{"id":505,"date":"2026-06-13T22:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T22:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=505"},"modified":"2026-06-13T22:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T22:06:08","slug":"will-americans-start-to-care-about-the-world-cup-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=505","title":{"rendered":"Will Americans Start to Care About the World Cup Now?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You\u2019re reading The Sporting Scene<\/strong>, Louisa Thomas\u2019s weekly look at the world of sports.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Last Wednesday, my eight-year-old daughter and I biked through a playground and down a long series of strip-mall parking lots, avoiding the gonzo drivers of greater Boston, past a farm and a Girl Scouts camp, to Bentley University, in Waltham, Massachusetts. We were about twenty minutes from her elementary school, on a reconnaissance mission. Traffic cones with signs temporarily forbidding parking lined the road, and a high blue fence, its netting emblazoned with the words ALLEZ LES BLEUS<\/em> and the insignia of the French national team, the Gallic rooster, alongside the school\u2019s crest lined the edge of the campus. I saw a white security tent inside the main gate and decided to keep riding. Another entrance was a few hundred yards down the road; this one was unguarded. We went in and rode past deserted buildings to a bike rack.<\/p>\n

Read more The Long Road to Margaret Thatcher\u2019s Britain<\/a><\/p>\n

I had told my daughter that the French team, runners-up in the last World Cup, were practicing at Bentley, and maybe we could catch sight of them. I knew this was unlikely. \u201cThe practice area is under a no-fly zone that\u2019s under 24-hour security monitoring with beefed-up staffing and video cams, bomb-sniffing dogs will comb the area before each practice, and anti-drone equipment sits at the ready,\u201d the Boston Globe<\/em> recently reported. But I couldn\u2019t resist the chance to see what we could see\u2014and to help my daughter, who had so far shown about as much interest in the World Cup as she does in doing the laundry, feel part of the action. The World Cup was here!<\/em> In our back yard! Forty-eight teams, three host nations, sixteen cities\u2014and one of them was our city, Boston. (Sort of: the last time we\u2019d been to Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough\u2014now called Boston Stadium, at FIFA<\/em>\u2019s insistence, for the duration of the World Cup\u2014the drive had taken more than an hour.) One of the best teams in the world was based within biking distance. And yet, only a few days before the biggest global event on earth was set to begin, the only sign I\u2019d seen of the impending madness was a small collection of FIFA<\/em>-branded stuffed animals at our local CVS. My daughter plays soccer; a few of the kids in her class wear Messi or Mo Salah jerseys to school more days than not, and so I thought a glimpse of Kylian Mbapp\u00e9, one of the greatest players alive, might stoke her interest. Or maybe she\u2019d spot William Saliba and become inspired by his imposing physical presence. I imagined us counting down the hours to the France-Senegal game. I pictured us in the back yard with a ball, talking about Total Football and tiki-taka<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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We parked our bikes, and my daughter volunteered to find someone who might be able to direct us to the soccer field. It dawned on me that my moral authority was about to crack: I was going to have to tell her that we weren\u2019t supposed to be there. But, before I could say anything, she approached an older man shovelling dirt into one of the campus\u2019s well-manicured garden beds and asked where we might be able to find the soccer field. \u201cOh, you can\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s fenced off.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She turned to me and narrowed her eyes. \u201cYou mean we\u2019re not supposed to be here?\u201d she asked. The gardener looked at my daughter, and then looked at me, and then performed the sort of kindness that the FIFA<\/em> president Gianni Infantino is always saying that only the World Cup can inspire: he offered us directions, involving a large hill and about twenty-seven turns, to a sand pile on the edge of campus. \u201cMaybe, if you climb the sand pile, you can look down across the street and see something,\u201d he suggested.<\/p>\n

