Is the USA ready for the World Cup? – Football Weekly podcast

Summary

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Football Weekly: Is the USA Ready for the World Cup? (May 13, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this timely pre-World Cup episode, Max Rushden and Barry Glendenning are joined by Alex Abnos (Senior Sports Editor at The Guardian) and Leander Schaerlaeckens (soccer journalist and author), to dissect the mood in the United States as the world’s biggest soccer tournament approaches. The panel delves into American enthusiasm (or lack thereof), logistical headaches, political controversies, sky-high ticket prices, concerns for fans and diaspora, legacy hopes, and where the US Men’s National Team (USMNT) stands on the eve of the tournament. The discussion moves seamlessly from organizational challenges and societal tensions to on-the-pitch prospects, keeping Football Weekly’s typical blend of sharp insight and dry humor.

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Main Themes and Discussion Points

1. The World Cup Fever in the U.S.: A Slow Burn?

• Is there World Cup buzz in America?
  • Public interest remains muted as of mid-May, but panelists expect it to intensify in the final weeks (03:43).
  • Alex Abnos: “It’s very much not happening until it’s on the absolute most eve of it happening and then it’s all that anybody is talking about... These games are going to be bringing people to people’s doorsteps. Sometimes literally.” (03:43)
  • 1994 parallel: At that time, 80% of Americans weren’t aware the tournament was about to start (Leander, 04:49).
  • U.S. sports calendar is crowded: NHL and NBA playoffs, baseball season all distracting from “soccer fever.”
  • World Cup presence: Slowly seeping into daily American life via advertising and displays in shops.

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2. Political Tensions & Controversies

a. Geopolitics and Iran’s Participation (05:34–10:10)

• Iran’s involvement remains uncertain:
  • Ongoing diplomatic friction; visa, anthem, and crowd concerns.
  • Alex Abnos: “Personally, I want to see Iran play at this World Cup. … Their soccer team has continued to be amazing and they’re consistently one of the best in Asia.” (07:25)
  • Large Iranian diaspora in L.A.: Political demonstrations likely.
  • Barry Glendenning: “The anthem point… is 100% directed at the fans … Los Angeles has the biggest Iranian diaspora population in the United States, many of whom… are no fans of the regime.” (08:14)
  • Displays like anti-regime shirts were managed strictly in Qatar, but will be different in the US due to less control over crowd composition.

b. Trump, Instability, and Policy Volatility (10:10–11:47)

• World Cup adds new layers of uncertainty, especially with Trump’s unpredictability.
• Leander Schaerlaeckens: “It feels like this World Cup is inventing entirely new categories of issues that were unknown to man. … We are run by a regime that will change on a whim … So it feels especially volatile.” (10:53)
• Concerns about entry for fans, potential travel restrictions, and the danger of a ‘1% World Cup’ only accessible to the wealthy.

c. ICE and Security Fears (23:53–25:54)

• Anxiety about ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) using World Cup events to target undocumented migrants.
• Alex Abnos: “Personally, I’ve always been a little bit dubious that they would use the World Cup as a mass staging ground for raids. … I think ICE is way more likely to operate in places that are where not quite so many cameras are.” (24:20)

d. Are Mexico and Canada “Bit-Part Players”? (25:54–27:34)

• Concerns that the co-hosts are overshadowed by the US, both in media and FIFA attention.
• Leander: “Canada and Mexico were always going to get fewer games. But they have definitely been overshadowed by everything that goes on in the United States. … Infantino [is] constantly at the White House… always a presence around Trump." (26:17)

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3. Fan Experience: Ticket Prices, Accessibility, and Transport Nightmares

a. Ticket Price Outrage (12:34–18:15)

• Prices for tickets astronomical – especially for knockout matches.
• Alex Abnos: “The idea that Americans are used to paying these prices just because dynamic pricing exists is just not true. It’s just not.” (13:45)
• Barry Glendenning: Details on sky-high resale prices: “The very cheapest ticket available for the final… is just shy of £7,000 sterling … third place playoff at £686… for the semi finals, £2,000.” (14:26)
• Middle and working-class fans largely priced out; roots of potential lack of atmosphere.

b. Falling Prices and Excluded Fans

• Secondary resale markets show some prices dropping, but still unaffordable for many. Scotland fans, some with criminal pasts, giving up trips for cheaper holiday alternatives (e.g., Benidorm) (18:15).
• Even die-hard England fans and Guardian staffers skipping the tournament due to expense or distaste for Trump/FIFA culture.

c. Transport and Additional Costs (20:01–23:53)

• Public transport mark-ups (e.g., $150 New Jersey train tickets), taxpayer money spent to prop up FIFA protocols.
• Alex: “I don’t know if a $150 train ticket is necessarily the most clean and best way to go about recouping some of that money…” (20:17)
• Some venues (e.g., Atlanta’s Mercedes Benz Stadium) successfully resisting FIFA’s demands for price hikes on concessions.

d. FIFA’s Takeover of Local Organizing

• FIFA running logistics much more directly than in past US World Cups, often at odds with local governments (22:19).

