The place is San Francisco, the venue is Alcatraz Island and the purpose is a rare immersion in non-sport culture in the midst of covering the World Cup on the US West Coast. Here, dutifully reading about the ill-fated 1962 prison escape plan, it felt like I’d been thrown into the middle of The Shawshank Redemption as I toured around the site which housed criminals such as Al Capone, an eerie 1.5 miles offshore. No wonder the escapees were never seen again.
Satisfied that my thirst for something akin to normal touristy tropes had been met, I was queuing for the boat back to the city when I felt something from high above. With not a cloud to be seen, it certainly wasn’t rain. And one quick look down at my t-shirt informed me that a seagull had, well… you know.
Ruefully (or thankfully, for those reading this over lunch), I didn’t manage to snap a decent photo of the mess before I wiped it off with a spare tissue. Content regrets. “They have a pure fish diet – it’s good for you, man!” said a chuckling American next to me. Cheers… man. They do say it’s good luck, I suppose.
Such jovial encounters were a regularity across a tremendous three weeks in the USA, based predominantly in Los Angeles, with one weekend reporting on England’s glorious win at the Azteca in Mexico City. Attending my first World Cup, my overriding takeaway was the heartwarming illustration of multi-culturalism at every turn.
And obviously, this World Cup had a myriad of Fifa-triggered issues: ticket prices, visas, the treatment of Iran’s squad, the Balogun ban overturn, the pandering to Trump. But the passion of supporters across the country was genuinely alluring, amid preconceptions of what this tournament, in this United States, might actually be like.
World Cup fever began in earnest at Heathrow’s Terminal 3. Sitting next to me on my Virgin Atlantic flight to Los Angeles was a Mexico fan, shirt on and all, who lived in LA. We proceeded to talk about all the important issues of the day: Raul Jimenez’s heading ability, Mexico’s popular president Claudia Sheinbaum, why Californians are hated across the US and Trump. It was all fun and games until he spotted an aisle seat a few rows ahead after take-off. Fair enough, needs must.
Arriving at LAX, there was not a World Cup poster in sight. Immigration, at least, was surprisingly smooth. This was not the Trump-led US of A I was promised.
The next few days, housed in an Airbnb just outside Culver City, were spent acclimatising to the uniqueness of West Coast life. Most notably, I crossed my fingers at a pair of giggling Colombian fans as I booked my first-ever Waymo self-driving car. Adrenaline as a passenger has never felt so high.
Left a bit perplexed that my journey back home would take double the time Google Maps told me, I later learned that Waymo had temporarily halted its freeway operations in May. Probably for the best, eh. Yet as pedestrians walked up to the window and took photos of the car at traffic lights, I felt like some kind of duped guinea pig or eldritch celebrity. Is this what it feels like to be Harry Styles?
Across LA, you quickly gauge the life of a quintessential Californian in encounters in Ubers, cafes and sports bars. One loud-mouthed punter next to me in the Barney’s Beanery pub in Santa Monica describing soccer as “f***ing boring” 20 minutes into a match was particularly vexing. Buddy, have you seen your version of football?!
Embarrassingly, he was then proved right as England and Ghana played out one of the dullest matches of the tournament.
Often, there’s an unintentional irony to their words. Outside the magnificent Los Angeles Stadium, the spaceship-like arena plonked beneath sea-level in Inglewood’s multi-million-dollar regeneration project, for one volunteer telling fans “no refillable bottles allowed inside”, you had another saying “free water if you take the survey.” Most are perfectly well-informed and amiable, even if one very charming Uber driver actually did use words like “iconography” and “ad nauseum” in proper real-life sentences.
What is not in doubt is the ultra-high level of sports fanaticism in this country. Whether it’s golf, softball or indeed the World Cup, it’s on the big screen. And, my gosh, do the bars have some big screens to go with their big portions.
The N17 bar in Marina Del Rey, so named by the owner who supports Tottenham, was one particularly enjoyable Sunday afternoon experience. A night later, one sports bar in Hollywood was packed to the rafters for a screening of Love Island USA after the Netherlands-Morocco penalty shoot-out. Needless to say, that was my cue to leave.
My favourite American city, however, was Seattle. A spectacular downtown skyline – which you can see from inside the Lumen Field stadium – next to the protected saltwater inlet Puget Sound is a sight to behold. And even more so with thousands of Egyptians and Iranians spread across the city ahead of their World Cup showdown.
One of America’s most liberal locations, it was hosting the first-ever World Cup Pride Match amid a myriad of different marches. Surrounded by so much geopolitics and peaceful protest, it all went off without incident. We didn’t know it then but Iran’s last-minute winner, ruled out by VAR, would prove to be the last action of their unprecedented involvement in this tournament. Their treatment from US immigration officials was utterly contemptible.
Other high points came with following the USA in San Francisco for their fever-pitch win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, even if I did get kicked out of the media centre at the end of a podcast recording, before the Folarin Balogun debacle turned the whole tide against them. I also saw eventual world champions Spain twice, in knockout wins against Austria and Belgium. Yet the overall highlight, undoubtedly, was a weekend in Mexico City; a city which had a colour and vibrancy unmatched on the US West Coast.
Everywhere you went, the sense of anticipation for England’s last-16 visit was inescapable. On the day, amid thunderstorms, the cauldron of the Azteca Stadium was an atmosphere unlike anything I’d ever experienced. A constant drum of noise, the one-hour delay only added to the cacophony. A Jude Bellingham-inspired win was one of England’s great World Cup triumphs – and the Mexicans took it all in good grace.
But as my time neared its end, there was one underlying thought: Will this World Cup make a difference? Will this really be the event which gives America its long-heralded soccer boom? Two encounters made me think so.
After a gorgeous one-hour (big effort, I know) sunset hike to the top of Mount Lee, perched just behind the Hollywood sign with a 360-degree view of Los Angeles, a young Mexican called Jovanni felt immediately enamoured by my English accent. “Ah, you knocked us out!” he said.
Sports-mad, he told me in detail about why LeBron James was leaving the Lakers, how the Dodgers are going for a historic baseball three-peat and – get this – the boisterous ‘El Trafico’ rivalry between Los Angeles FC and LA Galaxy, as if it were the Old Firm between Celtic and Rangers.
The second was altogether simpler: a local Uber driver ranting to me about VAR and in-game substitutions. “What the hell were Ecuador doing against Ivory Coast?!” he said, as if he were at the helm of a black cab around Stamford Bridge in December.
And as I headed home, seven matches, 21 goals and 55 articles later, amid the conclusion of the very best and the very worst football’s greatest stage has to offer, the main conclusion was twofold: maybe the star-spangled cut-through really can happen – and even Fifa cannot truly screw up what is, with the World Cup, a truly un-screwable product.
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