When the ball rolls on Friday (12) for the first game in the United States of the World Cup, the country will once again be the host for the biggest sporting event on the planet since it hosted the World Cup for the first time, in 1994. The opening and the second game, on Thursday (11), take place in Mexico and Canada, also hosts.
Although the USA is the main host of the tournament — where 78 of the 104 matches take place — most Americans do not intend to follow the games. A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that 66% of adults say they are little or not likely to follow the competition. Only 28% say they should follow the World Cup in some way.
Interest is significantly higher among immigrants. According to the survey, 54% of foreigners living in the United States intend to watch the World Cup, more than double the 23% recorded among Americans born in the country.
The numbers help explain one of the most peculiar characteristics of a World Cup in American territory: much of the passion for the tournament comes precisely from the immigrant communities that helped form the country.
Structural engineer Eric Zuidema, 37, a Brazilian who has lived in the USA since he was 10 years old, says that football is still competing for space with a much wider range of sports than that found in Brazil.
“In the United States you have American football, basketball, baseball and several other options. In Brazil, practically everything revolves around football. This ends up reducing the level of fanaticism we see a little”, says he, who lives near Miami, Florida.
Still, he sees a gradual change over the past two decades. “I’ve always followed football and I see my American friends paying more and more attention to the sport.”
Despite concerns surrounding immigration and travel costs, the Trump administration insists that international interest remains high. According to Andrew Giuliani, director of the White House task force for the World Cup, FIFA has already surpassed the mark of 6 million tickets sold.
“We want people to come to the United States and enjoy this World Cup, while making sure the country remains safe,” he said. Despite the promises, the USA is already beginning to register controversies with cases of barred referees and fans, extensive interrogations of players and access restrictions on the eve of the World Cup.
The contrast with the 1994 World Cup also appears in the security infrastructure. According to Giuliani, this will be the first World Cup held on American territory under the protection apparatus developed after the September 11 attacks.
“Going back to 9/11, that really changed the world. We have never hosted a World Cup or an Olympics with all the security measures created after 9/11,” he said. Fans will encounter multiple security perimeters, successive ticket checks and restrictions on the use of drones around the stadiums.
If in 1994 football still occupied a peripheral space in American sports culture, the sport has grown significantly in the last three decades. Giuliani cites the expansion of the sport in the country and the presence of international stars like Lionel Messi in the American league as evidence of this transformation.
Software engineer Kevin Matthews, 30, sees this change in his own trajectory. A fan of basketball and baseball during his childhood, he only started following football in his adult life, during the pandemic.
“I didn’t always like football. During the pandemic I started to follow it more and today I follow the sport closely”, he says. “The American team started to have better campaigns in the World Cups and this made people believe more that the country can compete.” In 2022 and 2014, for example, the USA reached the round of 16 of the tournament.
Even with the growth of the sport, the environment is still far from that found in countries traditionally passionate about the sport. Zuidema remembers the decorated streets, the sticker albums and the expectation that surrounded the World Cups during his childhood in Brazil.
“In my office they are organizing competitions and talking about putting the games on television during working hours. People are excited, but it doesn’t go much further,” he says.
For Jonathan Hanson, political scientist and professor at the University of Michigan, the competition occurs at a particularly delicate moment for the international image of the United States.
Although the major migration operations that marked the first months of the Donald Trump administration have lost intensity, Hanson believes that the issue continues to affect the perception of the country on the eve of the tournament. He cites recent cases of professionals linked to the World Cup who had difficulties entering the USA and believes that new similar episodes are yet to emerge.
“Migration issues are still present and are creating a stain on the United States as a host country for this great event,” he said.
The professor also draws attention to an element that he considers unusual in the recent history of major sporting events: the fact that the host country is involved in military conflicts while hosting foreign teams.
“This is a little different when you have a country that is effectively at war with another that is sending one of the teams to compete,” he said, referring to Iran’s participation in the tournament and the current context of tensions in the Middle East. “It makes me wonder how the rest of the world perceives the US right now,” he said.
Hanson says the mood was very different in 1994. “There was a sense of excitement about it. Remarkably, there wasn’t all this political drama,” he recalled.
Matthews sees the World Cup as a rare opportunity for people from different countries to meet at a time that he defines as “strange” for the USA.
“It will bring a lot of people from different countries and they will all be together at the games. I think this can bring people together on a more human level, from person to person”, he says.