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4. On the Pitch: U.S. Men’s National Team Prospects

a. Realistic Ambitions (29:29–31:52)

• Leander: “Realistically the top for this team… probably means the quarterfinals.” (29:40)
• Group: Paraguay, Australia, Turkey — a “tricky but not impossible” draw.

b. Consistency and Recent Form

• U.S. has played all group opponents recently, with mixed results (beat Paraguay and Australia, lost badly to Turkey).
• Alex: “You just really don’t know what sort of performance you’re going to get out of them on a game-to-game basis… This squad in particular just seems so erratic.” (30:36)
• U.S. struggles historically vs. strong European teams (32:13).

c. Development Context and History (34:03–36:20)

• American soccer’s meteoric rise, but four decades is a blink compared to global football heritage.
• Leander: “To have gotten from [fielding incomplete teams in the 1970s]... to consistently reaching the knockout stages… is a bit of a sporting miracle.” (34:50)

d. Grassroots, Accessibility, and Barriers (36:20–39:51)

• Soccer participation highest among American kids, but most drift to other sports or are priced out.
• Youth soccer still mostly privatized and expensive— a systemic issue affecting inclusivity.
• Alex: “If you think FIFA are bad at extracting the most amount of money possible out of the game… you have to kind of stand in awe of all of the various youth soccer associations… it’s really something.” (38:25)
• Generational improvement: now a growing class of adult Americans raised on soccer.

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5. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the slow build-up:
  "It’s very much not happening until it’s on the absolute most eve of it happening…” (Alex, 03:43)

• On Trump’s unpredictability:
  "We are run by a regime that will change on a whim and...that man is going to do what he's going to do depending on the last thing he was told or saw or heard." (Leander, 11:17)

• On ticket pricing delusions:
  "The idea that Americans are just used to paying these prices...is just not true. It’s just not.” (Alex, 13:45)

• Football as a space for the privileged:
  "Is it really going to be that celebration of the sport that we all hope to see or is it just going to be fully gentrified and a 1% World Cup? That’s what I’m really worried about.” (Leander, 11:49)

• On American soccer’s roots:
  “After the US beat England at the 1950 World cup…they basically disappeared for four decades…one qualifier…they didn’t have enough players to field a full team and they had to recruit a man from the stands.” (Leander, 34:03)

• Alex on US team consistency:
  “It’s really hard to know what you’re going to get out of this team. Are they going to step up when the lights are the brightest or are they not? They have the talent, but I don’t know.” (33:48)

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Key Timestamps

• 03:43 — Why the World Cup buzz feels flat in the U.S.
• 05:34–08:14 — Iran’s involvement, political displays, and diaspora dynamics
• 10:10–11:49 — Trump, policy unpredictability, and worries for visiting fans
• 12:34–18:15 — Ticket prices, resale market realities, and who can afford to attend
• 20:01–23:53 — Public transport chaos and FIFA’s “hostile takeover” of logistics
• 23:53–25:54 — ICE fears for diaspora and undocumented communities
• 25:54–27:34 — Are Canada and Mexico co-hosts in name only?
• 29:29–31:52 — USMNT tournament ambitions and group analysis
• 34:03–36:20 — American soccer’s wild early years and rise to relevance
• 36:20–39:51 — Youth participation, cost barriers, generational shifts
• 41:04–42:06 — What would a successful World Cup look like for American soccer?

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Final Reflections & Legacy Questions

• Hope for a tournament that expands the sport’s reach, yet concerns about leaving a legacy fade due to high costs and FIFA’s dominance.
• "You want a tournament to leave a legacy… There’s an entire generation… who say, you know, the 1994 World cup changed my life…" (Leander, 41:04)
• Fears that the federation being “mostly frozen out” and profit captured by FIFA will limit long-term benefits for U.S. soccer growth.

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Tone & Takeaway

Clever, at times wryly comic, but clear-eyed about the tensions, contradictions and absurdities inherent in hosting the world’s biggest football event in an increasingly divided, expensive America. The panel bemoans the World Cup’s drift toward exclusivity while holding out hope for unexpected triumphs on and off the pitch—and for a legacy that inspires, not excludes, the next generation.

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Transcript

[A]

This is the Guardian.

[B]

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[D]

Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly. It's a month until the World cup and we're getting lots of questions like when are you going to talk about what's happening in the U.S. well, even if we have covered it a lot in passing, consider this an official start. We're joined by two experts in the US to discuss ticket prices, Iran visas, ice Trump, Giani, public transport and general enthusiasm for the tournament. We'll also discuss the US Side and their chances grassroots football. All that on a bonus episode of the Guardian Football Weekly. On the panel today, Alex Abnos, senior sports editor at the Guardian, our friend from Austin, Texas. Welcome, Alex.

[A]

Hello, Max.

[D]

I mean, not from Austin, Texas, but that's when we had our wild times together. Leander Sholekens, soccer journalist, author of the Long Game, US Men's soccer and its savage four decade journey to the top or thereabouts. And we will get to the end whether it's got to the top yet or whether it'll get to the top this summer in a bit. Hey Leander, how are you?

