Soccer isn’t a source of American metaphors. People cover their bases, play hardball, and take a swing and a miss. The Monday morning quarterback comments on a Hail Mary. You roll with the punches when you’re on the ropes. A full-court press is a game changer. But language is as much a metaphor for life as sports is. In January, an Economist poll found soccer edging ahead of “America’s Pastime,” baseball. One in 10 now call Euroball their favorite sport, just ahead of baseball (9%) and well behind football (36%), but not far off basketball (17%). The balls they are a-changin’.
How did soccer become as American as swimming across the Rio Grande? The same way as everything ever did: market forces, magnetic appetites, and human aspiration. American football is England’s rugby football without the passing game. Baseball is England’s cricket in a hurry. Soccer is already Americanizing. In the land of Title IX, soccer spread as a girls’ game, with the boys playing catch-up. This is the first World Cup to subdivide the halves into quarters for “hydration breaks,” because the public is more prone to dehydration than any other species, and to have live entertainment in the half-time break, because the networks enjoy it that way, and so do we.
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The World Cup should be held in the United States every time. It’s like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. You might not like it. You may not win every time. But if we must have prestige gatherings, you want it on your turf. The fact that Mexico and Canada are co-hosting doesn’t change this, though it does say a lot. The opening week of the 2026 World Cup was a diplomatic triumph to offset the furtive amateurishness of the Trump administration’s deal with Iran, and a cultural triumph to offset the cage fight at the White House that marked Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. The whole world is watching the U.S., as it always does. But this time, it sees a land of plenty and joy, celebrating the body in the sunshine. Walt Whitman would have loved it.
The world’s cup overfloweth into the shabby airports and pristine stadia. The federated tribes of soccer ball fans present themselves much as the foederati, the allied “barbarians,” came to Rome. Some are not barbarian at all. They are dignified representatives of high civilizations. They come in respect, honor local custom, and clear up around their seats afterward. Their exemplars are the Japanese, whose sincere passion for alien rituals approaches parody.
A larger cohort comes in barbaric splendor. If it is as if they have always been here, it is because they have. They are the children of Europe. The Tartan Army of the Scots rampaged through Boston with pipes and kilts, stormed Fenway Park, and drank four times as much beer in four days as the entire city puts away over a typical Fourth of July weekend. After this rigorous training regime, they opened their first game by singing “Flower of Scotland” at Foxborough stadium at 125 decibels, the loudest ever recorded at a World Cup. Meanwhile, the distempered English threw chairs in the bars of Dallas. With Russia’s martial arts-loving ultras banned due to the war in Ukraine, England are the favorites to retain the Hooligan World Cup.
Then there are the largest groups of all, the ones we rarely consider. There are the teams from failed states of every stripe. Every one of their players is a triumph of talent and merit against tribalism, corruption, and religious mania, but enough about Scotland. One or two of these teams will push through the group stages into the knockout rounds and then go down fighting, Braveheart-style. In sport as in business, fortune favors the bold until the odds favor the team with depth on the bench and a professional support structure. Finally, there are those who failed to make it at all. Only 48 teams out of 206 made it through the preliminary heats.
Sport is a metaphor for life, but we don’t like to take its harsher lessons about winning and losing. Compare the World Cup to immigration policy, the pump that primes the demographic vigor of American society. Like the U.S., the World Cup is a globalized money-spinner and an improvised epic of excellence that draws talent from around the world. Yet the World Cup is more than a clash of passport holders. It’s a clash of nations and peoples, in which sporting style expresses national character. The whole world wants to come to the U.S., but if that happened, the nation’s style and character would change, just as the French team’s style has changed. Not everyone has the skills to make it through the playoffs. Not everyone plays fair when they get here. What are the skills we need? What should be the terms of invitation? What kind of people are team players? For whose benefit are we playing this game?
Dominic Green (@drdominicgreen) is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
