The World Cup Fans Loved America
The World Cup reminded us that the American experiment still looks extraordinary from the outside, especially when visitors meet Americans face to face.
A week after the soccer World Cup ended, many fans went home happy. They left with more than photos, jerseys, and souvenirs. They left with a warmer view of America. Despite the harsh anti-American and anti-Trump propaganda pushed by leftist media here and abroad, many visitors seemed genuinely surprised by what they found.
Americans were kind. They were helpful. They were hospitable. The food was delicious, and the portions huge. The roads were wide. The stores were full. Even in poorer U.S. regions, visitors saw abundance. As a grateful U.S. citizen, I think that matters. Their reaction was not scripted. It did not come from a tourism campaign or a political slogan. It came from ordinary people walking through our airports, eating in our restaurants, shopping in our stores, talking to strangers, and discovering that the America they had been warned about was not the America they actually met.
A USA Today column put it plainly: “Tourists drool over Buc-ee’s, Walmart, and ranch dressing. This enthusiasm is being met with pure suspicion and surprise by some U.S. journalists.” Leftist commentators sneered at the tourists’ enthusiasm. The visitors did not seem to care. They were too busy falling for America’s bigness, wealth, abundance, and everyday friendliness. That observation emerged in numerous viral videos. The World Cup gave millions of people a chance to see America without the filter of snobbish, hostile commentary. Many seemed surprised to find a country that was way more generous, more open, and more livable than the caricature they had been sold.
That is why the tourists’ reactions struck a nerve. They marveled at things many Americans barely notice anymore. Free refills. Huge grocery stores. Friendly small talk. Tailgates. Air conditioning. Wide roads. Local volunteers. Sports bars packed with happy strangers from different countries. They saw a people proud to welcome guests and show off their communities. America remains comfortable, creative, generous, and welcoming. That is worth saying out loud, especially when so much of our education and media culture teaches Americans to see their own country through contempt.
Other reporting pointed in the same direction. Northeastern Global News described the social media response around World Cup visitors as unusually positive. It noted Scottish fans celebrating in Boston, Japanese fans trying Texas barbecue, and Algerian fans being welcomed in Kansas. Reuters made a similar point. Foreign soccer fans were marveling at parts of American life that many residents overlook, including 24-hour retail, free soda refills, chicken wings with ranch, and a warm welcome from Americans.
The economic evidence tells the same story. Before the tournament, the U.S. Travel Association reported that international World Cup visitors expected to spend more than $5,000 per person. That was about 1.7 times more than a typical international trip to the United States. It also reported that more than 80 percent were open to visiting places beyond the largest gateway cities. During the tournament, Forbes cited Bank of America data showing card-based purchases in the 16 host cities up 6.3 percent year over year. Non-local visitor spending was up 16.7 percent.
That is the part of the story too many anti-American voices miss. People do not travel thousands of miles, spend thousands of dollars, extend trips, and post joyful videos because they feel trapped in a dystopia. They do it because they have found something attractive. For many fans, the United States was not just a host country. It was an experience of scale, convenience, optimism, and neighborliness. It felt different from home. It felt memorable.
As a survivor of communism, I have heard enough anti-American lectures to last a lifetime. I know what real propaganda sounds like. I know what it does to people. That is why the incessant anti-American message in our schools and media is so exhausting and needs to be replaced by truthful appreciation of American exceptionalism.
Gratitude is not blindness. Love of country is not denial. A free nation can debate, reform, and improve without teaching its children to despise it. The World Cup tourists reminded us that the American experiment still looks extraordinary from the outside, especially when visitors meet Americans face to face instead of through the distorted lens of partisan media.
The real embarrassment is that so many Americans seem shocked that foreigners loved America. We have heard so often that our country is uniquely cruel, backward, divided, or unwelcoming that we can forget what daily life here still shows. The fans saw what ideology concealed. They saw a big, welcoming, generous country. They saw strangers helping strangers. They saw communities rallying around guests. They saw abundance, even in places that are not rich.
