Football Is US?

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The beautiful game is getting cold vibes in America, partly thanks to Trump. But the magic may yet happen

World Cup is almost here, but in one of its host nations, the party feels oddly unloved. Across much of the footballing world, the familiar fever has already taken hold. In Buenos Aires, parks and cafés are humming with speculation about Argentina’s chances of defending their crown, with fans swapping Panini stickers, and tracing possible routes to glory. In Cape Verde, one of the smallest nations ever to reach the tournament, the mood is even more electric. The 10-island archipelago off West Africa has been celebrating its surprise qualification like a national awakening, and daring to dream of more.

But in US, the atmosphere is strikingly different. That is partly cultural. Football, or soccer in American usage, has never quite occupied the country’s sporting bloodstream in the way baseball, basketball, or American football do. Major League Soccer has certainly grown, helped by ageing global icons such as Messi choosing America as a late-career stage. Youth soccer, suburban soccer moms, and packed summer friendlies all exist. Yet, for the average American sports fan, World Cup still does not carry the ancestral pull it commands in Europe, Latin America, Africa, or parts of Asia.

Politics has made that distance feel wider. Trump’s America is not the America of USA ’94, when the tournament arrived as a sunny advertisement for post-Cold War confidence. This World Cup comes wrapped in suspicion, border anxiety, and geopolitical tension. A host nation remains in active conflict with Iran, a participating country. Citizens of Haiti, Iran, Senegal, and Ivory Coast face travel barriers that could prevent them from watching their teams in person. Add the Trump administration’s hardline immigration posture, uncertainty over how foreign visitors will be treated, and ticket prices that seem designed for oligarchs rather than ordinary fans, and this World Cup begins to look less like a welcome mat than a velvet rope.

And yet football has a habit of escaping cages built around it. Once the ball rolls, the tournament may find its soul, not in official slogans or VIP boxes, but in America’s immigrant neighbourhoods. In St Louis, Missouri, home to a large Bosnian community, excitement is already building around Bosnia and Herzegovina’s appearance. For families who fled war in 1990s, this is not merely sport. It is memory, pride and belonging in motion. If America struggles to embrace the world’s biggest sporting event, its immigrants may still teach it how.