[E]

Hi Max.

[D]

Barry is here, as always. Hi Baz.

[F]

Hi Max.

[D]

As with every major tournament. We have that tricky balance of wanting to enjoy the football without ignoring the political climate. We've talked about it before, we'll talk about it again. No doubt. I'm going to start with this email from George who says, hey, Max, Barry and everyone else. Monday marks one month before the World cup begins. Usually it feels like there's a lot more buzz around the tournament. Is it just me or does it feel very flat this time around? Any thoughts on why? Is it general apathy towards a grotesquely large competition being run by grotesquely shameless men who are turning it into an inevitable village vanity parade? Is it because the Premier League title race is still interesting? Is it the general negative news stories, ticket prices that are streaming out from across the Atlantic? I also wonder how Mexicans and Canadians are feeling about it all. They're supposed to be co hosts, but being treated like bit part players. And I suppose in, in the uk, like it is still the football season, right? We're not thinking about the World cup and we won't for a couple of weeks, I guess. What, what's it like over there?

[A]

It's not the football season. I mean, it is your football season that many people are paying attention to. I think as with many big events in the U.S. you know, the, the ramp up hasn't really started yet. I think you often find with tournaments like this. You see this with the Olympics too. It's very much not happening until it's on the absolute most eve of it happening and then it's all that anybody is talking about. And it tends to go that way for the entire length of time that it exists. So, you know, is everybody on the street here talking about the World Cup? Not really. I mean, you know, you get. I've certainly had more conversations about it in the last month or so than I have in the month previous. But it's not as if it's the only thing on everybody's minds right now. I think you'll see that change in a very, very big way maybe in a couple weeks and then exponentially more so in the next week. And then once the tournament starts, it's all anybody's going to be talking about because these games are going to be happening and they're going to be bringing people to people's doorsteps. Sometimes literally there's a little bit ways to go, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Or are that unusual.

[D]

Yeah, would you go with that, Leander?

[E]

There was a poll conducted a month ahead of the 1994 World cup, which was the last one that was held here, and it found that 80% of Americans at that time didn't know what the World cup was or that it was going to be on their doorstep. So if we take a comparison, we are miles ahead of there, where at least people know what it is. But there is a lot of other programming on. The NHL playoffs are going on, the NBA playoffs are going on, baseball season is going. So it's just not something people are really thinking about as much with a few weeks to go, which is sort of as you would expect this time before World Cup. But you see little snippets of it left and right. You walk into stores or businesses that are sponsors, and you'll see World cup signage and stuff like that. So it's starting to creep into daily life very slowly.

[D]

If we go through the major sort of political concerns to begin with, I guess Iran and its involvement, Alex, and, you know, Infantino basically saying, no, look, it's all fine. They'll be in America. I've decided this. And obviously this is such a moving story so that we record this today, and then by the time it goes out, it may not be relevant. How do you see that playing out?

[A]

Oh, geez. If I knew or if I had any definitive question, I'm sorry. No, it's okay. But if I had any sort of definitive vision for how this would play out, I would be probably doing something else. But, yeah, I mean, it's. It's really, really tough to say. As you say, there have been yet another volley of words between our various countries, governments. It's difficult to know what, if any, effect that will have on the soccer team's participation in the World Cup. One would think it would be very important. But, you know, if that was truly the case, I think Iran would have been out of the tournament a long time ago. I think it is in the best interest of a lot of different stakeholders for them to take place and for the tournament to go on uninterrupted. And I think that them being withdrawn from the tournament or kicked out of the tournament or however it happens would just come with a lot of questions and a lot of talking points, a lot of logistical issues that I don't think, frankly, a lot of people want to deal with. Personally, I want to see Iran play at this World Cup. I think that they're just a fantastic story and are always a fantastic story because despite all of the sanctions that have been levied on them over so many years, and despite their kind of pariah status, sometimes deservedly so among the international community, their soccer team has continued to be amazing and they're consistently one of the best in Asia. They've earned their spot in this World cup, honestly, the on the backs of their play on the field. So I would kind of prefer they just sort of are allowed to see that till its conclusion of whenever that may be.

[D]

A couple of days ago, the head

[F]

of the Iranian Football Federation said that they would play at the World cup subject to a list of 10 conditions they were laying out being met. And the conditions didn't seem particularly unreasonable to me. A lot of them are related to visas, fan travel, their anthem being treated respectfully, etc. Etc. I imagine that the American administration might balk at some of those conditions as things stand, they do play the three group games in the States, two in la, one in Seattle.

[A]

So

[F]

I don't think their participation is in any way guaranteed yet. It's too, too early to say.

