In the 1970s and ’80s up north where I’m from, soccer wasn’t even a thing. We’d heard of Pelé, but that’s about it. It was all football (American-style), baseball, hockey, and basketball. That’s it. And, individually, swimming and golf. Having never been taught soccer, I spent most of my life ignoring it — until a really good Italian team made the World Cup. And eventually won it. This was in 2006, and I, as a full-blooded second-generation Italian, watched every second of every match. Sometimes at home. More often at The Grotto (R.I.P.). That’s when I realized I’d been missing out. Italy has pretty much sucked since then, so my fandom now encompasses Team Ghana, since my son is from Accra. For the 2026 FIFA World Cup, they’re in Group L with Croatia, Panama, and mighty England. Go, Black Stars!
And that’s the thing about sports. It truly is unifying. As a lifelong Pittsburgh sports fan and longtime resident of the Steel City, I grew up witnessing the material impact of sports on society. After all our steel mills closed in the mid-to-late 1970s, sending thousands of formerly proud men and women out of work, we had no identity and nothing to believe in — until the world champion Steelers and Pirates came along. Their success sparked the city’s second “renaissance,” as they called it, which ultimately led to Pittsburgh’s lofty standing as a place of groundbreaking medicine and technology, robotics specifically (because of Carnegie Mellon University).
Soccer, as the only truly international sport, has had similar impacts around the globe, perhaps not ones tied to real estate but to social unification and the conjoining of disparate factions, which is what most of us are hoping for through this World Cup: that we can put politics aside temporarily and come together to cheer on Team USA. I get it. It’s hard, but don’t let the fascists and Nazis running this clownshow of a government take away your patriotism to a country founded on and (up until recently) committed to two very specific anti-Nazi, anti-fascist things: words like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and deeds like 1776 and the world wars. Maybe Team USA’s performance can help transform “Old Glory” from the placeholder Confederate flag that it is today to a true representation of our shared Americanness, forming in a shining place once likened by some smart person to a melting pot, with all sorts of flavors, colors, and textures. That’s what makes America America: Baskin-Robbins’ big 31-plus-1,000. Not just straight vanilla.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying there’s a ton of stuff to do and a bevy of ways to take in the World Cup action, many that don’t involve taking out a loan to purchase “Dallas Stadium” tickets. On pg. 12, our resident expert on X’s and O’s, Film Editor Kristian Lin breaks down Team USA’s chances and prognosticates on potential finalists, while on pg. 10, fellow soccer maniac Ryan Burger, who’s also the Weekly’s art director, discusses the potential action (or lack thereof) outside the pitch, with some yellow and red cards for the offenders. (“Quite frankly,” we’d be amazed Donald Trump doesn’t get one.)
Elsewhere in the issue, “Sports Rush” Olson and Editorial Board member Elaine Wilder look at all the soccer-themed artwork popping up throughout DFW in anticipation of the tourney (pps. 4 and 6), while on pg. 17, Elaine runs down some of the best spots in town for watch parties. All that and so much more await, so welcome to our inaugural (and perhaps last for a long time) Summer of Soccer issue. As the Beastie Boys once prophetically cried, “Kick it!”
