World Cup in the US: A Journey Through Football's Growing Pains
Los Angeles stretches out in every direction, a sun‑bleached sprawl of freeways, palm trees and faintly disorientated football journalists. From a small corner of West Hollywood, with a podcast mic instead of a backpack and a schedule instead of a rail pass, this World Cup feels a long way from Germany 2006 – from steins in backstreet bars, dancing with Trinidad and Tobago fans and ducking Brazil v Australia because the hangover was stronger than the will to live.
Back home the question keeps coming: “Is there World Cup fever in the States?” It’s asked with the same hopeful curiosity as a local TV crew wandering around central Cambridge before an FA Cup quarter-final in 1990, discovering that a good number of residents didn’t realise Cambridge even had a football team. America is no different. Football can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
The reality on the ground is less fever, more pockets of heat. With an hour between kick-offs and a production schedule that pins you to a postcode, your world shrinks to a Trader Joe’s, a cafe over the road and a hotel pool full of influencers comparing TikTok numbers and nightclub guest lists. The games are on in the bars, though. US shirts dot the pavements. A Bosnian walks past and someone shouts: “Good luck later.” Football, here, lives in these small collisions.
All of this is happening while real life carries on thousands of miles away. Partners at home are doing the heavy lifting – children, work, the thousand tiny domestic fires – while the circus rolls through North America. Somewhere, an 18‑month‑old called Willie Rushden is fighting off hand, foot and mouth while his dad talks about pressing triggers and expected goals. The guilt sits in the suitcase, wedged between the laptop and the spare headphones.
Then there’s the size of the place. The US isn’t just big; it’s absurd. Los Angeles feels endless. One minute you’re LimeGliding – a bike with no pedals and a lot of misplaced optimism – from West Hollywood towards Santa Monica, wind in your hair, sun on your back. The next, the app has dumped you in a no‑cycling zone on a dual carriageway, dragging a dead lump of metal through a hedgerow, miles from anything resembling a pavement or a plan.
For the first few days, the tournament has had to elbow its way past basketball. You don’t so much choose a Knicks or Spurs allegiance as absorb one by osmosis. Spurs felt right. Then they promptly surrendered the biggest lead in NBA finals history, or something close enough to it that the pain felt familiar. Football fans everywhere recognise that particular script.
In the middle of it all came Zohran Mamdani, Guardian Football Weekly listener and, less significantly, mayor of New York, standing at the Knicks parade and delivering a speech that could have powered a small city. He rattled through names that meant little to an outsider, but the conviction, the rhythm, the sense of belonging – that landed. The hairs on the back of the neck stood up in a way no pre‑match VT has managed yet.
The football has finally caught up. The US win over Paraguay did more than put points on a table. It released something. You could feel it in the reaction of those who have carried the sport here for years – the writers, broadcasters and fans who have lived through false dawns and empty stadiums, who have argued for football’s place in a country that barely noticed it. Their joy was not the giddy high of tourists; it was relief, vindication, a sense that this might actually move the needle.
For England, a World Cup win or a last‑32 exit barely shifts the dial. The game is baked into the culture. For the US and Australia, everything feels sharper. A quarter-final, a run that grips the wider public, can change budgets, coverage, respect. It’s an unfair weight for players to carry, but it hangs over every knockout tie. This is not just about medals; it’s about relevance.
Thousands of miles away, in Melbourne’s Fed Square, that pressure turned into something else entirely. The scenes there, in a city that has become an adopted home, came closest to breaking the composure. Nestory Irankunda – a refugee, a symbol of a family’s escape from conflict – took a touch and scored a goal that cut through the noise of the age. In an era of surging populism and nationalism, a young man whose family fled war, representing Australia, a country built on immigration, felt like football at its purest. The US, too, understands that story.
Around it, the Socceroos leaned into their own identity. Connor Metcalfe watching his goal back in the mixed zone, reacting in full, unfiltered Aussie – “Far out that was far out, that was ick!” or something along those lines – captured the joy of it all. For reasons that defy logic, it is easy to love this Australia, even if the sight of their cricketers still prompts a very different emotional response.
Distance from England has its benefits. You escape the noise, the culture‑war debates about whether Thomas Tuchel sings the national anthem, as if the monarch is sitting in Windsor, tutting into his tea. None of it matters. What does is that England are good and, crucially, fun. Harry Kane finally has pace buzzing around him. Noni Madueke is grinning his way through games. Elliot Anderson keeps finding the right pockets. Djed Spence is suddenly moving like the Road Runner. There is hope, but not the familiar, doom‑laden version that has stalked previous tournaments. Not yet.
Day to day, the tournament is filtered through two lenses: Barry Glendenning in the next room and Fox Sports on the TV. One constant question lingers: will Zlatan Ibrahimovic eventually throttle Alexi Lalas on air, or will Barry lose patience with his housemate first? It feels like a tight market.
The US coverage has been solid. Yes, there is a lot of “basic soccer” explanation, but that is the nature of a World Cup in a developing football nation. Broadcasters back home do the same. An England game at a major tournament attracts millions who couldn’t name Crystal Palace’s right-back on a Monday night. Not everyone wants inverted full-backs and rest‑defence breakdowns. What nobody needs, on either continent, is to see Christian Pulisic selling Wells Fargo during a hydration break for the fifth time in an hour.
Then there is the domestic battlefront. Sharing a place with Barry is a reality show no one commissioned but everyone seems to be watching. On paper, it’s simple: two colleagues, one flat, a month of football. In practice, there is a running list of minor crimes. Eating an apple too loudly. Failing to screw the lid on a bottle of Coke Zero properly. Offering unsolicited advice on how to chop a chilli. Asking whether he needs the big saucepan. Putting yoghurt in a bowl. Doing too much laundry. Criticising flatulence that really needs no critic.
Somehow, people can’t get enough of it. Snippets of this odd couple existence drift onto Instagram, into the podcast, across YouTube – or wherever people now graze for content – and it lands. Barry helping a star of Selling Sunset with her key fob (not a euphemism, despite sounding like one) becomes a minor plotline. Suddenly, the idea of “cracking the States” doesn’t feel entirely ridiculous.
The football will decide how far that fantasy runs. For now, there are games to cover, pods to record, apples to eat at an acceptable volume. North America is vast, the days are long, and the margins for the US and Australia are thin. Somewhere between West Hollywood bar stools and Fed Square flares, this World Cup is asking a simple question: can these football nations turn moments into a movement, or will this all fade back into the noise once the final whistle goes?