[A]

It's really interesting because I think the anthem point at least is 100% directed mostly at the fans of them that they will be playing in front of, because Los Angeles has the biggest Iranian diaspora population in the United States, many of whom, I would say the vast, vast, vast majority are no fans of the regime that is currently in place. So if anybody's going to be booing or whistling or whatever during the Iranian national anthem, I would think it's going to be a lot of Iranian fans in Los Angeles. How FIFA plans to control that, I don't know how you do that. I know that at least with displays of political signage and shirts that are anti regime, which was, I know, was also on that list of demands. They do have a measure of control over that, in the sense that they can see fans as they're coming in and, and pat them down and make sure they're not bringing in anything. But that's also nothing new because they did that in Qatar as well, because those games took place right in the middle of the Masa Amini protests. There were lots of people that were entering in that first group game against England wearing Women Life Freedom shirts. And then by the second game, most of them were no longer wearing those shirts or being made to remove them. And the makeup of the crowd changed in a very noticeable way from games one to two and then also to three. The difference now is that Iran cannot send their own people from the regime. People from Iran cannot travel to the US in the vast majority of cases to try to affect the makeup of the crowd in the same way. So I think probably The Iranian football head was looking at this situation, saying, FIFA, help us out here. Because I think it's very likely that should they play in Los Angeles especially, it's going to be sort of ground zero for a lot of political displays.

[D]

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I suppose, Leanne, what experience tells us about these major tournaments is once the football starts, everything else sort of disappears and then we enjoy the football and we can worry about everything else later. But given the unpredictability of Trump, I suppose. And again, it's not a question that's easy to answer. You just don't know if that will happen in this case. It almost, you know, if you sort of think about Russia or Qatar, right, which obviously have their own human rights issues, there's almost like a consistency with their leadership in a sort of. Do you understand the point I'm making in a sort of weird kind of way, that Trump is so unpredictable that you don't know specifically with the US exactly how mid World cup he might make a decision on something?

[E]

Feels like every World cup introduces its own set of issues, right? And I can't remember this is going to be my fourth World Cup. I don't remember a single one where there wasn't some kind of problem and some kind of hand wringing that was happening ahead of kickoff. And you're right. Then usually once the football starts to happen, we kind of forget about everything and. And we watch all the pretty soccer and we move on. It feels like this World cup is inventing entirely new categories of issues that were unknown to man. And there's just so many variables this time around, and there's so little consistency from day to day in the leadership that's overseeing this thing. We are run by a regime that will change on a whim and that answers to one man, and that man is going to do what he's going to do depending on the last thing he was told or saw or heard. So it feels especially volatile. So there's just a million different things to worry about.

[D]

I was going to say, what are you most worried about?

[E]

The ability for people to come to this World Cup. I mean, aside from the cost of them, aside from the cost of travel and the hotels, is, will people be allowed into this country? Will people be allowed out of this country? For that matter, once they get here, will they be allowed to leave, will it feel like a World Cup? The organizers have kind of been boasting that this is going to feel like 104 Super Bowls in 39 days, because it's such a big event and they're kind of trying to put it on an American scale. But what you see at the super bowl by and large is that it's only doctors and lawyers and executives who can afford to go to the thing. Right. And so is it really going to be that celebration of the sport that we all hope to see or is it just going to be fully gentrified and a 1% World Cup? That's what I'm really worried about.

[D]

Ticket prices then. Such a massive talking point anecdotally. Alex or Leander, do you know people who bought tickets and are going to games and have bought tickets for prices that aren't absolutely extortionate?

[A]

I've heard from people that have managed to snag tickets that are, that they consider to be not totally ridiculous. So I don't know anybody that's shelled out. We've heard stories from other people that I don't know personally that have shelled out thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars for tickets. And to those people I say good on you for having the money, I guess. But John Infantino had a quote the other day at the Milken Conference. This made the rounds because it was just so self evidently ridiculous that he said that you cannot get into any game in the US A college game is what he was referring to. But he's saying a college or professional game for less than $300. And it is so the reason I say it's so self evidently ridiculous because like every single person, every single American that has lived in the US for any amount of time that has ever gone to a sports game anywhere in the US Knows that is just false. And a FIFA spokesperson was telling me that he was referring specifically to college football and professional football. And I think even in that case it doesn't apply. Like the only game that might apply to is the college football national championship game. And it's, I mean, how many people are really going to go to that? It's just, it's just a ridiculous statement to make. I think FIFA are taking the existence of dynamic pricing, which is true, it does exist in North America and it is used to raise ticket prices and they're using that as sort of an excuse to raise the prices as much as possible to generate as much revenue as possible. But this idea that Americans are just used to paying these prices just because dynamic pricing exists is just not true. It's just not.

[F]

I looked at FIFA's resale site a couple of hours ago. So the very cheapest ticket available for the final on FIFA's resale site is just shy of £7,000 sterling for the third place playoff at £686 for the semi finals, £2,000. Now, with apologies to our Austrian friends, they appear to be the coldest ticket in town as as far as group games are concerned. So you can get a ticket for Austria, Algeria 135 quid and Austria Jordan 135 quid and Jordan, Algeria 140 pounds. I'm not trying to condone FIFA's gouging in any way, but if they cap the prices on their resale site, one presumes the tickets will just end up on some other resale site at similar prices.

