Americans are almost too in love with opposing World Cup fans who are here to beat us on our own soil

The first week of the World Cup has been a beautiful display of international brotherhood and cultural exchange with fans from every corner of the planet hugging each other in the streets, sharing drinks, swapping scarves, and singing songs together like the whole thing is a global summer camp where everyone gets a participation trophy for being nice.

The Scots have been chanting and drinking Boston dry. The Germans are road-tripping through the heartland making friends with everyone they meet. Japanese tourists are having spiritual awakenings over free chips and salsa. It’s all been very wholesome and heartwarming which honestly, fine, I get it but deep down, my nationalist-based American pride is ready for someone to start a fight.

I’m going to be honest about something that might make me sound like an asshole but I don’t care. The internet is absolutely loving all of these videos of foreign fans falling in love with America and on one level I appreciate it because it’s nice to see the rest of the world realizing that this country isn’t the dystopian hellscape that CNN and whatever international news network they watch back home has been telling them it is.

America is a great country with great people and great food and great cities and it’s good for the world to see that firsthand instead of through the filter of 24-hour news cycles that only show the worst of us.

On another level, every time I see a video of Brazilian fans and American fans dancing together in the streets or French supporters linking arms with the locals at a bar in Center City, a small part of me watches it with genuine disgust because all I can think about is the fact that these people are here to beat us. They’re not tourists on vacation and probably think that USMNT is complete joke and an embarrassment to the sport.

They’re fans of opposing nations who flew to our country to watch their teams try to eliminate the United States from the World Cup on our own soil and we’re out here hugging them and buying them beers like we’re all on the same side.

We are not on the same side. Blame my nationalist pride. Blame the fact that every time America takes the world stage in sports I turn into the most irrationally patriotic human being on the planet. Blame whatever you want but I don’t want to hold hands with Brazilian fans.

I don’t want to swap scarves with the French. I don’t want cultural exchange and mutual respect and sportsmanship between opposing supporters. I want the Cup. I want the USMNT to win every single match they play and I want the fans of every country that loses to us to fly home devastated while American fans celebrate in the streets of their own cities. That’s what a World Cup on home soil should feel like and the friendship tour that’s been happening on social media all week has been a little too cozy for my taste.

Soccer Is the Beautiful Game but It’s Not Always Kumbaya

Soccer is also the sport that has produced some of the nastiest, craziest, most terrifying fan incidents in the history of organized athletics with European ultras, South American barras bravas, flares in the stands, riots in the streets, and full-scale brawls between opposing supporters that make an Eagles tailgate look like a book club meeting.

That energy has been almost completely absent from the first week of the World Cup because everyone is still in the honeymoon phase where the games don’t matter enough yet and nobody has been eliminated.

That’s about to change as the group stage wraps up and the knockout rounds begin because the stakes get higher and the kumbaya energy disappears real fast. Wait until a team is facing elimination in their final group game with 50,000 of their fans in the building, or until a controversial call in a Round of 16 match sends an entire country home early, or until two rival nations meet in the quarterfinals with a semifinal berth on the line.

The handshakes and scarves are going to be replaced by something a lot more intense and I’m honestly here for it because a World Cup without at least a little bit of chaos between opposing fanbases isn’t a real World Cup.

Shoutout to the Algerians for Getting Things Started in Kansas City

The Algerians showed up to Kansas City and started pre-gaming with actual fire and fireworks in the streets, which is the kind of behavior that I exclusively associate with soccer fans from countries where the sport means more than life itself.

Flares, smoke, chanting, the whole nine yards from a fanbase that treats every match like a religious experience with pyrotechnics, and that’s the energy the World Cup has been missing while the Algerians decided to inject it into the tournament before anyone else had the guts to.

KC 🇩🇿🔥 pic.twitter.com/QGkRbcOP81

— Arsenal Algeria 🇩🇿 (@Arsenal_Algeria) June 16, 2026

It’s not much yet but it’s only a matter of time before the friendly neighbor act wears off and the real fan culture starts showing itself because you can’t put hundreds of thousands of passionate supporters from rival nations in the same American cities for a month and expect everyone to behave the entire time.

ALGERIA FANS TAKING OVER TIMES SQUARE 🇩🇿🗽
pic.twitter.com/gfuRy5xpca

— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) June 16, 2026

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, It’s Been Crickets

While the Algerians are lighting fires in Kansas City and other host cities are getting the full international soccer atmosphere, Philadelphia has been almost embarrassingly quiet on the fan chaos front. The French have been in town and done absolutely nothing because the French have always been massive pussies when it comes to away-day energy and they aren’t doing any type of cool shit here.

