Soccer

This year’s Copa América soccer tournament in the US was a dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup, which will also be hosted by the US, along with Canada and Mexico. And to put it mildly, folks appear to hate the dress. With the US group opener against Bolivia barely attracting 48,000 fans to an 80,000-capacity stadium and players voicing frustration over the conditions of the fields, public opinion already seemed to not be on the host’s side. What transpired last night, however, likely caused more anti-US sentiment in the western hemisphere than any military intervention.

America’s soccer supernova is always just around the next corner, but Rebecca Lowe, who anchors NBC’s coverage of the Premier League in the United States, recalls a few corners already turned. “When I stood in LA in the rain at four in the morning and there were 5,000 people lining up to come in and join us,” she said, referencing one of NBC’s “FanFest” watch parties in 2021, “I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this has not only made it, but this is not going anywhere. This is only getting bigger.’ And there are not many things in this country that can get bigger.” It sure seems like there are more red-blooded Americans patrolling our streets in Arsenal and Liverpool shirts these days.

Basketball is one of America’s best exports. Back in 1992, NBA rosters featured only twenty-three foreign-born players from eighteen nations. That was the year the US Olympic “Dream Team,” starring Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Charles Barkley, posterized its way to the gold medal by an average margin of forty-three points. The Dream Team helped spur a worldwide hoops boom that shows no signs of stalling. When a new NBA season tips off on October 24, there will be at least 120 foreign-born players from forty nations on league rosters. Basketball, born in a dusty gym in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891, is now one of the world’s two favorite sports, second only to soccer. The games are close cousins.

Argentine soccer legend Diego Armando Maradona died in 2020, at that time still the last man to lead his nation’s team to a World Cup championship. On Sunday, in some sense Maradona passed away again, as Lionel Messi lifted the golden trophy and his own legacy as not only the greatest Argentine player of all time, but possibly the greatest to ever lace up boots in the world. Tuesday has been declared a national bank holiday in the South American nation, not that anyone there has stopped partying since the famous win on Sunday. The heroes' welcome will be for this band of players, especially Messi, who snapped the thirty-six-year World Cup drought. But make no mistake, the image of Maradona will also be on display far and wide.

Americans are truly excellent at four things: ingenuity, marketing, making chicken wings and inventing their own sports. The first three, of course, are also all foundational pillars of American sporting glory; it would be nothing without the wings. And so, as the US gears up to face the Netherlands on Saturday, its first ever appearance in the knockout round of the World Cup this century, I am duty bound to issue a plea: for the love of all that you hold sacred, please America, don’t get into soccer. This would be a huge mistake. While covering the World Cup in Doha, I’ve watched the US men’s national team, or USMNT as they are unforgivably referred to, play in a couple of games. And I have to say I'm pretty concerned.

The 1-0 Team USA victory over Iran in a World Cup match that was crucial to both teams seemed to take place in a different universe from the grand geopolitical narratives that swirled around it. This was nothing like the infamous 1956 Melbourne Bloodbath between the Hungarian and Soviet water polo teams, facing off weeks after the USSR's bloody suppression of Hungary's revolution. The stakes in Doha were very high: for Iran, only a win or a draw would see them advance; for America, win or go home. Yet there did not appear to be any tension or enmity between the players on the field. No screaming matches, head butts, or dirty fouls. There were few controversial calls by the referee.