[E]

I think in that case though, more tickets would probably clear down to what is a reasonable market value because if feels like there's a decent amount of games where there's still inventory that hasn't been sold at all. A few days ago there were still tickets to be had for the US opener against Paraguay that just hadn't sold in the first place. But they were going at eleven hundred and twenty dollars a piece, which is extraordinary. I know some people that are going to go to the World Cup, I know a lot of them that aren't because either they don't have the disposable income or it just isn't worth their while at that cost. Because for a family of four, best case scenario, you're looking at $1,000 to get yourself to a game and it's more likely to be $2,000. And even in a country where the average household income is just under $84,000, that's a ton of money. There just aren't that many Americans that can afford to go to these things. And that's to say nothing of people who'd like to come here from elsewhere and have to pay for travel. On top of that, it is really

[A]

wild to have this discussion about the biggest sporting event that's happening in the US this whole year happening at the exact same time. That affordability in general life stuff is also such a big talking point politically, pretty much everywhere. I mean, granted I live in New York City, so I'm, I'm like, I listen to the affordability mayor every single day. But the reason that he won on that is because it's a thing that people are talking about and it's just, just like these two realities can't exist at the same time. Americans are struggling to afford things. That is a fact. These tickets are too expensive. That is also a Fact, FIFA making all sorts of excuses like, we're used to this, just, it just doesn't wash to me at all.

[D]

FIFA tripled the price of its best available tickets the World cup final, making $32,970 seats available previously at a high price of 10,990 for category one. And I suppose the thing is, is that like, I love football, but like, a game can be bad and like there's a, there's a sort of amount you can spend on something. Like it doesn't matter how nice the steak is if you've spent like a million dollars on it, right? If, if, if the, if you're sitting there in your seat thinking, I paid $10,000 for this and it's, you know, and it's still nil. Nil. Matt Hughes reporting that outside of FIFA's marketplace, ticket prices appear to be falling. According to TicketData.com which tracks prices from a number of resellers, including StubHub, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats, the cheapest available for 87 of the 91 matches in the USA and Canada had fallen over the past 14 days. It's so hard if you are a fan of a team that don't often qualify for a World Cup. I think I feel for like, you know, Scotland fans say, you know, who go, well, when is our next one? Okay, there are more teams in the World cup, who knows, by the next World cup, gianni might have 200 teams in here, but like, you just don't know when your next World cup will be.

[F]

Yeah, well, our, our mate Bar Jim has told me about Scottish fans he knows of who aren't going. Some of them because they've had their collars felt in the past and are worried they won't get visas because they got criminal convictions and others because it's just prohibitively expensive. So what they're going to do instead is pitch up in Benidorm, the Spanish holiday resort, for the duration of the cruise. And I'm sure they'll have a lovely time and it'll cost them a fair fraction, like a very small fraction of what it would have cost them to go to the States. I know England fans who never miss a tournament who are skipping this one because of the expense. I know of one fell who works at the Guardian who isn't going. He said he can afford it, but he, he just doesn't fancy it because of Trump and Infantino and ice and whatnot. You know, Ireland haven't qualified. I would have been interested to see how many Irish would have traveled if. If they qualified. But, you know, there are so many Irish in America. They would still be massively represented in the stadiums if. Even if the fans weren't from Ireland. But they're not there. So it's relevant. New Jersey Transit ramping up the prices for fans to commute out to the stadium because FIFA, it's going to cost them about 50 million quid of taxpayers money to ferry people to and from matches. So just all the additional expense on top of already overpriced tickets makes it. Doesn't make it an attractive proposition at all. Yeah.

[D]

Just on that public transport thing, Alex, is that. Because there was a bit of a sort of to and fro between. I saw one governor, you know, posting a video and then FIFA replying, like. Like, who is right about this?

[A]

Can everybody be wrong?

[D]

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Is that an acceptable answer? I mean, I will say I think I understand where the New Jersey government is coming from. They were sort of grandfathered into this deal to host World cup games without any real plan for how this was not going to cost the state and its taxpayers a huge amount of money. So they needed to make it up somehow, and they decided to make it up that way. So I have a degree of understanding for why things played out the way they did. As far as that goes, I don't know if a $150 train ticket is necessarily the most clean and best way to go about recouping some of that money, especially considering that other cities in other ways have shown that they. That you do not have to necessarily submit to every single thing FIFA wants you to do in order to extract the most revenue possible out of the tournament we've seen in Atlanta. Mercedes Benz Stadium is a huge, amazing arena that is famed throughout the United States for, even by US Standards, to have very cheap concessions, snacks, Cokes. The amount that you pay for them inside the stadium is almost exactly what you would pay outside the stadium. And that's a rarity in the US And FIFA came in from what. From what I've been told and said, hey, you actually need to charge way more for all of the beer and all of the sodas and all the snacks if you're going to want to host World cup games. And Mercedes Benz Stadium just said, no, we're not going to do that, because then we would not be Mercedes Benz Stadium. And they won that. And snacks in Mercedes Benz Stadium are going to be cheaper than they are for any other World cup venue. Kansas City is building a whole bus network in a city that has no real functional public transportation to speak of outside of one streetcar line downtown. And to access it for the duration of the tournament, you'll need to pay something like 50 bucks, and that's for unlimited rights. Now, 50 bucks is not nothing. But it is. Considering that they're creating something from nothing and allowing you unlimited access to it for the tournament, it's a little bit closer to what you would expect to pay for that.