As it happened, we wouldn\u2019t have seen anything but the freshly cut grass; the French players were arriving at Logan Airport at that very moment, before heading downtown to the Four Seasons, where the team had rented every room, for maximum privacy. But my daughter, in any case, was not going to break the rules. \u201cYou should have gotten tickets,\u201d she said. I explained that tickets weren\u2019t available for practices. I decided not to mention that tickets were<\/em> still available for some of the games in Boston, including Saturday\u2019s game, between Haiti and Scotland; FIFA<\/em>\u2019s dynamic pricing model listed the cheapest ones at around eight hundred dollars. And that was before you tacked on the inflated cost of getting to Foxborough. (At least only the cost was keeping us out: most Haitians are currently unable to enter the country, thanks to one of Donald Trump\u2019s travel bans.) My daughter\u2019s scowl deepened. \u201cWe\u2019re going home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFootball is enormous,\u201d Roger Bennett, one of the founders of the football-centric podcast-and-video network Men in Blazers, told me over a video call not long ago. \u201cThe opportunity is enormous. We\u2019re so bullish,\u201d he said. Sixteen years ago, Bennett and Michael Davies started Men in Blazers as a single podcast. Now they have three channels: one for men\u2019s soccer, with a particular focus on the Premier League, the Champions League, and the U.S. national team; another for women\u2019s soccer; and a channel focussed on soccer in the Americas. There are podcasts, events, a television show; during the World Cup, Bennett will drive around the country in a giant, tricked-out orange bus. (\u201cLike John Madden\u2019s bus,\u201d Bennett explained.) He envisioned \u201cCollege GameDay\u201d-style live events, with screaming fans in the background. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be like a tidal wave for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Bennett arrived in the U.S., from England, in 1990, to work as a camp counsellor in Maine, there was so little interest in soccer that he failed to find a bar that would agree to put on the World Cup semifinal, in which England would be playing the biggest match of Bennett\u2019s lifetime. Many of the bartenders seemed to take a kind of perverse pleasure in denying his request. (He learned from a little box in the Globe<\/em>, the next morning, that his beloved team had lost on penalty kicks.) Soon afterward, Bennett moved to Chicago, where he fell in love with American culture; his first taste of an Arby\u2019s sandwich was \u201clife-changing,\u201d he told me. His adoptive home had no interest in his other great love, soccer, but Bennett was undaunted. As for the worn-out soccer-versus-football debate? \u201cIn England, they use the word \u2018soccer\u2019 all the bloody time,\u201d he said. Two of the biggest football shows in the U.K. were called \u201cSoccer Saturday\u201d and \u201cSoccer A.M.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s short for \u2018association football,\u2019 \u201d he explained. People mock Americans for using the word because the rest of the world likes a chance to make the superpower feel inferior. \u201cEven Slovenia doesn\u2019t fear us,\u201d he said, referring to the U.S. men\u2019s team. \u201cThese tiny nations and big nations know that we<\/em> know that they<\/em> know that we<\/em> know that they<\/em> know we\u2019re crap at it.\u201d Some British fans referred to U.S. fans as \u201cplastic fans.\u201d Real<\/em> fans were those who attended games, home and away, in the flesh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Bennett was in Chicago when the 1994 World Cup began. It was meant to showcase soccer\u2019s ascendance in the U.S. The logo featured a soccer ball taking off against red-and-white stripes. But no one was paying attention at the start; on opening night, O. J. Simpson was motoring down the L.A. freeway in his white Bronco, trailed by the police. According to Bennett, a study ranked soccer as the United States\u2019 sixty-seventh favorite sport, behind tractor pulling. Bennett went to the opening game, at Soldier Field, partly just to help fill what he imagined would be a lot of empty seats. He was shocked to find the stadium packed, mostly with Bolivians and Germans, and their descendants. When Italy later played Ireland at the Meadowlands, outside New York City, the World Cup finally burst onto the American scene. \u201cAll of New Jersey was there,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cIt was like \u2018Angela\u2019s Ashes\u2019 against \u2018The Sopranos.\u2019 \u201d That game \u201cgave Americans permission to celebrate their identities in all of their dizzy wonder,\u201d he said. The U.S. team performed above expectations, beating Italy and making it out of the group stage before falling to the eventual champion, Brazil. Attendance broke records. For a moment, soccer was everywhere. Andr\u00e9s Cantor, who had called all Spanish-language broadcasts of the World Cup for Univision, played himself on \u201cThe Simpsons,\u201d re\u00ebnacting his iconic cry of \u201cGooooooaaaaalllll!\u201d<\/em> (The utterance, Cantor points out, is typical of goal celebrations in Latin America, and not unique to him, but Anglos in the U.S. seemed not to realize that.) And yet the surge lasted only a moment. \u201cIt was like one of those waves that you feel like they\u2019re massive, but by the time they hit shore they\u2019ve lost their power,\u201d Bennett said. When his favorite Premier League team, Everton, was in an important game the following year, Bennett again couldn\u2019t get it on television. To follow it, he called his parents back in the U.K., and asked them to hold the receiver up to the radio.<\/p>\n

