Welcome to America, the problematic host of the World Cup
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The boy honed his legend on dirt fields. Sandlots were all those little Americans had back then, patches of a dream, open spaces that looked like decoration between the factories. He was the dusty son of Italian immigrants before the game took him places, a kid from Harrison, N.J., who would one day crack jokes on a steamship bound for Montevideo.
Soccer was his passion. Before he turned pro, he served in the Navy during World War I. Then he served the United States again, this time on playful terms. He was a jokester. He was among the best players of his generation. In the summer of 1930, he went to Uruguay for the inaugural World Cup with a fitting designation: the first captain of America.
His name was Tom Florie. He led a team of textile mill workers and first-generation Americans and naturalized citizens, all of them sporting blue collars and following the direction of a Scottish-born coach. They made it to the semifinals of the nascent tournament, still the best World Cup showing in American soccer history.
Ninety-six years later, what that very American assortment accomplished on a muddy field in Montevideo sits undisturbed. It is largely unexamined, another indictment that further clarifies the nation’s current dysmorphic state. On Friday, the men’s World Cup returns to the United States for the first time since 1994, arriving in a country that seeks to impress the world despite being in its most ferocious dispute in modern history about who belongs here.
Welcome to America, the problematic host. It wouldn’t be a World Cup without one. Russia in 2018. Qatar in 2022. Now the U.S. is on a slide under humanity’s microscope, the oddest member of this continuum. The America that sees itself as a paragon now must stomach being seen as an antagonist. We are raised to feel differently, to feel exceptional, righteous. Free.
As we welcome the world’s game, as we celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, this is the stage America built for itself. Now it’s time to perform.
But the host cannot agree on what it represents. One America sees a grand, hospitable version of itself. Another America sees diverse crowds filling its stadiums and feels threatened by their flags and languages and hyphenated identities, by the very diversity that is supposed to make American soil fertile for this tournament. All the while, the rest of the world watches the country’s crisis with bewilderment and dread, aware of the dangers of America in its current disposition, still powerful but turning inward — turning hostile — distorting and weaponizing its mythology.
It’s the nightmare infesting the dream that the 1930 team embodied. What a motley, glorious Team USA. They were the Italian-American captain, the immigrants playing in industrial leagues, the working-class amateurs from New England and St. Louis and Detroit, the Scottish coach. They were all on board, and for 18 days, on a ship called the SS Munargo. They traveled with Mexico. There were no disruptive debates about who belonged. They played. Florie told his best jokes. And those Americans set a standard that subsequent teams have yet to reach.
The promise of America was stitched into their jerseys. That promise is almost a quarter of a millennium old now. As the World Cup begins, is it still a binding commitment?
Is this still Tom Florie’s country?
They’re making fun of us overseas. The jokes coat the fear. On Wednesday, the French sports daily L’Équipe published an alarming front page. It was a foreboding image of President Donald Trump, dangling a puppet of FIFA president Gianni Infantino in his right hand and holding the World Cup trophy in his left. The illustration also featured banned Somali referee Omar Artan lifting a yellow card and a U.S. law enforcement officer with the flag wrapped around his face and neck.
“Welcome to the USA,” the headline read.
It was sharp. It cut deep. This is the perception, and a significant faction of the country proudly proclaims it a reality. What a strange time to be alive. The French sports press is now a moral conscience.
La une du journal L’Equipe du mercredi 10 juin pic.twitter.com/NaOqIX3fZn
— L’Équipe (@lequipe) June 9, 2026
Aggressive and rigid government policies have made the run-up to the World Cup cumbersome, at best. Among the avalanche of issues: ICE enforcement, travel bans and visa denials. The climate has left hotels in host cities with significantly fewer international bookings than projected, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Detainment is the biggest worry.
The denied entry of Artan has dominated headlines for the past few days, but there have been several reports of headaches with border officials. It seems our invitation to the world came with some punitive fine print.
Of course, this was not part of the plan. For more than a decade, the U.S. sought the chance to host the men’s tournament again. It lobbied FIFA with some of its most influential voices. In 2010, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Morgan Freeman were all part of the pitch for the 2022 edition. Shockingly, Qatar won the vote, leading to a fresh round of controversy and corruption probes. A revised United 2026 bid with Canada and Mexico clinched it. Thinking back to that long process, the most persuasive words came from Clinton in 2010 when he articulated the nation’s strength.
“Maybe America’s best claim to this World Cup is that we have the only nation … that can guarantee, no matter who makes the final, we can fill a stadium with home-nation rooters.”
Victoria Jackson, a sports historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University, likes to revise the former president’s words and say, “There are no away teams in America.”
She says it with reverence. In this country of immigrants, every qualifying team has a community waiting to receive it. When America hosted the 1994 World Cup, it defied skeptics predicting national indifference. A record 3.6 million fans attended the 52 matches, an average of nearly 69,000 per game. At the Rose Bowl, the final drew 94,194. Questions of whether Americans would embrace soccer deferred to evidence that passion for the sport already resided within us, in our multiculturalism.
That’s the feeling America chased for so long, continuing to lobby, refusing to let cynicism about FIFA’s decision-making take control.
It’s here again, finally. And it’s complicated.
“It’s bittersweet,” Jackson said. “This could have been amazing.”
The U.S. opener of the 2026 World Cup commences Friday where the 1994 version ended: in Southern California.
In the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, vendors along 1st Street stack jerseys and hang the flags of competing nations. Screens for a watch party are being set up at Mariachi Plaza. SoFi Stadium gleams over in Inglewood, looking like $5.5 billion. Renamed Los Angeles Stadium for the summer, it is adorned with tournament branding, prepared to greet the planet.
Just a year ago this week, the area braced for something different. After ICE raids sparked protests across Los Angeles, Trump deployed 700 Marines and thousands of National Guard troops in a distressing show of power. They stood in Boyle Heights. They posted up downtown, South L.A., Westwood. On streets famous for children playing pickup soccer, on streets where generations of immigrants have turned the game into a universal language, the government sent an army. It federalized fear.
Twelve months later, the world turns its eyes here to watch the U.S.-Paraguay match and to search for clues about whether the country can tame its big, bad wolf for the next 39 days.
Los Angeles outlasted the rage. The people here endured.
But as problematic hosts go, America is disorienting because it genuinely prospered from a belief it now destroys. And it does so in full view of a world that it alienates. The World Cup lens shows an unflattering image.
“I think it’s definitely revealing the strangeness of our domestic politics,” Jackson said. “Sports diplomacy is something that really matters. You’d think the U.S. would be doing all sorts of things around this narrative. Hosting an international sporting event amplifies your connection to the rest of the world, or it exposes how you’re pulling inward. It’s surprising, or telling, what we are doing.
“It’s like we want to make money off the party we’re hosting, but we’re not willing to leverage it to talk about how the world can be more interconnected, which is sad.”
Next week, for the Mexico-South Korea game, Boyle Heights will close 1st Street. A giant LED screen will go up near Mariachi Plaza. The soldiers are gone. The restaurants will be open. A neighborhood that absorbed raids and trauma will gather in the street to watch its game, live its story, hold its ground.
“Soccer brings unity,” said Miriam Rodriguez, the president of the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce. “We want to let our community know that, even in hard times, we’re still here.”
In Boyle Heights, 1st Street is America.
Another patch of a dream.