With the 2026 FIFA World Cup now underway, many aren’t sure how to feel as Americans. Headlines in the months leading up to the tournament have been filled with negativity. From exorbitant pricing for many matches, to numerous team staff members and referees being denied entry to America, to the President winning a FIFA Peace Prize in December 2025 that looked awful at the time and has still aged like whole milk sitting in a Phoenix parking lot in July.
Despite all this, there are growing scenes of hope, community-building, and excitement on the ground as the citizens of the world started traveling to North America for the world’s biggest sporting event. Bosnians brought the world’s largest coffee pot to St. Louis and belted out their national anthem. Brits battled the heat in Tampa and admired the pirate ship inside Raymond James Stadium. Germans have fallen in love with Buc-ees and SEC football stadiums. Scottish fans took over Boston, and Brazilians partied with New Yorkers as the Knicks ended a 53 year title drought. Perhaps most amusingly, Mexico has emphatically opened its arms to travelling Korean players and fans with tequila pouring freely between each nation’s supporters. Even with all the negativity FIFA is bringing to the tournament, there is still boundless joy to be found in this tournament.
This is the first World Cup with 48 teams. There are pros and cons of this decision, but it undoubtedly offers more matches and more opportunities for small nations to be included on the world’s biggest stage. For first-time participants like Jordan, Curacao, Uzbekistan, and Cape Verde, just making it is a prize. The larger format has also given nations like DR Congo, Scotland, Haiti, and Iraq chances to end lengthy World Cup droughts so a new generation of fans can fall in love with the beautiful game. Supporters from all these nations will treat each match like a party, and the crowd scenes at these matches will be unforgettable. Ticket prices for some of these matches involving these “lesser teams” are in the $200 or below range on most resale sites, making them somewhat more accessible than most matches in the tournament with electric pre-game and post-game atmospheres guaranteed.
Nobody can take away my joy for this tournament because soccer has given me so much already. As a kid, playing goalkeeper for a club team gave me a real sense of belonging and accomplishment. When that team coached joy out of the game for me, I took my frustration out by kicking a ball against my backyard wall to stay out of trouble. I did this so often that I eventually cracked the concrete wall in our yard. Then the 2010 World Cup came and renewed the love that had been stolen from me.
Mexico versus South Africa in the opening match, I’ll never forget it. Diego Forlan became a menace to society for one month. Donovan’s goal at the death versus Algeria. Iniesta and Casillas gave Spain its first ever World Cup title in heroic fashion. And those iconic vuvuzelas. The streets will never forget that World Cup, to the point that FIFA had to give us Mexico-South Africa as the opener again this summer.
Fast forward to early 2024. I had once been in a men’s soccer league, held Phoenix Rising season tickets, and joined Newcastle United’s Toon Army Phoenix supporters’ group. This all stopped because I have young children and was trying to navigate that in the post-COVID landscape. Post-COVID depression was approaching new heights as my marriage crumbled under unsustainable stressors on us both. I had become isolated from friends and the Arizona soccer community that meant and means so much to me. I had no answers and only questions about how I would make rent as a newly single father with two young boys. And then soccer lifted me up, as I started my journey as a ref.
My referee assignor gave me more matches when I disclosed my situation to him. One year later, the school I substitute taught at in South Phoenix allowed me to coach its coed middle school team. We shocked everyone with an eight-match win streak and reached state quarterfinals. This success gave another school in Scottsdale the confidence to hire me as a teacher full-time and coach Boys’ Middle School soccer. I again defied expectations with a young, undersized squad to finish 7-1 and THIRD of 17 teams in our B division, and we are promoting to the A division this upcoming winter.
As my coaching journey started to take off, I registered in the FIFA ticket lottery in December 2025 as a Japan supporter. I knew there would be better odds to get a ticket from the Japan allocation than for the USA or Mexico. Fortune favors the bold, and through God’s grace I won two tickets at $140 each for the Japan-Tunisia match on June 20 in Monterrey, Mexico. For my cousin and I who grew up playing FIFA and watching the World Cup at our abuela’s house, our upcoming road trip and weekend vacation in Monterrey will be a lifelong dream becoming reality. If you, your friends, or your family passionately love this game, there may not be a better opportunity to celebrate it in our lifetimes. And that celebration can happen in the stands, at a watch party, by pub crawling with visiting fans, or even at home on the couch with those you love most!
