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With the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics just some years away, eyes are turning to the handful of latest sports activities coming to LA. One — flag soccer — is garnering specific pleasure, because the all-American sport will make its Olympic debut in simply 4 years.
Whereas followers are excited concerning the concept of Workforce USA fielding a workforce of NFL stars, present USA flag soccer quarterback Darrell “Housh” Doucette has one thing to say about that. In an interview with The Guardian revealed Saturday, Doucette mentioned that NFL gamers anticipating to get a simple roster spot may not discover it really easy.
“We simply don’t assume they’re going to have the ability to stroll on the sector and make the Olympic workforce due to the identify, proper?” Doucette advised The Guardian. “They nonetheless should go on the market and compete.”
Doucette took difficulty with a promotion launched by the NFL the place Jalen Hurts — Philadelphia Eagles quarterback and an NFL flag soccer ambassador — lights the Olympic torch with a flaming soccer and tells the digicam, “It’s our flip.” Per The Guardian, Doucette believed that Hurts was indicating his want to play — however Workforce USA already has a quarterback.
Different NFL quarterbacks, together with Joe Burrow and Caleb Williams, have additionally mentioned that they wish to play on the Olympic workforce. Doucette mentioned that he can count on gamers to wish to check out for the workforce, however that they should not take these spots with no consideration.
“I believe it’s disrespectful that they only robotically assume that they’re capable of simply be a part of the Olympic workforce due to the individual that they’re — they didn’t assist develop this sport to get to the Olympics,” Doucette mentioned. “Give the blokes who helped this sport get to the place it’s at their respect.”
For years, the NFL has lobbied closely for flag soccer’s inclusion within the Olympics, partly as a technique to give the game a extra international attain. Because of this, flag soccer was formally added to the LA 2028 program, alongside baseball/softball, cricket, lacrosse sixes and squash as extra sports activities in Los Angeles.
The 2028 Olympics will characteristic each males’s and girls’s flag soccer. Workforce USA’s males’s workforce has gained 5 of the final six world championships; the U.S. ladies’s workforce can be extremely profitable, and has gained the previous two world championships in 2018 and 2022.
Doucette, who’s 35, has been profitable for Workforce USA, serving to the workforce to a 2021 world championship in Jerusalem, a gold medal on the 2022 World Video games in Birmingham, Alabama, and an Americas Continental championship in 2023, the place he gained MVP.
He was additionally a member of an novice squad that, in 2018, defeated a workforce of former NFL gamers on nationwide tv. Doucette led the workforce to a 20-point win over the NFL squad, which included working again Justin Forsett and former Seattle Seahawks quarterback Seneca Wallace, and was coached by Michael Johnson, a four-time Olympic gold medalist in observe.
Per the Guardian, Doucette’s success in that 2018 sport was largely as a result of workforce’s velocity, plus the power to drag off fakes and laterals in a method that the deal with gamers weren’t used to. Because of this, NFL gamers hoping to affix the flag soccer workforce would possibly discover that the sport is tough to regulate to, particularly with a squad of gamers who’ve been enjoying the game for years.
“It’s not that we’d like these guys,” Doucette advised The Guardian, talking about NFL gamers hoping to be Olympians. “As a result of we’re already nice with who we now have.”
Doucette and Workforce USA will quickly journey to Finland for the 2024 world championship, the place they’ll defend their title beginning on Aug. 27 in a match that includes 31 different nations.
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