The United States has gotten its first good World Cup news in four years. On Wednesday morning, the United 2026 bid, a joint effort to share the tournament three ways between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, defeated a proposal from Morocco to win the right to host FIFA’s international soccer showcase eight years hence. This victory comes with its share of bad news. Security at airports and stadiums and fan festivals across the country will be smothering. We’ll also be enabling FIFA’s corruption and graft. There will be scammers and swindlers and potential match-fixers and petty crooks and under-the-table deals and briefcases filled with cash left in designated drop-off locations. Advertisement But there are positives to hosting the World Cup in North America as well, especially after two straight tournaments in more autocratic countries. People will find it easier to speak out and print stories about and protest poor labor conditions and other injustices here. Despite Mexican fans’ abhorrent chanting of an anti-gay slur, LGBTQ fans will find a more welcoming atmosphere in North America than they will in Russia or in Qatar in 2022. With the bad element will come the good, and if we don’t believe the benefit of welcoming high-level human achievement and the traveling fans who come to see it outweighs the negative, then we shouldn’t bid for a World Cup or an Olympics or a Formula 1 race or a Super Bowl ever again. The time is now to start thinking about how to host a better, more humane World Cup. It will certainly be the best opportunity the world has had in a while. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Only in an organization with internal politics as predatory and marauding as FIFA’s could the outcome have been in doubt leading up to a vote that finished 134–65. The federation’s own evaluators reported on a number of major risks with the Moroccan bid. Six of 14 planned stadiums would’ve had to be built for the tournament, and uncertainty about hotel accommodations and transportation capacity led to speculation that significant portions of the country’s infrastructure would have to be overhauled. All told, the president of Morocco’s organizing committee estimated the country would’ve had to spend close to $16 billion—more than a quarter of the country’s 2016 GDP. The possibility that some of their countries’ companies might be in a position to benefit from that outlay is thought to have driven several European nations to vote for Morocco. Advertisement Compared with Morocco’s logistical challenges, there were two main worries for the United 2026 effort, neither of them related to the bid itself. The first was the possibility that lingering resentment for the United States’ role in bringing a corruption case against FIFA, which saw more than 20 of the federation’s officials and a number of its business partners indicted in 2015, would torpedo the bid regardless of its merits. It wouldn’t have been the first time FIFA executives made a major decision based mostly on spite; Argentina’s former FIFA vice president Julio Grondona once reportedly told an England bid committee that he’d vote for them “If you give back the Falkland Islands.” Fortunately for the United 2026 bid, FIFA has a much longer history of making decisions based on revenue maximization. A Moroccan tournament was projected to generate $5 billion in revenue for FIFA, compared with $11 billion for the United bid. In the end, that massive difference in dollars won the day. Advertisement The second concern was Donald J. Trump. The president’s stances on immigration, and possibly his tweeted threats of retaliation in the United Nations should FIFA fail to award the tournament to North America, gave the United bid a higher risk than Morocco in the evaluators’ government support category. That the voting members of FIFA—a money-obsessed organization with a dubious grasp of ethics and a history of underwhelming responses to accusations of racism, sexism, LGBTQ discrimination, and poor labor conditions—might be able to find some common ground with Trump is perhaps not the biggest surprise of this process. Will the U.S. be ready to compete for the World Cup title by 2026? Probably not, but few teams are. Both Trump and FIFA will appreciate the opportunity to brag that 2026 will be the biggest World Cup in history, with 48 teams in the field for the first time. The proposed structure for the tournament calls for 16 three-team groups to winnow the field down to a 32-team knockout round. Teams will still have to play seven games to win the tournament—or to win third place, because that’s still happening—but with one of the group stage matches replaced by an elimination game, there will be less margin for error on the way to the finals. There will also be less of a likelihood of error, since one of the two other teams in each group will likely be a team that wouldn’t have qualified for a 32-team World Cup. If a 1 vs. 48 matchup of Germany and Norway doesn’t sound that exciting, know that the reality will actually be a lot worse: Due to the allotment of slots to different continental federations, the reality will probably be more like Germany v. No. 120 New Zealand. Advertisement Advertisement The plan calls for 10 of the 80 total games to be played in each of Mexico and Canada and the remaining 60 in the United States, though considering that FIFA let Qatar move the entire