If the sudden popularity of soccer receded, it didn\u2019t disappear. U.S. Soccer, which had run the tournament, finished with a surplus of fifty million dollars, and used some of that money to establish Major League Soccer, a league that has slowly but steadily taken root and cultivated loyal fan bases. The 1999 Women\u2019s World Cup saw similar growth in interest, and arguably had a greater long-term effect: the success of the U.S. Women\u2019s national team during the next two decades created countless new fans. Perhaps the biggest change, though, was technological: with the arrival of the internet and then of streaming TV services, the days of holding a receiver up to a radio were over. Anyone could watch Premier League and Champions League games from anywhere in the world. Soccer is \u201cthe perfect internet sport,\u201d Bennett argued, noting that the golden age of baseball aligned with the golden age of radio, and that the rise of football (American football) is inextricable from the rise of television. Americans started following the top leagues in Europe and Latin America with fervor. These days, when Bennett flies back to the U.K., the plane is packed with American fans heading to Premier League games. And American billionaires own several of Europe\u2019s most storied and valuable teams. (Petrocratic states control many of the others.) \u201cOur audience is so knowledgeable,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cThey know so much\u2014as long as it\u2019s mostly happened after 2014.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As for the tepid run-up to this World Cup? Story after story highlighted the greed of FIFA<\/em> and the hardening of U.S. borders at the very moment the world was set to arrive. Visas have been denied, or delayed, for a number of staffers, fans, and even players. A referee was denied entry into the U.S. simply, it seemed to him, because he was Somali. One of the host nations is at war with one of the tournament\u2019s participants. The relationship between the U.S., which was set to host seventy-eight games, and Canada and Mexico, which were hosting thirteen each, remained uneasy. Every headline about the World Cup is worse than the last: ticket prices are outrageous, far higher than for any previous World Cup. Cities\u2014and their taxpayers\u2014are on the hook for the lion\u2019s share of expenses. New York and New Jersey are fighting over who goes first on signage. Hotels are reporting unexpected vacancies. There is an unmistakable feeling that a great mass of fans are priced out, or fenced out, while wealthy sponsors and venal bureaucrats get the benefits. It was hard to say who the World Cup was for, or where it was taking place, or what it was even supposed to represent.<\/p>\n

