Seattle's World Cup will be remembered for more than soccer

More countries compete in the World Cup than there are countries.

Yeah, that's a weird statement - seems impossible - but look at the numbers.

FIFA says 211 tried to qualify for this year's men's tournament, from top-ranked Argentina to bottom-dwelling San Marino. The United Nations counts 193 member states. (Countries like Curaçao, Scotland and Wales are independent for football purposes, but not for international relations purposes.)

The most watched television program in history? It's never the Super Bowl. It's always the World Cup final.

The numbers tell only part of the story.

The World Cup arrives in Seattle on Monday as the greatest mass celebration, the greatest upswelling of global communion that humanity has yet created. It is the highest level, the most passionate expression of the world's most popular and egalitarian game - the only one played truly everywhere.

If the World Cup is a showcase of our best - community, camaraderie, spontaneous exultant joy - it can also be a spotlight for some of our worst - corruption, greed, narcissism, cynicism. The last two World Cups have been held in authoritarian states. This one is taking place, mostly, in a country that has been actively shutting itself off from the rest of the world.

And yet, ask people who have gone to past World Cups and no one really talks about the political moment of the host country. No one even talks that much about the soccer.

What people remember - both Seattle locals and the tens of thousands who will travel great distances to be here - are the fans they meet on a bus, the barbecue they ate walking to the stadium, the crowd losing its mind, the exuberance, exultance and immensity of it all.

The World Cup is a bit like a religious feast," Simon Kuper writes in a new book, "World Cup Fever." It's "comparable to Easter, the Muslim Eid, or Hindu Diwali, but rarer, happening only once every four years, and shared by every country on earth."

The balancing act

Seattle and the 10 other U.S. cities hosting games over the next month are welcoming the world at a time when the country has rarely been so hostile to the rest of the world. The U.S. has cut food and medicine around the globe and closed its doors to refugees and to immigrants. Through tariffs, it has moved to restrict its economy from other countries, including Canada and Mexico, our neighbors and co-hosts. The surge in immigration enforcement has driven fear and led to millions of fewer international visitors.

The effect on the World Cup is direct. The U.S. has stopped, at least temporarily, accepting immigrant visa applications from more than one-third of the countries coming to play. It has banned visitors, almost entirely, from two other participants, Haiti and Iran. A Somali referee, recently named the best referee in Africa and set to work the tournament, was refused entry to the United States last week, turned away without explanation by Customs in Miami.

FIFA's motto - "Football unites the world" - has often seemed at odds with the actions of its host nations.

FIFA likely gained no fans in overwhelmingly Democratic Seattle by creating a brand-new "FIFA Peace Prize" to give to President Donald Trump for his "exceptional actions for peace and unity."

It has always been a balancing act, this tournament, a vehicle of joy for billions that at the same time is used by its organizers and hosts for their own self-aggrandizing, sometimes nefarious, purposes.

It has been tied up in politics since the beginning. After host nation Uruguay won the first World Cup in 1930, the band didn't play the country's national anthem. Instead, it played the anthem of the president's ruling party. Four years later, when Italy hosted in 1934, Mussolini instructed the coach to select only Fascist Party members for the team. Before the games, the players gave fascist salutes.

More recently, the last two editions, in Russia and Qatar, have been stages for authoritarian regimes, with fans forced to overlook their grave human rights abuses.

"Russia and Qatar demonstrated that you didn't have to win the tournament to gain a propaganda success," Jonathan Wilson writes in "The Power and the Glory: The History of the World Cup."

"Every host," he writes, "has tried to use the tournament as an expression of self-confidence or modernity, or to prove that they are relevant, a central part of a broader global community."

'The memorable parts'

The World Cup is also an unabashed cash grab, featuring ticket prices far beyond the means of most, and generating billions upon billions of dollars for an insular, international organization with a storied history of corruption.

In Seattle, the cheapest ticket for Monday's opening game, as of Saturday, was $530. Want to see the U.S. National Team play in Sodo? You're looking at at least $1,700.