tournament from summer to late fall four years after winning its bid to host, it’s probably best to consider the specifics pending. However the numbers shake out, hosting the tournament should be a boon for the national teams of North America, who will likely get a free pass through qualifying and into the tournament. Six host countries have won the World Cup—including England and France, which won their only titles when hosting the event—and countless others have overachieved with the help of home-field advantage, from Sweden reaching the finals in 1958 to the U.S. escaping its group in 1994, to South Korea making a semifinal run at home in 2002. Advertisement Will the U.S. be ready to compete for the World Cup title by 2026? Probably not, but few teams are. The youthful starters of the team’s three summer friendlies, players like Christian Pulisic (19), Weston McKennie (19), Tyler Adams (19), Matt Miazga (22), Timothy Weah (18), and Josh Sargent (18) will all still be in or close to their primes in 2026. If these guys fulfill most of their potential—and that’s an if the size of FIFA’s 2026 tournament windfall—they’ll be in a good position to ride home cooking further into the tournament than the U.S. has ever gone. Advertisement Mexico, too, has a promising generation of youngsters waiting in the wings, from dual-national defensive midfielder Jonathan Gonzalez (19), who the federation swooped up when the U.S. dawdled after its World Cup disaster, to Los Angeles Galaxy prospect Efrain Alvarez, who at age 15 has scored six goals in seven appearances in the minor-league USL. Even Canada, which has only qualified for one World Cup in its history, has reason to hope; Alphonso Davies (17) is one of the most dangerous dribblers in MLS and had a goal and three assists last Saturday for the Vancouver Whitecaps. Advertisement If the short-term benefits for each country’s national teams are obvious, the picture further out gets hazy. The impact of the 1994 World Cup is clear in hindsight: As both a catalyst for the creation of MLS and an introduction to the game for millions of Americans, it was a seismic moment in the history of soccer in the United States. If the 2026 World Cup spurs MLS owners to raise the salary cap in anticipation of new attention and encourages U.S. Soccer to spend more money on player development in the hopes of putting a better American product on the field, then it will already be a success. (One imagines U.S. Soccer will also give the ax to an underwhelming coach more quickly with World Cup disappointment at home on the line, and that too will be a big help.) Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement<doc-sep>US soccer received a much-needed jolt of positivity on Wednesday, when it was awarded the bid to co-host the 2026 World Cup with neighbors Mexico and Canada. But that fleeting high will come with a Thursday morning hangover when this year’s tournament kicks off, and the greater significance of what happened to the US in their failed campaign to qualify for Russia 2018 begins to truly, finally sink in. The 2026 World Cup will bring welcome publicity and interest in soccer in the US but in the present day US Soccer does not appear to have entirely grappled with the long-term ramifications of missing out on Russia. Most of the players involved in the Calamity in Couva, when a loss to Trinidad & Tobago doomed the US campaign, have described the experience as a waking bad dream. “The main thought that goes through your head is shock,” says midfielder Dax McCarty, who was on the bench that night. “Being a part of it, you almost have a feeling of helplessness. You’re just hoping, praying, that something, anything goes your way. When the final whistle blows, it’s a feeling of shock and awe.” The knock-on effects of the letdown continue to reverberate even up to now. The Guardian spoke to two bars in the soccer strongholds of Portland and Seattle who estimated that they will lose something like $20,000 in revenue on days on which the USMNT would have played. Elsewhere, FourFourTwo scaled back its US operation a few months later, citing advertisers who pulled out after the Trinidad loss, putting several of the country’s best soccer journalists out of work. The World Cup remains the only time soccer is front and center of the mainstream American sporting consciousness. There are one-offs, here and there. The Champions League, for example, has gained in relevance in recent years. Major League Soccer continues to improve, and crowds continue to grow even if television rankings remain comparatively stagnant. Every four years, however, the World Cup thrusts the game toward the very top of the news cycle. Players pose for magazine covers beforehand and make the late-night talkshow circuit in the aftermath. Bars fill to standing-room-only even for games the US are almost certain to lose. That shared, communal experience is impossible to replicate. Ask American soccer diehards to date the beginning of their fandom, and most will reference a World Cup year —from the 1994 edition on home soil to the USMNT’s underdog run to the quarter-finals in South Korea in 2002. All of those possibilities for connecting with new fans vanished in an instant with the 2018 qualification debacle. Despite the World Cup setback, those within the soccer bubble have mostly played down and waved off concerns about negative long-term implications. Prior to last year’s