And yet, when the World Cup gets going, the story could change. The run-up to Qatar, four years ago, was a humanitarian disaster. By the time the tournament was over, it was considered one of the best World Cups of all time. Perhaps Americans will delight in the sight of thousands of Dutch supporters, clad in orange, marching through Kansas City, or legions of Germans following a young man playing a saxophone, or the Scottish fan who walked three thousand miles from California to Boston, to raise money for mental-health awareness in his home country and attend the Haiti-Scotland match. Only twenty-nine per cent of Americans describe themselves as \u201cinterested\u201d or \u201cvery interested\u201d in the World Cup, according to a YouGov poll. Fifty-nine per cent say that they don\u2019t plan to watch any games. But the collective attention of Americans is fickle, and prone to sudden excitement. The country is also big enough that even thirty per cent of the population\u2014around a hundred million people\u2014is equivalent to the entirety of many other sizable nations. Spark enough interest, and you\u2019ll have a conflagration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe joke on our shows that soccer is America\u2019s sport of the future, as it has been since 1972,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cIt\u2019s always perpetually about to be the next big thing.\u201d But this<\/em> time, this<\/em> World Cup, would be different, he insisted. \u201cI do believe we\u2019re in that moment where it is about to become the sport of the now, and this World Cup should cement it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more My N.B.A. Knowledge Comes In Handy<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps he was right. On Thursday, as the World Cup kicked off in Mexico City, where Mexico defeated South Africa, and then South Korea came back to beat Czechia, I started to hear reports of Scots in kilts roaming the streets of Boston. There was a man wearing a chicken costume and a Brazil jersey, and dancing to music from a boom box, at the Cortlandt Street R station in New York. \u201cShould we all go to France-Norway on 6\/26? I think the answer is hell yes,\u201d one of my friends texted our group chat.<\/p>\n

But I wasn\u2019t hearing the same kinds of stories about fans of the U.S. team. The U.S.M.N.T. has a sizable following, led by a fervid group of supporters who call themselves the American Outlaws. But a lack of success in the biggest tournaments has kept it niche. Many American soccer fans root for teams from their ancestral homelands, and so even when the team plays in the U.S., its supporters are often outnumbered. The bet was that those days were over. But it wasn\u2019t obvious to me that Liverpool fans in Brooklyn and Barcelona fans in Atlanta, people who revered Manchester City\u2019s Erling Haaland (who plays for Norway) or Real Madrid\u2019s Jude Bellingham (England), would transfer their allegiances to the U.S.M.N.T. during the World Cup, especially at such a divided moment in this country. \u201cHardcore soccer fans can recite the starting eleven,\u201d Cantor had told me earlier in the week. But casual fans might only manage a few, he said. It didn\u2019t help that so many of the stories surrounding the team and the tournament reflected division, exclusion, and uncertainty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen two teams take the field, the nation\u2019s histories, politics, cultures, take the field along with them, that\u2019s what makes the World Cup so like a Greek epic poem,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cThe World Cup is massive. The fan base for football is massive. And the open question is, can an American team take advantage and write itself into that story? And I yearn for that. I ache for that.\u201d But what would it take for that to happen?<\/p>\n

On Thursday, I arrived in Los Angeles, where a large ad featuring Lionel Messi holding a beer greeted me as I stepped off the plane. A vending machine filled with FIFA<\/em>-branded souvenirs was mostly empty. There weren\u2019t many other signs that the U.S.M.N.T. would be playing their first game of the tournament just a short drive from the airport the next day. In the lobby of my hotel, a large archway of soccer-themed balloons framed a banner that said \u201cWORLD CUP<\/em>.\u201d A deflated gold trophy balloon sagged to the floor.<\/p>\n

But when I got closer to the stadium, a couple hours before the U.S. was set to kickoff against Paraguay, I was surrounded by throngs of people wearing brand-new red-and-white striped jerseys or U.S. soccer T-shirts. They had red, white, and blue facepaint streaked onto sunburned cheeks and American flags draped over their shoulders. It was hard to spot a ticket-holder who wasn\u2019t decked out for the occasion. Despite all the stories about lagging ticket sales, nearly all of the seats inside the stadium were filled by the time the players were introduced, and chants of \u201cU.S.A.\u201d grew loud.<\/p>\n

It had been hard to get a grasp on the team\u2019s chances. Even the makeup of the team was unclear until only a few weeks earlier. But seven minutes into the match, Christian Pulisic, a winger for A.C. Milan and for years the U.S. team\u2019s most important player, received a pass from Weston McKennie, accelerated into the box, split two defenders, and sent it back to McKennie. McKennie tried to play it across the goal, hoping to find another American streaking up the right side, but a Paraguayan defender stuck out his foot and deflected the ball past his own goalkeeper. The crowd erupted.<\/p>\n

