Did World Cup’s stint in USA open eyes to world’s pastime?

Have we experienced a sporting epiphany in the summer of 2026? Have we all learned why soccer is the world’s pastime, the beautiful game?

Or is the World Cup more like a beautiful event, especially when you’re the host country with host privileges?

In America, we’re about to find out.

The sport clearly has significant momentum in the United States. The 2026 World Cup was a smashing success full of subplots, superstars, story lines, and controversies. Norway’s Erling Haaland is about to sell a ton of merchandise for Manchester City. Lionel Messi will bring juiced-up energy to the MLS when he returns to his club in Miami, where his matches could sell out stadium venues, just like Caitlin Clark during her rookie year in the WNBA.

In the World Cup final, Spain flexed a championship defense that swallowed you whole. But in the third-place game, the sport made our jaws drop with freewheeling, fastbreak soccer that resulted in a combined 10 goals scored. Incredibly, neither goalkeeper had a bad day. It was a magical watch, especially for Americans who will never embrace the nil-nil draw.

Just like Olympic host cities the morning after Closing Ceremonies, many in America are having withdrawals. Big-stage soccer can be intoxicating. The rhythm, the flow, the pageantry, the stakes, the back-and-forth probing inside (mostly) non-stop action, the severe consequences spawned from minor mistakes … a great match is both decadent and exhausting, like a seven-course dinner.

But just like Olympic sports, our interest tends to wane when the circus leaves town. Will this time be different?

The MLS debuted in 1996, two years after the U.S. hosted its first World Cup in 1994. Back then, it had 10 teams. Today it has 30 teams, the same amount as the NBA and Major League Baseball. Will you pick a team to follow? Will you adopt a team in the prestigious English Premier League, which rostered 154 players in the 2026 World Cup, where the most recent title bout between Arsenal and Manchester City drew a record 2.6 million viewers in the U.S?

“I think the viewership numbers were pretty staggering, both on traditional media and non-traditional engagement on social media,” Phoenix Rising President Bobby Dulle said. “We had a lot of stars grab the attention of not only the youth who were already following them, but also the attention of traditional sports fans. The stars really stood out, whether it was Messi, Erling Haaland, Lamine Yamal or Harry Kane.”

The Rising are looking to capitalize. They staked a claim in the Valley in 2014, on the ground floor of a highly saturated sports market. They moved to Scottsdale in 2017 and promptly finished sixth in USL attendance. Later that year, and again in 2019, they were denied bids to join the MLS. They are members of the USL Championship League, and in the middle of their 13th season in the Valley.

But smart people know the soil, and how Arizona is teeming with soccer fans. On five different occasions, a match involving Mexico’s national team drew over 55,000 people to State Farm Stadium. The MLS is still planning to expand to two more cities, and Phoenix is a potential goldmine with the right location and the right stadium initiative. And the 2026 World Cup is a siren to investors who are bullish on soccer and might want to buy a slice of ownership, especially here.

“Soccer is in the spotlight, right?” Dulle said. “Now it’s our job to keep that candle burning. The level of play in America continues to improve. The types of players representing national teams all over the world are playing in local backyards, including Phoenix. The talent is here and accessible. It’s our job to tell their story.”

It’s also their job to keep us remotely interested, in the face of their most daunting question:

Will soccer matter once real football begins?

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