would". He feared that the celebrations and the goals had cost the U.S. team fans and "sealed themselves as villains" of the Cup. Six days later, when the U.S. team beat Chile 3–0, the scoring players and their teammates celebrated their goals with hugs, followed by golf claps. England defeated Latvia 20–0 in the 2023 FIFA World Cup qualifiers and were criticized for running up the score. While the English team consisted of full-time professionals, the Latvians were largely amateurs. The mother of one of the Latvian players lamented the "unnecessary humiliation". The Belgian team had defeated Armenia 19–0 in the same qualifying series, and though they did not see similar criticism, UEFA said both incidents had led to the decision to change its qualifying format so that teams would not encounter those of a vastly different level. Australian rules football There is no negative stigma associated with running up the score in Australian rules football, as the sport lacks any obvious means to kill off a match quickly and painlessly, and time-wasting is both unpopular with fans and discouraged by the laws of the game. The only tiebreaker used in most leagues is the ratio of points for versus points against (known in the code as "percentage"), a system that encourages teams to record large scores and winning margins, occurring frequently when there is a large disparity between ability. Running up the score occurs in all levels of play, but it is particularly prevalent in metropolitan and country leagues, where weaker teams can often be beaten by margins of 200 points or more. American high school sports Vast talent discrepancies between opponents happen more often in high school sports than in college or professional sports. This is especially prevalent in district competition (where schools of similar size are grouped based on geography) and regional single-elimination tournaments in which all schools (regardless of record) participate. It is even more prevalent in Kentucky high school basketball, in which a single state championship for each sex is conducted; this in turn means that district and regional competitions, and even the state tournaments, will feature games involving schools that differ vastly in enrollment. Often, a state's athletic association will seed a vastly superior team (one that has gone undefeated or has very few losses) against a very weak team in the first round (so as to avoid early-round matchups between high-seeded teams, hoping