MLS Cup final, just a few months after the loss in Trinidad and at his annual State of the League address, Commissioner Don Garber insisted that the sport remains on the rise in the US. Garber pointed to increased investment in the domestic league, the gains made in player development, and soccer’s rising popularity among millennials. Garber’s not wrong, per se, but it’s also undeniable that the league has benefitted from the USMNT’s regular World Cup appearances. It is impossible to separate MLS’s gains from those casual fans being introduced to the sport every four years. The players, at least, realize that Trinidad & Tobago 2-1 United States will forever be the first line of their respective career epitaphs. For a group that likes to refer to itself as a brotherhood and which has taken pride in results that have outpaced their collective talent levels over the years, to have been the first team to fall short in 32 years has been devastating. Midfielder Benny Feilhaber recalls the silence in the locker room afterward the Trinidad game, how Arena was the only one who spoke. “’Obviously, there’s not much to talk about,’” Feilhaber recalls Arena saying. “’We didn’t get it done. That’s it.’ It was up to everybody to deal with the fact that they were part of this massive failure.” World Cup Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email The powers that be seem to have escaped a similar self-reckoning. During the US federation’s election this past February, it was president Sunil Gulati’s long-time No2, Carlos Cordiero, who was voted in to replace him, rather than any of the self-described “change” candidates such as Kyle Martino, Eric Wynalda and Hope Solo. Despite the fanfare about the new general manager position, it went unfilled for months before the hiring of Earnie Stewart from the Philadelphia Union. It remains unclear, however, whether the role is going to hold enough power to actually bring about meaningful change – that the process to fill the position took so long, and that so many of the leading minds within MLS shied away, hint that it does not. “Whatever we’ve been doing hasn’t panned out the way that we, as Americans, expect,” former USMNT defender Brad Evans said. “We always think that we’re the best at everything, and that we deserve the best in everything. We have money. Why are we not the best? That’s the mentality through every single sport. I think it’s hard for us to grasp that what we’re doing isn’t right.” Even after Trinidad, the single most traumatizing night in the modern history of the United States men’s national team, it’s unclear whether the federation has still totally grasped Evans’s point. There are those who think that any kind of drastic change would be rash, and unwise. Soccer has been on an upward trajectory for years now – why completely shift course? “You don’t make wholesale changes based on the ball being two inches wide or two inches in,” said Gulati after Trinidad, referencing a Clint Dempsey shot that hit the post in the final qualifier and could have saved the day. That argument may ultimately be proved right. It may also merely keep the federation on track for another, unseen and even more traumatizing reckoning further on down the line. Regardless, it’ll be of little consolation to the millions of American sports fans who tune into the World Cup this month and flip channels in bewilderment looking for the USMNT. And it means that the loss in Trinidad has no silver lining, that the promise of change that sustained some in the aftermath will be unrealized, and that the hollow pit in the stomach of American soccer fans this summer will have no useful purpose moving forward.<doc-sep>If you’re new to soccer but the World Cup has got you hooked, fear not, you aren’t alone. However, given that the tournament features teams from every corner of the globe you could be forgiven for thinking it a little strange that the United States is conspicuous by its absence. Here is the how, the why and the why not, behind the Team USA’s failure to be a part of soccer’s grandest spectacle. Why isn't the U.S. in the World Cup? There are 32 teams in the World Cup and that number will rise to a whopping 48 in 2022, but that still means more than 140 countries miss out on qualification each time. For qualifying purposes, the global soccer map is split into six regional confederations, which are each allocated a number of spots, loosely based on that region’s perceived strength. Europe, for example, gets the lion’s share, with 13. CONCACAF, the section containing countries from North and Central America and the Caribbean, gets three automatic berths, with a fourth team eligible for a playoff. Every FIFA World Cup champion:From 1930 Uruguay to 2014 Germany 2018 World Cup:Ronaldo tops list of top 50 players to watch in Russia World Cup snubs:A team of the best players not going to Russia Historically, this has been fantastic news for the U.S., given that that CONCACAF has precious little depth. Mexico is always strong and Costa Rica is usually competitive, but the U.S. should typically be too tough for the likes of Panama, Honduras and Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica. So it has normally proved, at least since 1990, when the Americans began a run of playing in seven straight World Cup tournaments. This time around, however, things were a bit different. A terrible start to the final round of CONCACAF qualifying