Organizationally speaking, the 2026 World Cup began on 13 June 2018, when then-Fifa general secretary Fatma Samoura sternly instructed the delegates to cast their vote in a cavernous conference hall in Moscow.
Yet mere days away from the tournament’s kickoff in Mexico City, it doesn’t really feel like the thing is here yet. At least, not in the US. And not in New York, the host city for the final.
It can be oddly difficult to tell when and where a World Cup has well and truly started. It’s not when the draw takes place; there’s too much winter left, too much club soccer to be played. It also isn’t the opening match, or the preceding ceremony; if anything, those seem late. The thing exists tangibly in the weeks and months before that, as the world prepares and positions itself for the impending tournament.
Tyler Adams and Weston McKennie, who will probably make up much of the United States men’s national team midfield this summer, were 19 when their home country was named as a co-host. That’s when they knew that their nation, for which both men had made their senior debuts on the same day seven months earlier, had qualified automatically as one of the three co-hosts.
“For me, it started to feel real probably after [this past] season finished, because we had a lot of pressure at our club level,” said McKennie. “So I wanted to just finish my season off with Juventus and then, after that … I think it’ll start to hit me more. Obviously, whenever you get the message that you’re named to the roster, that’s another big moment where you realize, OK, it’s starting.”
“Two days ago, I was playing against Nottingham Forest, hoping to achieve something,” said Adams, a Bournemouth player in the Premier League. “Yesterday, [I] got off the plane and we’re in Times Square. I think it’ll probably hit tomorrow, when we start training properly and really start preparing.”
Adams and McKennie were speaking at US Soccer’s World Cup roster unveiling event at the swanky Pier 17 complex at South Street Seaport in Manhattan. In a bonanza of red, white and blue, the 26 players picked by head coach Mauricio Pochettino were announced one by one, trundling on to a large concert stage on the building’s rooftop. They emerged to loud music and from in between blasts of smoke, clad in grey suits over knitted T-shirts and white sneakers. Then they stood about as the rapper Gunna performed in front of them.
The whole thing was a bit much. “That’s America,” Adams wryly noted.
Yet such events exist exactly to signal that the World Cup really is here, that it isn’t just a far-off notion. This remains tricky in a country where, as much as the popularity of soccer has grown, the international game is still mostly treated like the Olympics, something to get into for a few weeks every four years. The NBA playoffs are near their apotheosis – with the New York Knicks in the finals, no less – while the hockey and baseball seasons are ongoing as well. There’s a lot going on, and the World Cup, for now, is just one of those things.
The most evidence of the impending tournament can be found in the various businesses that sponsor the thing. Shop for a bucket of paint or a rake at a hardware chain and you may stumble on some signage, if you’re paying attention. Pharmacies have plush mascots for sale among other officially licensed trinkets. “To see all the different branding and things that are being put up around the country has made it that much more real in the past couple weeks,” said the US captain, Tim Ream.
Weighing anticipation and the present is a tricky balance for players to strike. They are expected to live day to day, practice to practice, game to game. And for the US, absent a qualification process that stretched over a year or two, they lacked the usual signage that demarcates the cycle.
“I think I kind of felt it on the horizon,” said Christian Pulisic. “Obviously, you’re focusing on what you’re doing at your club, but I’d say once I got here and kind of was with the team and felt these fans and support and buzz around the World Cup, is when I really started to feel it.”
Players on the bubble experienced Monday’s Fifa roster deadline differently. “Probably within the last month was sort of when all these players were very, very nervous and wondering what was going to happen and hoping to be there,” said Gio Reyna, whose eventual inclusion felt unlikely for long stretches of the past year. “Coming down the last couple of weeks of the season, I think it was on everyone’s mind.”
And now that the team has finally assembled, some members still don’t entirely sense that the moment is here. “Maybe that first game of the World Cup, being a part of that, maybe is when it will really hit; or maybe it will be a week after the entire World Cup – I’m not sure,” said defender Miles Robinson. “It’s slow to really sink in.”
Leander Schaerlaeckens is the author of The Long Game: U.S. Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, which is out now. He teaches at Marist University.