If the World Cup gave us anything beyond great matches, it gave Americans a mirror. The people holding it had no reason to flatter us. What many reflected back was simple: America has always been, and still is, worth admiring. I hope we are humble enough to hear the compliment. I hope we are honest enough to keep improving. And I hope we are confident enough to stop apologizing for the prosperity, hospitality, and freedom that so many visitors appreciated without reservation.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar & Project Manager at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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Comments
” America remains comfortable, creative, generous, and welcoming” Now if only Democrats and their media could work up the courage to learn this too.
The know this, but they HATE this.
They want control, pure and simple, and they will stop at nothing to take it.
Well all that is true, but I was afraid a few may wander into parts of our cities that are literally no go zones for people not of “color” should we say?
It’s not like avoiding those is an skill they hadn’t already mastered at home.
That’s home, here, sometimes it’s just a few blocks the wrong way
And yet, it didn’t happen.
The revelation — conveyed by the astonishment of European World Cup tourists, regarding the ubiquity of air conditioning, in the U.S. — regarding the comparative scarcity of European air conditioning was the most surprising thing, to me. Having visited myriad countries in central and northern Europe (but, never Spain or Portugal), I wasn’t aware that air conditioning was a rare commodity and phenomenon there, as is a reliable and affordable electricity supply, to power it.
Well, terrific.
Now we’re going to be refusing entry to semitrailer loads of chavs at our southern border.
Our immigration cops may even have to learn English.
Just imagine how wonderful of an impression visitors would have if there weren’t those ungrateful people that hate our country. The democrat party is a national disgrace, and they remind everyone of it daily.
Lack of gratitude is the poisonous sin infecting the left. It destroys whoever succumbs to it.
Tied right in with greed and envy.
Everything Democrats hate about America. Watching Margaret Breenan today brings the realization that she is so infused with hatred of America, honest elections, and the American flag that she would gladly participate in satanic rites to destroy 3/4s of the nation for starters, and torture a similar number of the survivors.
She seems immune to the plight of the Suzanne Guthrie another hater of the right, albeit with a smile, and the hundreds of victims of her insane beliefs.
I know we made a great impression on so many who visited but I remain puzzled over……..ranch dressing? I prefer blue cheese or Caesar dressing. But ranch?! They can have all of it.
Ranch dressing, blue jeans, chicken wings, The View, Android phones.
It’s a total puzzlement.
Nah, there’s no puzze regarding Droid phones — Android gives users lower-priced phone options, from myriad manufacturers, and replaceable battery options (a true boon, during travel or in the field), for those of us who decline to support Apple’s obnoxiously overpriced product and service ecosystem.
Yes, but Android phones don’t use Apple’s proprietary texting protocol – so there’s that. 🙁
wings? You are getting them in the wrong place. Upstate NY is the only place to determine if you do or do not like them.
with Blue Cheese as the only acceptable option
Well, for sure “The View” is. On the other hand, I did not hear or read of a single visitor who praised The View. Ranch dressing, free refills, large portions, wide variety all yes; The View no.
If more Americans traveled to other countries and didn’t do the typical American “touristy” type of travel, looking for home away from home, then there might be a greater appreciation among them for what a great country this is. Leftist Democrats will always hate America, no matter what, though. They should be exported to live in third world countries.
My years working and traveling in Latin America gave me a much different perspective on the United States. I came to Latin America as a “progressive” of the left. I left Latin America as an “evil right winger.”
Circa 1980, the “progressive” narrative about Latin America and the US was that Latin Americans resented the US for its imperialistic interference in their affairs. I met a lot of Latin Americans who had either worked or vacationed in the US— or knew people who had. One told me of the lower retail prices—always sales. An Argentine Jew told me that he experienced none of the anti-Semitism in the US that he had experienced in his homeland. (that is not so much the case today.) Latin Americans viewed the US as a land of opportunity—even those who had never been there. One said Americans were a bunch of go-getters—much more initiative. (That was in response to my running after a stopped truck while hitchhiking. The truck drove away, but the following car picked me up.)
I feared that my being American would be a liability—imperialist and all that. On the contrary, my US citizenship opened a lot of doors. My speaking Spanish undoubtedly helped. The only “negative” response I got was in Argentina, in response to President Carter’s human rights push against the Junta. I was told: “The United States is interfering in Argentine affairs. Let’s have a beer together.” Not all that negative.