put the U.S. at the bottom of the six-team CONCACAF group and led to the firing of Jurgen Klinsmann as head coach. Bruce Arena came in to replace him and began superbly, with a 6-0 victory over Honduras. However, Arena could only manage three straight draws on the road and when Costa Rica racked up a 2-0 victory in New Jersey in September, things were dicey. It all came down to the final qualifier, a visit to Trinidad and Tobago, which had lost eight straight games and had nothing left to play for. The American were, quite rightly, overwhelming favorites to collect the three points needed. However, the T+T players were angered when it seemed the American players were mocking the waterlogged training facilities and took an early 2-0 lead and never looking back. Teenage wonderkid Christian Pulisic pulled a goal back but it wasn’t enough and the side slipped to a humiliating defeat. Worse still, news filtered in that both Panama and Honduras won their games (being played simultaneously), pushing the U.S. to fifth place and depriving them of a World Cup place. Cue tears, recriminations and much soul searching in the American soccer community. Arena left his position, he hasn’t been replaced yet, and the USA will be on the outside looking in this summer.<doc-sep>
MOSCOW — Okay, so here's some good news. We're now used to the fact that the United States has no involvement in this World Cup and the tournament isn’t worse off because of it. The other reason for cheer is that thanks to a series of factors including a reworking of the selection process, the Americans will probably never miss out on a World Cup again. Now for the bad news. The World Cup’s opening portion has shown us a few things, but from a domestic perspective it has proved that the United States' failure to get to Russia this summer was even worse than we thought. That’s right, worse than we realized on that shocking October night in Couva, Trinidad and Tobago, when missing out on soccer’s showcase became reality. When you play in the CONCACAF region, one of the most forgiving and poorly stocked of all FIFA’s confederations, it is tougher for a serious soccer nation – and yes, the United States is one of those – not to qualify than it is to make it. Given the kick in the butt this setback has proved, it's hard to see the U.S. getting refused entry to the party again in 2022. Then you have 2026, in which the Americans (plus Canada and Mexico) will have a guaranteed spot as the hosts. From then on, the World Cup will have expanded to 48 teams, with possible future expansion on the way. That means that up to six teams from CONCACAF would reach the tournament – the equivalent of writing an invitation and handing it directly to the U.S. team. But they didn’t make it this time, and as the games play out in Moscow and beyond, we are seeing just how sad that really is. The teams here at their expense aren't world beaters. Not even close. MORE WORLD CUP: Remember, that while the U.S. only needed to finish in the top three in CONCACAF to be sure of a World Cup spot, even a fourth-place finish would have given it a final chance at redemption through a playoff. That is what happened to Honduras, which then came unstuck against Australia. Australia is here because of that and regarded as a tournament weakling, though the team earned some credit in a courageous 2-1 defeat to France. The Socceroos have a cool nickname but not much else going for them, and it would be a huge surprise to see them get out of the group. Finishing above Honduras in CONCACAF was Panama, which rightly celebrated making its first World Cup with joyous celebrations. Just one game in, Panama's campaign already feels doomed after being totally outplayed by Belgium. Unless it turns things around with an upset against England, it will be booking plane tickets home before too long. Ahead of the Panamaians, finishing second in CONCACAF, was Costa Rica, who outplayed the U.S. twice in qualification. One was a 4-0 trouncing that ended Jurgen Klinsmann’s doomed reign and the other was a 2-0 victory at Red Bull Arena that was the catalyst for the late campaign dip that ultimately pushed the Americans out of the field for Russia. Here, however, Costa Rica looks to be a long way removed from the entertaining upstart that reached the quarterfinal in 2014, beating Uruguay, Italy and Greece before narrowly falling to the Netherlands on penalty kicks. It lost to Serbia, a solid but unspectacular member of the World Cup’s European contingent, and probably needs to get something out of its clash with Brazil to stay alive. Good luck with that. All of which means that any of the spots that the U.S. could (and should) have collected are also-rans who are making up the numbers. The gap between the U.S. and its regional rivals wasn’t huge, but was big enough to have the squad watching television this summer. The chasm between those teams and the best of the rest, is monumental. MORE WORLD CUP: But what about Mexico, I hear you cry? Sure, CONCACAF’s best team made a sensational start to the tournament by beating world champion Germany and now deserve to be considered among a list of genuine contenders to win it all. The U.S. showed no sign of being on a par with Mexico through the CONCACAF campaign, losing at home to El Tri in Columbus to kick off the final round before salvaging a hard-fought point on the road thanks to Michael Bradley's audacious long-range chip.