Despite FIFA’s general incompetence and greed, many communities are embracing this special opportunity to welcome the world and make this a special event. In every host city, there will be free FIFA watch party spaces where thousands are expected to gather for matches. Some of these spaces will hold concerts and small field tournaments on matchdays, and there will be countless other restaurants and communities offering smaller watch parties around America, Mexico and Canada. Even in the cities that are not hosting World Cup matches. It will be an unprecedented opportunity to mingle with people from around the world and be exposed to the love all these varied cultures have for a simple game where 11 players kick a ball around a field.
In an increasingly disconnected world and dysfunctional economy for the working class – where doom scrolling to escape the grim realities we face has become a popular activity for eight-year-old kids and 65-year-old seniors alike – we need to make a conscious decision to build communities and help our neighbors who are struggling most. For over 100 years, immigrant communities have long been the biggest supporters of soccer in America. Immigrants have also been discriminated against and dismissed by their own American peers for at least that long, so it’s no wonder the game has been relegated to “minor league” status by most Americans for generations.
This dubious state of affairs for American soccer has been slowly changing in the last 32 years though, and two World Cups on American soil are a major reason why. FIFA awarded the 1994 Men’s World Cup to the USA despite our men’s team having almost no success at the competition since 1950. The men broke a 40-year World Cup drought in 1990 only to lose all three group matches. Even on home soil, advancing from a group with Romania, Colombia & Switzerland appeared to be a tall task.
Yet two amazing things happened at this tournament. First, the Americans reached the knockout stage for the first time since the inaugural tournament in 1930. They tied Switzerland and shocked title contenders Colombia 2-1 before losing to Romania but still reached the last 16 where they valiantly fought in a 1-0 loss to Brazil. Secondly, excitement for the game grew overnight as the 1994 World Cup set attendance records still in place to this day. The momentum from the tournament enabled America’s first lasting domestic professional soccer league (Major League Soccer) to enter our professional sports landscape and slowly legitimize itself in the global hierarchy of pro soccer leagues.
We cannot tell the story of soccer in America without mentioning the 99ers. The 99ers are the group of trailblazing American female players who went undefeated in the entire 1999 tournament on U.S. soil and defeated China in penalties in the Final. After Brandi Chastain drilled the winning kick at the Rose Bowl, her “tarps off” celebration became one of the most powerful images in women’s sports history and inspired future generations of American girls to turn us into a women’s soccer blueblood ever since.
Those were the last two World Cups granted by FIFA to be on U.S. soil* and both raised the trajectory of soccer in America. After three decades of waiting, the world’s game is once again in our backyard and we have the opportunity to take soccer in America to unprecedented levels. A recent study revealed 10% of Americans see soccer as their favorite sport, behind only football and basketball. This trend should only continue after World Cup fever strikes and as older Americans give way to the next generations.
*FIFA selected China for the 2003 Women’s World Cup but had to make America an emergency host due to the SARS outbreak in China.
Additionally, there are now enough pro teams in America to have a “football pyramid” of three fully professional divisions and semiprofessional options beneath the top three leagues. The United Soccer League (USL), which currently has second and third division sanctioning by the U.S. Soccer Federation, is trying to create a sanctioned first division to rival MLS in the next couple years, and has stated it intends to become the first American professional league EVER to institute a promotion-relegation system among its professional tiers. On the women’s side, the NWSL is one of the best professional leagues in the world with crowds regularly exceeding 10,000 fans. As women’s soccer continues to expand in America, there is also the growing expectation that a joint bid with Mexico for the 2031 Women’s World Cup will be approved.
For generations, immigrant communities and a handful of U.S. born oddballs kept soccer culture alive in this country. In the 1990s, two World Cups on American soil gave most Americans their first taste of the beautiful game on home soil and finally legitimized the sport in this country. In the decades that followed, soccer has developed a growing foothold in mainstream American culture through FIFA video games, the continued success of our national teams, the rise in popularity of the Premier League and Champions’ League competitions, and the steady growth of the American professional soccer pyramid.
Despite continued ignorance about the game and its significance from some of our peers, now is the time for everyone who loves soccer to share that love in our communities. And if you don’t know much about soccer – which is completely okay – now is the time to ride the cultural wave that is about to sweep this great nation and unite most of the world for five fleeting weeks.
THEY can control ticket prices and make it tough for ordinary fans to be at these World Cup matches, THEY can prioritize dollars over authenticity, but THEY cannot take away our love for the game. I doubt the Men’s World Cup will return to America, Mexico and/or Canada for at least another 30 years. Now is the time for US to make memories that will last a lifetime, and the memories have already started with the US Men’s team giving arguably its best-ever World Cup performance in a 4-1 romp over Paraguay. In the coming weeks, some of US will meet their future soulmates because of the World Cup. And if you’re on the fence about soccer, just come with some friends or family to a local watch party. First round on US!