The US looked a lot better after having seen Latin America. The common man in the US had a much better chance than in Latin America. Government in the US was much more efficient and honest in comparison to what I experienced. At a government office in the capital, I was given excuse after excuse for not handing me a document I had requested a year ago. After a week of visits to the office, I told them to mail it, as I was returning to where I lived and worked. Their response: “but it will get lost in the mail.” So they finally made up the document on the spot. Or mailing goods worth $10 to another country that a postal employee stole.
I paid multiple police bribes in Venezuela—never in the US. (Though I also experienced kindness from Venezuelan police, who after I arrived in town at 3 AM, without a phone number for my company, let me sleep in the police barracks, They drove me to the company in the AM. Earned them a gift of a bottle of whiskey.)
It’s a small world. In Venezuela, the cousin of the wife of a workmate knew a guy from my small high school. He went to Venezuela as a member of the Peace Corps. He married a Venezuelan and stayed in Venezuela after his time in the Peace Corps. He got killed in a motorcycle accident several years before I went there.
My time in Latin America—and subsequent research in the US—demolished the “progressive” narratives I once held about Latin America. But that is not the topic of this article, so I will not expand here.
I thought all of that was just a brilliant ad / influencer campaign from FIFA because half of America hates soccer.
If it was… then well done on the ad company. This was Budweiser of old/ Clydesdale/ puppies and ‘Merica level of pulling on our national pride.
I’ve known about how great Americans are for a long time.
Back in ’72 when I got out college a friend and I decided to take a trip. We left Michigan, drovve to Louisiana, headed west to cali then back home camping most of the way.
The people we met all along the way were the best you’d ever want to meet.
When they found out what we were doing they asked us to their homes for dinners or to stay overnight when we on the outskirts of cities we’d be going to visit. A rattlesnake at Texas’s state park made the fatal mistake of hanging around the bathroom. The Texans cooked him up that night for dinner for us along with some cactus leaves.
It was like that everywhere we went, even cali. I still think it was one of the best decisions I ever made. We weren’t rich having just gotten out of college but we had enough for the trip.
The people we met all along the way were the best you’d ever want to meet.
When they found out what we were doing they asked us to their homes for dinners or to stay overnight when we on the outskirts of cities we’d be going to visit.
On a backpacking tour of South America, I spent several weeks in the company of a French woman. She told me that several of her fellow Frenchman had taken hitchhiking tours of the US. Sometimes the people who gave them rides would invite them to spend the night. That was also my experience in my hitchhiking days.
She told me that there was something SICK about Americans, that we would be so kind to strangers. I smiled to myself and made no reply.
In her defense, coldness to strangers is more a European trait than just a French trait. A Peruvian fellow employee, whose parents had immigrated from Italy, went to work for Volkswagen in Germany, He told me that if your family hadn’t been in town for generations, the Germans didn’t want to have a thing to do with you. I heard the same from a fellow employee who was a German expat. Courtesy of a mining engineer father, he grew up in Peru. He went to Germany for university. Even though he was a German national, as his family hadn’t been in town for generations, the Germans didn’t want to have a thing to do with him. He went back to South America for work.
I would add that in Latin America, I sometimes got invited to spend the night,
So this is Europeans compared to Americans of the North and the South
“She told me that there was something SICK about Americans, that we would be so kind to strangers.”
reminds me of the harpy who said there is something wrong with parents who homeschool and WANT to be with their kids all day.
I do both – I am kind to strangers, and I like my kids enough to be with them all day!
Interesting. My wife and I like to visit places on the “road less traveled ” when we go on holiday. In a small town in Germany, definitely not a tourist destination, we stopped at the local grocery store (a favorite thing to do for us). When one of the locals identified us as Americans, he was so thrilled that we were visiting his small town. We chatted all the way out the door as we left. Made our day!
https://x.com/FreedmRings/status/2079709385924677728
You’ll probably have to type in – cancel – next to the x but before .com to get the music that goes with it.
Enjoy.
Neatest trick ever! Thank you!