[E]

What we're running into in a lot of these host cities is that the local governments of the cities and of the states are not the same as they were when the tournament was awarded to the United States in 2018. So that's what happened in New Jersey, where the new governor sort of was handed this deal that had been agreed to by a previous government and said, here you go, here's what you're doing. And all of these issues, I think, are downstream from the fact that FIFA has sort of, in almost like a hostile takeover, leveraged this entire tournament for its own benefit at the last World cup in the United States. At most every World cup, there's a local organizing committee, usually run by the domestic federation. They will sort of get a bunch of people together and they will organize the tournament and then FIFA will be involved, obviously. But what's happened this time around is FIFA has effectively moved in. They opened headquarters in Miami, they opened their little headquarters in Trump Tower, although that's more decorative than anything else, I think. And then they created these local organizing committees within the host cities to kind of handle the dirty work and the unprofitable work.

[A]

Right.

[E]

Of transportation and fan fests and all the rest. So there isn't kind of that organizational intermediary that's supposed to sit in between those two things that figures out stuff like security and transport and all the rest that you would normally have. Because FIFA decided what they really need to do here is swoop in and make sure that they kind of concentrated as many of the revenue streams within their own budget as they could.

[D]

Can I ask about ice? Alex Baz mentioned it. It has fallen out of the headlines around the world. That doesn't mean they're not wandering around the streets in the U.S. i don't know. And there was a concern in the lead up that they might operate as security. There were lots of concerns that they would use World cup games as an opportunity to, you know, basically pick off undocumented migrants off the street or, you know, any diaspora, you know, supporting their country. So I just wonder what the latest is on. On that.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, you're totally right that ice is not quite as in, in the focus as, as it has been. And we spoke in Austin and in the months previous, they are still very active. You know, the ice raids have not gone away. These things have not stopped happening. They're maybe a little bit less in frequency, a little bit less in headlines. And personally, I've always been a little bit dubious of the idea that they would use the World cup as a mass staging ground for raids. I think that this is not an unreasonable fear. I just don't see it happening for a number of reasons. Mainly because it would cast FIFA in a really, really bad light. It would end up blowing back on the Trump administration in a way that I think they really wouldn't enjoy. And also this has been a fear for every major event that's happened in the US Since Trump took over for his second term. It was a fear for, I think both Super Bowls or at least. Yeah, certainly the most recent Super Bowl. There was a, there was a fear that ice would have large scale operations outside of San Francisco that ended up not really happening. There was a fear that they would be doing similar sort of operations outside of Club World cup games. Granted, Club World cup is a very different traveling sort of identity fan that you get than the World cup, but we didn't really see it happening. I think ice is way more likely to operate in places that are where not quite so many cameras are. Basically, if you were to be scared of ice while traveling in the United States of America for the World Cup, I would be more scared of them away from the stadiums when you're just out and having an otherwise lovely time.

[D]

Leander, there was a point in that email about, you know, Canada and Mexico feeling a bit part player. And I'm very conscious that, you know, we don't have any Mexicans or Canadians on this panel, for example. And you know, we will of course address that as we lead up to the tournament. But do you get that sense that, you know, they are bit part players in this or is it just, you know, US politics, US life is just a much more dominant force globally anyway?

[E]

I think it's a bit of both, unfortunately. I mean, this tournament was very much sold to FIFA as a uniting event that, you know, during the first Trump administration it was kind of the bid book says unity on the front and it was presented as something that would help bring North America back together after some struggles over a wall that mostly wasn't built in the end. And, you know, the reason that we have three countries here is because the federations made a compromise, right? They figured out that if they went in together and unified their three bids for the World cup, then they were all basically guaranteed to get the World cup and then they kind of divvied up how many games they would each get. So Canada and Mexico were always going to get fewer games. But they have definitely been overshadowed by everything that goes on in the United States. I mean, you can see it in the fact that of how little Johnny Infantino has bothered to spend time with the heads of state of Canada and Mexico, whereas he's constantly at the White House. He's, he's been to Mar? A Lago, I believe he's just always a presence around Trump. And so you can usually tell how FIFA feels about things and what's important to them by kind of tracking where Infantino shows up and where he doesn't.

[D]

Okay, that'll do for part one. Part two, we'll, we'll go on the pitch for a bit and concentrate on the usmnt.

[B]

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[D]

Welcome to part two. The Guardian Football Weekly. Leander your book it is, you know, four decade journey to the top or Thereabouts. So you need, you need USMNT to get to the top, ideally for your book sales, amongst other things, or thereabouts

[E]

that would be optimal. I would appreciate it very much. But I think realistically the top for this team at a 48 team tournament probably means the quarterfinals. I don't know how you feel, Alex.

[A]

Yeah, that's about right. I mean quarterfinals would be more knockout wins than they've ever had before. So. Sure, let's, let's go with that.