The early score seemed to settle the team, which had looked disjointed for the first few minutes. From that point on, the U.S. dominated, pressuring and often overwhelming the Paraguayan defense with speed and precise passing. After thirty minutes, Pulisic crossed the ball to Folarin Balogun, who scored. Balogun grew up in England and came through the English youth system, but was eligible to represent the U.S. by virtue of having been born while his mother was on vacation in New York. He was regarded as a promising prospect in England, and when he decided to play for the U.S., after heavy recruitment, it was a coup. He is just the sort of goalscorer that the U.S. has often lacked. \u201cAt a certain point you need a guy to put the team on his back,\u201d Leander Schaerlaeckens, author of \u201cThe Long Game: U.S. Men\u2019s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts,\u201d told me a few hours before the game. For all of Pulisic\u2019s dazzling skills, he was at his best when he didn\u2019t have to be that guy. \u201cWhen push comes to shove, the basic chemistry of winning games is, who\u2019s the guy who\u2019s going to take charge?\u201d In Balogun, it seemed Pochettino had found his answer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Twenty minutes later, Balogun scored again, after shaking off a tackle and sending the ball just inside the goalpost. By halftime, the U.S. had controlled the ball for more than seventy per cent of the game and was up 3\u20130. It was by far the best the team had played since the current coach, Mauricio Pochettino, arrived two years ago, after coaching several high-profile club teams in Europe\u2014and perhaps the best half the team had ever played at a World Cup. It was, at least, hard to imagine them playing any better. The Paraguay players looked stunned. They came into the tournament known for their defense, but, under the attacking pressure of the U.S., had to resort to fouling to slow the Americans down.<\/p>\n

As the U.S. squad transitioned into a more conservative game-managing approach, the quality fell off slightly, and Paraguay capitalized on a defensive breakdown to score a goal of their own. Then, in the final seconds of stoppage time, Gio Reyna, who\u2019d come on as a substitute, curled a gorgeous shot off the outside of his boot into the goal. It was a redemption for Reyna, who\u2019d been benched during the previous World Cup and criticized by the team\u2019s coach, Gregg Berhalter, for showing a lack of effort in practice\u2014which led to a sordid drama within the team. Berhalter survived the scandal, but he was eventually fired, following an embarrassing showing at another tournament. Now Reyna was being mobbed by his teammates\u2014including Berhalter\u2019s son, also a member of the squad. The team\u2019s four goals were more than the U.S. scored during the entire 2022 World Cup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to play with passion and make the fans feel proud about what they are seeing on the field, I think, to create that emotional relationship, and then you will do the rest to try to encourage the people to celebrate,\u201d Pochettino said earlier this week. \u201cWe need the support of our fans.\u201d That support should deepen as the public becomes more aware of individual players, as they learn the names not only of Pulisic but of McKennie and Balogun and the rest. Still, as Pochettino pointed out, the quickest way to create those emotional relationships, the sense of being part of something, is to win. \u201cA real dream,\u201d Balogun said to reporters after the match, when asked about his experience. \u201cIt\u2019s a dreamy night.\u201d \u2666<\/p>\n

An earlier version of this article misidentified the participants of the Men in Blazers bus tour.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Respectful Ways to Heckle Athletes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Louisa Thomas on the rise of soccer, and of the World Cup, as a fan sport in the U.S., and the U.S. game against Paraguay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-sporting-scene"],"yoast_head":"\nWill Americans Start to Care About the World Cup Now? - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=505\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will Americans Start to Care About the World Cup Now? - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Louisa Thomas on the rise of soccer, and of the World Cup, as a fan sport in the U.S., and the U.S. game against Paraguay.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=505\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-13T22:06:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"18 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=505#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=505\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"Will Americans Start to Care About the World Cup Now?\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-13T22:06:08+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=505\"},\"wordCount\":3645,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=505#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/4d8e780593a5627cfa935b1f5e681452.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"The Sporting Scene\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=505#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=505\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=505\",\"name\":\"Will Americans Start to Care About the World Cup Now? 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