwise has no business being in that position of power.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Real Salt Lake midfielder Diego Luna (8) hugs Chicho Arango (9) after Chicho scored a goal, in MLS action between Real Salt Lake and Atlanta United, in Sandy, on Saturday, July 6, 2024.
Nobody’s naive enough to discount that politics sometimes come into play in such matters, but play the way you have, the way you can, the way you will, and let such prejudices become obvious as a stain on whoever might be dumb enough to exert them.
Diego, I watched a panel of critics put you down on television for your decision as they pontificated about this and that — blah, blah, blah — and while I understand their right to and role in lobbing out that criticism, it doesn’t mean clear-thinking individuals have to agree with it.
And they don’t.
One said it was “unfortunate” that you declined the alternate spot, that “any opportunity whether you’re an alternate or not that you get to represent your country on the world’s biggest stage, you take it.” That might be “detrimental to him moving forward no matter how well you’re playing, or not.”
“He’s having a career year with RSL,” said another. “… This is more of him feeling hurt. … In this case, he’s being selfish. … While it may hurt, while it may not be what he wants, if you really wanted to be there, if there was an actual ounce of you that wanted to be an Olympian, you’d be an alternate. You’d do whatever it would take, and you would be there until there was no possible chance, but saying, no, I’m not going is just saying I’m putting myself and my feelings ahead of this team and this country.”
“I’d take it a step further,” said another, “and I’d say, that if you’re overall ambition is to be a men’s national team player, to be in world cups, and you’ve told the organization that I’m not willing to take these little steps here, what’s that say for your commitment later down the road? If I want to be a star sure, I’ll come in and do it, but you want me to come in and fight and do this and that and earn my spot, nah, I’m OK with that.”
This is a ridiculous view, Diego, whether there’s truth in it or not. Proving yourself by being willing to sit around as an alternate now for opportunities in the future should be no real factor at all. What you do on the pitch should be the factor. Are you deserving to be on a national team because of the way you play? That’s the authentic criteria, not being willing to duck away from Real Salt Lake and the winning that needs to get done there to go to Paris to show loyalty to powerful people by doing essentially nothing.
If there is truth in that, maybe that’s what’s wrong with U.S. soccer.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Real Salt Lake midfielder Diego Luna (8) scores a goal, in MLS action between Real Salt Lake and Atlanta United, in Sandy, on Saturday, July 6, 2024.
I’m with you, Diego. If your feelings are hurt, as the futbol gods are my witness, they should be hurt. You deserved to be on that Olympic team. You’d already demonstrated that. And if your hurt feelings now hurt other people’s feelings on the national level, let those folks cry all the day long as you go on doing what you’re best at here — playing and winning.
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