Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder was among the 66,925 football fans in attendance at the Seattle Stadium yesterday (July 6) as the USA men’s team crashed out of the 2026 FIFA World Cup following a 4-1 defeat by Belgium.
And while the performance on the field may not have given the USA team’s supporters much to cheer about, Vedder put smiles on faces with his own unique ‘hydration break’ during the Round of 16 knock-out game.
As the players on the field took their mandatory drinks break, and Pearl Jam’s Alive echoed around the stadium, TV cameras picked out Vedder in one of the corporate boxes holding a glass of champagne and a can of Stella Artois beer. After briefly ‘conducting’ the crowd in a singalong, Vedder proceeded to down the Belgian lager, deliberately letting it dribble from his mouth onto his T-shirt, to the amusement of all seated around him.
The game itself was overshadowed by controversy before a ball had been kicked, when USA striker Folarin Balogun’s one-match ban for a red card offence against Bosnia-Herzegovina was sensationally suspended by FIFA, after President Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of asking football’s world governing body to review the decision, because he “didn’t think it was a foul”.
Only once in the entire history of the World Cup – which has seen 189 other red cards – has a player escaped a suspension, back in 1962, before automatic bans were in place.
The decision outraged the world of football, with the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) saying it was “astonished”, but Trump said FIFA had “made the right decision”, claiming that it would have left a “big stain” on the tournament had the ban been implemented.
The Belgian team admitted after the match that the injustice had only fuelled their desire to win. Post-match, celebrating the win, the team’s Instagram account posted the message ‘Overturn this’.