[D]

Okay. So the group of Paraguay, Australia, Turkey. It's interesting leander, isn't it, that that group happens and you think, oh, that's quite an easy group or it's actually quite a hard group. I can't tell. It's like there are no impossible games, but there are no simple games.

[E]

No, I think they would have or should have felt a lot better about the group if Turkey wasn't in it. If they'd had Bosnia or someone like that in that group, that, that feels more relaxing, I think as a fan, as an observer. Because Turkey is a good team and they actually lost to Turkey in the spring when they had a qualifier beat Australia in recent friendlies, if memory serves. So they've actually played all of these teams in the past year?

[A]

Yeah, they beat Paraguay 2 1, they beat Australia 21 and they did lose to Turkey and looked very much second best to Turkey. You could debate as to whether or not it's a good or a bad thing, but I think it's just so fascinating that how often does that happen? Like the three teams that you have to face in your World cup group are teams that you have faced within very recent living memory of every single person on the squad and the coach. The thing with the US is like you just really don't know what sort of performance you're going to get out of them. On a game to game basis from Mauricio Pochettino, they've had really high highs. They've looked amazing in a 51 win against Uruguay. Granted, all of these are friendly, so who knows how much stock you can really put in them or most of them are friendlies anyway. They've also looked extremely bad, like during the 4 nil loss to Switzerland just before the Gold cup last year. Putting expectations on on this group at any point is really, really difficult. And this squad in particular just seems so erratic. I really struggle to know what they're going to do with this group because you're right, there is no like obvious weakling in this group. In fact, like if we're asking that question, where's the obvious weakling in this group? Maybe it's us. Maybe, maybe. Maybe we're the ones that everybody's looking forward to playing. It's. It could very easily be Tyler Adams.

[F]

The Bournemouth midfielder has said that the USA struggle against European teams because the normal teams that play from CONCACAF require a completely different skill set to play against. Could you possibly expand on what he might mean by that?

[E]

Yeah, they tend to play teams where they have to break them down, teams with a deep block that they have to figure out how to pick apart. And so this team hasn't really had a signature win against a team that takes it to them and that attacks them relentlessly. They haven't really beaten a strong European team yet. So this is still a fairly young team. This is still a team that was basically rebuilt from the ashes of the US failing to qualify for the World cup in 2018, which was the first one they'd missed since 1986. And so that's, that's one of the things that's causing a lot of anxiety is that they can do it against Mexico and they can do it against Panama and all these other teams, but we've yet to see it against Belgium or Portugal, who both had a fairly easy time of it against the US Back in March.

[A]

It's also kind of a toss up as to whether or not they can do it all the time consistently against the likes of Panama or Costa Rica, because those are tough games. And one thing that I think is really important going into this tournament, blessing and the curse of being a host. They haven't played any qualifiers, they've had basically no competitive games with the first choice squad. They had the Gold cup last summer, but that was mostly second choice reserves, players that happened to be available and none of the players that were not available because the club World cup was happening at the same time. So that prevented a lot of really key call ups, which once again, I don't mean to repeat myself, just feeds into the notion that it's really hard to know what you're going to get out of this team. Are they going to step up when the lights are the brightest or are they not? It really depends. They have the talent, but I don't know.

[D]

On your book, Leander, in my mind I have Pele playing for the Cosmos, then I have Alexi Lalas and Tab Ramos, and then I have sort of now. And actually the interesting thing is that four decades is nothing, isn't it? Like it's just such a short Amount

[E]

of time it is.

[F]

Yeah.

[E]

I mean, you have to consider where this program came from. After the US beat England at the 1950 World cup, which by the way, was a win that was wedged between very bad losses to Spain and Chile, they basically disappeared for four decades. From 1950 to 1990, they were totally irrelevant on the international stage. They had a streak in the 50s and 60s where they went 11 years without winning a game. There was one qualifier late in the 1974 cycle where they didn't have enough players to field a full team and they had to recruit a man from the stands just to make up the numbers. This was in a 74 qualifying cycle.

[D]

Oh, that's amazing. What just is anybody. Was it a tannoy or just someone you know, get your boots, Dave. That's.

[E]

They found a guy who knew how to play and that was the 11th man. And they've turned up to qualifiers without a coach. There was the 1966 World cup qualifying cycle. They actually had two coaches and nobody could seem to figure out who was actually in charge. And then in 1983, the Federation was. Was so desperate for any type of infusion of energy into the national team because they could only afford to play a game, if that every year that they entered the team into the nasl, into Pele's old league, as Team America, they entered the national team as a club team into the league. The trouble was that some of the leading players wanted nothing to do with it. They wanted to stay with their teams with the Cosmos or with the Seattle Sounders. And so what you really wound up getting was a tribute band of the national team, such as it was, that came dead last in the NASL and that folded after that one season around this time. It was just an unserious operation. The players were getting $5 a day per diem's. They were turning down call ups all the time because it wasn't worth the bother because often they weren't brought together until the day of the game or the day before a game. And so to have gotten from there to finally qualifying by 1990 and to consistently reaching the knockout stages of the World cup today is a bit of a sporting miracle. And that's really what the book is about.

