I spent two weeks crisscrossing America during this World Cup. I ate ribs in Houston, watched Scotland fans play bagpipes outside Fenway Park, and stood in the JFK museum in Dallas while a guy in a Luton Town shirt blocked the view of the sixth-floor window. That part, at least, felt uniquely American. You cannot plan for it.
The tournament is a strange fit here. In Los Angeles, I met a breakfast burrito chef who didn’t know the U.S. was playing 10 minutes down the road the next night. A taxi driver in a Mexico shirt didn’t speak English and seemed confused when I told him Londoners don’t speak Spanish. At SoFi Stadium, the pitch sits so deep below ground level you feel like you’re looking at a lost city. The place is enormous. Most British stadiums feel like toys by comparison.
The Welcome Mat and the Culture Shock
Houston is a different beast. No pedestrians. Just freeways and parking lots and flat-roofed buildings that stretch to the horizon. My Uber driver from the airport was a 6-foot-7 basketball coach who teaches pre-1800s history in Boston. The next one was a staunch Republican, son of a pastor, who spent 20 minutes explaining why Donald Trump was right about everything and ended the ride by recommending three hot cryptocurrencies. I nodded along. I did not argue. In Texas, you don’t know who’s carrying.
The rain in Houston hit like a freight train. I left my Airbnb in bright sun and watched mega-clouds form in real time. By the time my taxi reached NRG Stadium, the drops were the size of Evian bottles slapping the roof. I ran through a parking lot in a half-drenched shirt. A security guard handed me a poncho like it was prison contraband. I almost hugged him.
Soccer vs. Everything Else
The games themselves are spectacles. Germany vs. Curacao in NRG Stadium, a place that celebrates NFL mediocrity, country singers, and monster trucks on its walls. England vs. Croatia in the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium, which looks like a giant football resting on the riverbank. The stands are steep enough to trigger vertigo. The security is military-grade. One guard tapped his headset and told me he had a direct line to command when my bag wasn’t transparent enough. I waited 20 minutes in the Dallas heat while a steward sent me on a perimeter march, only to learn the media entrance was exactly where I’d started. My skin felt like bacon under a grill.
Interest in soccer outside the stadiums is thin. It’s a niche sport here, growing in pockets but dwarfed by the NFL and NBA. And yet something weird happens when the World Cup arrives. Dutch Americans turned Houston orange. Senegalese and French fans watched a game on a giant screen in downtown Dallas while Stuart Pearce tried to eat lunch. A taxi driver in Dallas knew nothing about football but was giddy at the idea of drunk England fans wrecking bars later that night. She talked about flying to Boston to drink with Scots. ‘If anything can bring about world peace,’ she said, ‘it’s the World Cup.’ She was only half-joking.
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