FootBiz newsletter #173: Will this World Cup change the USA? Plus, why Real Madrid's elections mattered
Florentino Perez may have won, but he was also arguably the biggest loser
By the time you next read this newsletter, the World Cup will have begun, dear friends.
Yes, we are here. We have made it. The build-ups to these tournaments always tends to be a little fraught and anxious but several factors have made this one seem moreso than ever. Nonetheless, you can’t pause time and the biggest World Cup in history will shortly be underway.
So, after back-to-back World Cups hosted by sportswashing autocracies who won bids under dubious circumstances, we turn to the USA and… whatever this is.
Russia opened its doors to the world, showed us its acceptable face and then its true colours just a couple of years later. That month spent in Moscow still feels very odd, though admittedly it did feel it at the time too, but it’s now a global pariah having been FIFA’s great partner less than a decade ago.
Qatar wanted to shrug off the talk of modern slavery and all the uncomfortable topics that surround how their gleaming, shimmering World Cup was built, and they just about managed it. Twinned with Paris Saint-Germain’s success, Qatar has inserted itself fully into world sport’s picture with something that feels like it’s approaching permanence.
In many ways, based on the build-up, this summer’s World Cup has been the opposite of sportswashing. The United States of America has instead held up a magnifying glass to all its failings, the most brazenly capitalist nation on Earth but also the least self-aware.
When foreign observers have noted how much this World Cup costs to attend, the instinct from most Americans has been to normalise it, rather than ask why their society is hardwired to extract as much money from them as possible while giving them the least possible in return.
Infantino’s cosying up to power has been a theme of his presidency
Similarly, when this entirely valid story about a mass shooting near England’s training base was published, Americans sought to minimise it as either not being that close (still, nine people shot!) or pretty normal stuff for America (again, nine people shot, what is wrong with you?).
My best hope for the next month or so, as a foreigner living in the USA, is that people don’t reflexively jump to being defensive about the inconsistencies and inefficiencies of American life but ask why they can’t have things better too?
As a thought exercise: if the UK joined the United States, it would rank 51st out of 51 for GDP per capita. Those extortionate tickets, the ramped-up hotel prices and the 9-mile trip from Penn Station to New Jersey that costs $100 are all very expensive for people in the UK, which is still one of the world’s largest economies.
But if the UK joined the US, it would also rank first for life expectancy, healthcare, paid maternity leave, years in education and number of other key quality of life metrics. It would (obviously) also have the lowest homicide rate, lowest gun death rate, lowest prisoner population, lowest road deaths, lowest drug deaths, the highest minimum wage and a host of other sticks with which you can beat this dead horse.
The point is not that one place is better than the other, but that these places can all be better. Depending on your angle, the focus on this World Cup could legitimately be development of American youth soccer or the growth of Major League soccer or making the Canadian league more competitive in CONCACAF competitions or whatever. But for ordinary Americans witnessing this global footballing jamboree arrive in their back yard, my hope would be that were they see the joy of it all they relish it, and where there are negatives that they ask the right questions.
Why don’t we have good public transport almost anywhere in America?
Why is healthcare so expensive here when it’s not elsewhere?
Canada and Mexico both get somewhat forgotten in all of this but that’s because FIFA have made it so. For the Canadians it’s a huge opportunity to further their development as a legitimate footballing power in the region, while for Mexico — easily the most football-mad of the three host nations — it’s a chance to show off its rich football culture to the world just as its domestic league is having its own Premier-League-in-1992 moment. That isn’t really what FIFA’s after, though.
Mexico City’s Azteca stadium will host World Cup matches for a third time
For the USA it’s a second time hosting the World Cup but this is a completely different country to 1994, one that’s more aware of — and open to — elite-level football than it has ever been. What this isn’t, if we are honest, is a World Cup that’s trying to spark something greater love of the sport in the American psyche, a moment where soccer truly takes hold. If it were, they wouldn’t have priced out normal people.
No, what FIFA saw in the United States was the opportunity to make as much money as humanly possible, thus guaranteeing Gianni Infantino his next (and supposedly final) term as president. That the US has broken a number of the agreements it made in securing the World Cup, including a shameful episode yesterday as an African referee was refused entry to the country and deprived of his dream of officiating at a World Cup, is irrelevant to FIFA who simply need the richest country on Earth to fulfil its part of the bargain.
Visitors will come, assuming they can get in the country (and assuming they can afford the trip) and they will marvel at the best stadiums and sporting facilities anywhere in the world, but they will complain about the traffic and the tipping culture and the heat and just getting squeezed for every penny possible at every given moment.
But if the action on the pitch is superb, it will steal the show.
Once the World Cup leaves town, it will be interesting, on reflection, to see what the American people believe the show, and FIFA, might have stolen from them.
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