But you don't have to be at the game to be at the World Cup. The world is coming here. There will be watch parties all over the city, the state. Games will be shown on a 70-foot screen inside Pacific Place mall. There will be a huge screen on the waterfront at Pier 62, and there will be watch parties at - of all places - the Seattle Public Library.

Pioneer Square will be a hub of free activities, right next door to the stadium and its gilded tickets.

"Seattle should understand what it is to host a World Cup and what a kind of a wonderful party it is," said Eric Cranston, a Seattle architect.

Cranston went with a group of friends to Brazil in 2014 to watch two weeks of the World Cup in Recife, a coastal city in the northeast part of the country.

He's a little shaky on how many games they went to - might've been four, maybe five. He doesn't remember all the teams they saw. He does remember the scene. Games on all the time, giant TVs on the beach.

"Everywhere you went, it was a festival," he said. "Music, dancing, festivals, just this kind of rollicking fun of locals, internationals and everybody."

Matches were a daylong affair, involving a packed shuttle bus to the stadium outside of town. There wasn't a lot around the stadium, so a tailgate popped up at a nearby truck stop - food trucks, music, a whole crowd of people ready to burn time and celebrate.

He remembers one man at the truck stop, before a Mexico match, dressed in full mariachi, with a bandoleer of shot glasses and tequila bottles in leather holsters. He was pouring shots for anyone willing.

"Everybody was trying to pay him, and he's like, 'No, no, no, I'm here as an ambassador for my country,' " Cranston said. "The fun was going and meeting the fans from all the other countries."

"I really hope that's what we get here in Seattle," he said. "Everything that goes on around those games is what really is the memorable parts of a World Cup."

Reeve Washburn, a Seattle artist, happened into a World Cup experience by accident. It was 1982, and she was with a couple of friends, backpacking through Europe after high school. She didn't even realize the tournament was happening in Europe, but has never forgotten the feeling as Italy, where she was staying, played to advance to the semifinals.

Washburn was in Rome, and the streets, which had been bustling in the morning, went dead silent. Nobody was out. Only odd groups, here and there, crowded around cars that had televisions propped on top of them. But every restaurant, every bar was packed.

She remembers sporadic roars filling the silent streets as Italy scored.

"It was so joyous hearing the cheers," she said. "You could tell people were intently watching the match and then just letting their emotions explode."

A few days later, in Florence, after Italy advanced to the final, Washburn remembers people pouring into the piazzas to celebrate, "riding Vespas and those funny little cars, and it was just really exciting and energizing."

Sean Waite, a federal prosecutor who lives in West Seattle, will be at the Egypt-Belgium match in Seattle on Monday. He can't afford tickets to the U.S. game - even for a lawyer, those prices are no joke. But he's planning to go to watch parties throughout the tournament, to be in a crowd, soak in the energy, the passion with the rest of the world.

It's not his first World Cup.

Waite was in law school in 2010 and studying abroad in South Africa.

He got tickets to a game in Rustenburg, a couple of hours' drive from where he was living in Johannesburg.

It was a long drive, it was hot, he was hungry. Parking was in these big grass lots, quite a ways from the stadium, so you ended up walking through a neighborhood to get there.

But a bunch of homes in the neighborhood had put up big signs indicating they were open for business. Waite wandered into one, and it was a braai, a South African barbecue. He paid some modest amount and got a plate for a big buffet line of grilled meats and vegetables. There were coolers of beer, picnic tables in the yard and folding tables in the living room to sit at.

"Families were running it, there were kids running around, it was a very immersive experience," Waite said.

"Everybody in the country just felt so excited," he said. "When I think about the matches, what I remember more is the prematch and the postmatch, the interactions with people."

He remembers arguing on the walk to the stadium, with an English fan who was razzing him about America's lack of "soccer culture."

"You guys don't even have songs, the Englishman said. So Waite, a University of Idaho grad, began belting out his alma mater's fight song.

The English fan chuckled. And they walked together toward the stadium.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the location of the 1982 World Cup. It was hosted by Spain, not Italy.

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This story was originally published June 14, 2026 at 6:43 AM.