[D]

Participation wise, like kids. It's the most played game. It might be a bit like Australia, right? Like it's the most played game. But then they lose all the. All the players, then go off to the where the money is. Right? But do you see that is changing?

[E]

I think it is. Soccer has for Too long been a rite of passage of American childhood, the way the Boy Scouts might be and the way sleepovers might be. And it's something that you would ditch and move on from once you, you know, became a teenager and you started getting serious about the real sports. The other issue is that youth soccer is prohibitively expensive, and it's really, really hard for a lot of families to afford it, which has been a bit of a common trend, I think, in. In today's conversation. And so that's frozen out an awful lot of talent over the years.

[D]

Feels like the cheapest sport you could play amongst the American sport. You don't need a bat, you don't need any pads.

[A]

One would think.

[E]

Yeah, one would think. But like all of youth sports in America, it's been privatized, it's been commercialized. We have something called travel sports, which has basically devoured all of Rex sports, which would be run by nonprofits or by local towns and which would be free or very cheap. And it's been taken over by these leagues that are very much for profit industries that'll charge. If you want to play at any kind of serious level, unless you're in an MLS academy, it's going to cost you thousands of dollars a year. And so the US national team, especially on the men's side, has often looked a lot like the American upper middle class, because that's the only people who can afford for their kids to be seen and to play at the. At the levels where the coaching is good and the competition is good.

[F]

I saw an interview Landon Donovan did on some podcasts. He said that an awful lot of kids are being lost to. To the game because the coaching is prohibitively expensive. A lot of the parents are way too pushy. And he said the coaches are really bad at coaching at that level. So I don't know if that's true or not. I'm just passing on what Landon had to say.

[A]

If you think that FIFA are bad at extracting the most amount of money possible out of the game of soccer in the United States, you have to kind of stand in awe of all of the various youth soccer associations that dot the landscape, because it's really. It's really, really something, the sort of system that they've built up. And as to Landon's point about coaching, I would generally agree. But I will say, if I may be optimistic about this for a moment, that it's changing. All of this stuff is changing in a generally positive direction. None of this is stuff that's going to be fixed overnight because it's all so systemic and it's all just a product of this long, long run in the wilderness that Leander wrote about.

[E]

And I think an element of it is sort of generational as well. Right. In order to have a really broad grassroots player development, you need fathers who can volunteer and mothers who understand the sport and who have grown up playing the game themselves. One of the big leaps forward that we're now seeing that U.S. soccer likes to talk about is that you now have executives and decision makers in corporate America who grew up as soccer fans. Right. So you're kind of seeing the gener, the generations tick over. And for more people who have grown up with the sport to rise to positions where either they can invest in the game or they can coach a team or they can do something useful, it just takes a while for, for all of that to kind of coalesce.

[F]

On the subject of pushy parents, are we likely to see Giovanni Reyna in the US Squad?

[A]

Lander, you want to take that one? I don't know.

[E]

He. He seems a bit of a toss up. I think there's absolutely a chance. I think Bochettino sees that he brings something to the team, that he has a ability and that potentially he has a game changing ability, that there just aren't very many players in the American pool who are able to do that. And yes, that invites the possibility of yet more soccer dad drama in the. In an American World Cup.

[A]

He could be on the roster with Sebastian Berhalter, the son of Greg Burhalter. I'm sure there will be at least one or two things written about that should it come to pass.

[D]

Until now, I didn't realize that the, when we see, you know, when the starting 11 come out, it's not the 11 best players in the U.S. it's just the 11 poshest people, people they could find. And that's. That's who plays for the U.S. leander, you were saying we were having a little round robbed email saying that one of the big questions at the moment is what does. And it's a big question, but it's a good way to finish. I think this app is. Is what does success look like for this World Cup? Like, what does soccer in America look like the day after it's finished?

[E]

You want a tournament to leave a legacy, right? And that means you wanted to accomplish a few different things. You wanted to introduce new fans to the sport. And that's tricky when it's so prohibitively expensive. There's an entire generation of Americans who, especially in soccer media, as it happens, who will say, you know, the 1994 World cup changed my life. I went to three games. I went to four games. It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't sort of insanely pricey. And that sort of completely turned around what I was interested in and what I wanted to do with my life. You also want there to be money to invest in the sport writ large. And here again, the federation being mostly frozen out of the tournament is really concerning because 94 left behind a big pot of money which they used to start Major League Soccer, which they used as the seed money for two Women's World Cups. That sort of was a chunk of money that did a lot of good over the long term for this sport that I don't see them getting out of this tournament.

[D]

That'll do for now. We will obviously chat to both of you plenty of times before and during the World Cup. And, you know, we will do our part to make Mexico and Canada also feel like they're part of it as well. But for the time being. Thank you, Alex.

[A]

Thank you so much, Max.

[D]

Cheers, Leander.

[E]

Thanks, Max.

[D]

Thanks, Baz.

[F]

Thank you.

[D]

Football Weekly is produced by Rory Simons. Our executive producer is Joel Groh.

[A]

This is the Guardian.

[B]

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