With No Argument on Substance, Critics Take Aim at U.S.’s Style

Benoit Tessier/Reuters

LYON, France — There was just enough edge in Ellen White’s voice to suggest she meant it. It was only a few minutes after the United States had eliminated White’s England team from the World Cup, though that is too simple a description of what she was going through.

She was still trying to process all that had happened, everything that had transpired in the previous two hours: the goal that was, and then was not; the penalty that appeared from nowhere and then went back the same way. White’s eyes were still rimmed red; her breath was still short. She kept worrying that she was going to cry, again.

Journalists are not (always) monsters. There had been enough questions…