Brazil brought a decent crowd but nothing too crazy by their standards, and the other teams with matches at the Linc have been basically nonexistent in terms of visible fan presence around the city.

Six World Cup matches at Lincoln Financial Field and the atmosphere in Center City between games has been about as electric as a Tuesday night Marlins game. Where are the flares and the massive supporter marches down Broad Street and the drum circles and the chanting and the 10,000 Brazilian fans turning Rittenhouse Square into Copacabana Beach?

Philadelphia is hosting some of the biggest nations in the history of the sport including Brazil, France, and Croatia and the vibe around the city has been weirdly tame for an event of this magnitude.

Part of the problem is that the visiting fanbases sending supporters to Philly haven’t been the ones known for bringing chaotic energy on the road because France in general is constantly soft and a bunch of dorks. The rest are too, compared to the home ultras and Croatia’s traveling support is passionate but small in numbers.

Brazil brings color and energy but the dangerous edge that South American supporters are known for doesn’t usually travel to events like this, and the city needed a Mexico match or an Argentina match or an England match to get the kind of opposing fanbase that would have turned South Philly into a war zone on game day. The draw just didn’t cooperate.

The USMNT Should Be Playing at the Linc and I Will Die on This Hill

Here’s the thing that has been driving me insane since the schedule was announced. The United States Men’s National Team is playing in the World Cup on American soil during the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and their group stage matches are being played on the West Coast instead of in the city where the Declaration of Independence was actually signed.

The USMNT opened against Paraguay in Inglewood, California, which is a perfectly fine venue with a nice stadium, but it’s not Philadelphia and it’s not the birthplace of America.

The World Cup is happening in the same summer as America250 with the entire country celebrating 250 years of independence while Philadelphia serves as the epicenter of that celebration because this is where it all started. The USMNT should have been playing group stage matches at the Linc in front of 70,000 fans in the city where American freedom was declared, with the energy of the World Cup and the anniversary converging in the most meaningful way possible. Instead the USMNT is in California and Philadelphia got Côte d’Ivoire vs. Ecuador as its opening match.

I’m not saying Côte d’Ivoire vs. Ecuador isn’t a legitimate World Cup match because it absolutely is, but the USMNT playing on home soil during the 250th anniversary should have been playing in the city that represents everything about American independence.

The fact that FIFA or U.S. Soccer or whoever made the schedule decisions didn’t see the obvious historical connection between the USMNT, the World Cup, and Philadelphia during America250 is genuinely mind-boggling and a missed opportunity that we’ll never get back.

The USMNT playing at the Linc on the Fourth of July for a knockout round match would have been the most iconic sporting event in the history of this city and possibly the country, but instead we might get a Round of 16 game between two teams we don’t care about while the USMNT plays their knockout match somewhere else.

The scheduling missed the layup of the century and Philadelphia is stuck hosting other countries’ matches instead of serving as the home base for America’s team during America’s tournament in America’s birthday year.

I Just Want the Cup

The wholesome international friendship stuff on social media is great content and I understand why the internet loves it because watching tourists from around the world discover American hospitality and fall in love with this country is genuinely good for America’s image abroad. The World Cup has been a better advertisement for the United States than any government campaign or PR initiative could ever produce, and the fact that fans from dozens of countries are posting about how much they love it here is something this country should be proud of.

I didn’t spend weeks writing about the Golden Generation and Balogun and “why not us” and “fuck the doubters” just to watch American fans hold hands with the opposition in the streets. I want to win this tournament with Balogun scoring goals and Pulisic lifting the trophy and the USMNT beating every country that sent their fans to our soil so those fans can fly home knowing that America isn’t just capable of hosting the World Cup but capable of winning it.

The cultural exchange and the viral videos and the international goodwill are all valuable in their own way, but when the whistle blows I don’t care about any of that because the only thing that matters is three points and advancing to the next round. Every team in this tournament is the enemy until they’re eliminated and the USMNT’s job is to be the ones doing the eliminating.

The group stage wraps up soon and the knockout rounds are when it gets real because elimination matches bring a completely different energy from both the fans and the players. Philadelphia might stay quiet if the matchups at the Linc continue to involve fanbases that don’t bring chaos, or the Round of 16 game on July 4th could draw a country whose supporters show up with real energy and suddenly the city gets the World Cup atmosphere it’s been missing.

Either way, the kumbaya phase of this tournament is almost over and I’m ready for the part where it gets nasty. The lovey-dovey shit has been great and the cultural exchange has been genuinely inspiring but this is a competition and I’m here for the competition.

Philadelphia deserves better than a quiet World Cup, the USMNT deserves to be playing in the birthplace of America, and none of the wholesome viral content in the world matters if we don’t bring the Cup home at the end of it.

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