Henri Moreau, a Belgian math teacher and self-described “obsessive” soccer fan, will spend most of the next few weeks sleeping in his second cousin’s den in Pasadena, against the strong wishes of his wife, his adult children and, he swears, his dog.
None wanted him to come to the United States for the 2026 World Cup.
“They all say to me ‘Stay home.’ They say, ‘(To heck with) Trump!’” Moreau said, his accent toned down a few pegs because, 30-plus years ago, he studied at Cornell University in New York.
“The dog didn’t say it,” he added. “But he gave me a look. You could tell.”
The issue, Moreau said, is politics.
“We all follow (the United States) so closely. And, to be honest, we all love it. But in Belgium, right now, we probably have a better democracy than you have in America,” he said.
“And we, like, literally have a king.”
Still, Moreau said all this in Pasadena, not his home of Mons, a university town near Brussels. And the reason he’s here, and not there, is a force that’s stronger than his (or anybody’s) preferred version of politics.
“It’s the Devils,” Moreau sighed, as if referencing the nickname for Belgium’s national squad, The Red Devils, was explanation enough.
“If you’re a fan, you understand,” he added, laughing. “I am powerless.”
Once every four years, billions of humans living in much of the soccer world — which is to say all of Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and increasingly large slices of Asia — spend a few weeks blowing off work, ignoring chores, drinking too much and generally obsessing over the ups and downs of their national soccer teams. For about a month (or, this year, slightly longer) rational thought is wrestled into a sleeper hold by emotions that remind you that the word “fan” is short for “fanatic.”
Bottom line: A lot of soccer fans, like Moreau, ignore a lot of things to focus on the World Cup.
Any World Cup match can feel like the Super Bowl, World Series and NBA Finals piled into a single thing, an impossibly huge sportsburger, and each World Cup has several dozen of such matches. A World Cup final — often described as a slightly less bloody version of war — typically draws north of 1 billion human TV viewers.
So the notion of Moreau ignoring his family’s wishes and flying to Los Angeles to see his Devils isn’t novel.
What is different — and what might be shaping the 2026 World Cup that starts June 11 and will include 48 nations playing 104 matches in 16 cities (including Los Angeles) in stadiums across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico — is the vibe.
At a typical World Cup, the dominant feeling, before, during and after the games are played, is joy.
“It’s such a good time,” said Vaughn Ramirez, a Panamanian-American who lives in Santa Ana. He went to the 2018 World Cup in Brazil, only to see his favorite team (Panama) get swept out of that year’s group stage.
“They sucked,” Ramirez said. “But it was still the best sporting event I’ve ever seen.
“It’s a feeling of love, like, everywhere,” he added. “That’s stupid, right? But even the guys who might want to hate, it’s OK. It’s just a game. That’s the feeling.”
Yet, for many, the ’26 World Cup seems to be shaping up as something different.
“My wife, at least, and usually our sons as well, have come with me to all of the last few World Cups,” Moreau said, noting that he attended in 2014, 2018 and 2022, when Belgium’s so-called “golden generation” of strong players (Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and Vincent Kompany, among others) teased greatness without ever quite delivering.
“So, even when (the Devils) lost, it was beautiful. Mostly,” Moreau said of those family sports junkets.
“But I’m alone this time. They won’t come here. So, it’s different.”
A Colombian fan celebrates a goal during Sunday’s International Friendly against Jordan. The teams played at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego, CA, in preparation for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. (Photo by Xavier Hernandez, Contributing Photographer)
It’s a political world
Let’s not oversell the idea that bad vibes and fan crankiness (even before a single offsides call has been botched) will stink things up. If nothing else, the planet-wide popularity of soccer pretty much guarantees that the 2026 World Cup will be, by most traditional markers, huge.
And huge, in this case, means huge.
This year’s format has been expanded to include 48 national teams, which is half again as big as the 32-team format used in every World Cup between 1998 and 2022. More teams mean more games (104 vs. 64) to show on television and, of course, more tickets (by some estimates as many as 7 million) to sell. And, of course, it means the coming World Cup will generate more money for the controversial and sometimes investigated organization that runs international soccer, FIFA, than has been churned out by any previous World Cup.
How much more? At least one estimate (ok, FIFA’s) suggests the expanded, North American-ized, supersized version of the World Cup will generate $8.9 billion, and that FIFA hoovered in more than $13 billion off World Cup preliminary and promotional matches between 2023 and 2026 — a 78% jump from the three-year window before the 2022 World Cup.
The ’26 World Cup also could have a strong impact in other, less easy-to-measure ways.
This year’s event will be played in front of the first generation of Americans who grew up in a world where the best athletes, boys and girls, often chose soccer as their primary sport, over the traditional big three, football, basketball and baseball. And if the US Men’s National Team outperforms expectations (most non-American observers describe the U.S. squad as closer to decent than great) then this World Cup could grease the way for another generation to do the same.
Let’s also be clear about something else:
Every modern World Cup involves some version of political outrage.
In 2014, in Brazil, millions of people — in the world’s most soccer-obsessed country, no less — marched in the streets to express frustration with the use of tax money to build stadiums at the expense of providing government-backed health care and food.
In 2018, in Russia, there were international calls to pull the tournament out of Russia. Reasons ranged from Russia’s lethal stance on LGBTQ people to its then-recent annexation of Crimea to the fact that many experts believed Russia was responsible for killing 298 people by shooting down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 four years earlier.
In 2022, in Qatar, there were complaints (though no street protests) about women’s rights, political corruption connected to the World Cup, the use of abused migrant labor to build soccer stadiums, and a two-tiered system for getting alcohol.
“I could not cry in my beer with no (expletive) beer,” Moreau said. “Very disappointing.”
Vibes matter
In that context, a vague feeling of international disappointment with America’s current political bent might be seen as something of a non-issue.
Then again, disappointment — and political concerns — seem to be growing rapidly.
Last month, the American Hotel & Lodging Association issued a report that said World Cup bookings were running behind original estimates for roughly 8 in 10 hotels that expected to see some business from the event. As many as 7 in 10 of those operators blamed tight visa rules, vetting of immigrants and a spike in the cost of catching a flight into the United States, brought on by the Iran war, as reasons for the lousy booking rates.
The report also blasted FIFA for pre-booking thousands of rooms around the country only to cancel those bookings in March, just weeks before the first matches. Though FIFA defended its action, saying the option to ditch the rooms was written into the contracts, the organization said nothing about the sluggish demand for rooms.
Politics is seeping into the event in other ways, too.
If the standard political credo of a World Cup is “football unites the world” (and, yes, those words are used in FIFA literature), the fact that one of the three host countries has issued travel bans on citizens of 39 nations, including four that are in the tournament (Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Iran, and Senegal) might be seen as something of a disconnect.
Also, concern that ICE agents might use World Cup matches as a venue for rounding up people they believe aren’t in the country legally was so widespread that local law enforcement and federal agents publicly announced that no such raids would happen in Los Angeles.
Yes, those officials said, federal agents will be on hand at the venues, but, no, ICE won’t be rounding up soccer fans.
“I personally called the head of Homeland Security here for the L.A. region and what he stated is that there will be federal agents … But in regard to civil immigration enforcement, they told us that specifically would not be occurring at any of the games,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said in a June 1 news conference.
“Any of that is subject to change. But I have trust that they’re giving me the appropriate information because, if that starts occurring, we’re going to have a whole new host of problems.”
One specific political issue — the Iran War — could be particularly important in Southern California. The region is home to the nation’s two biggest Iranian-American enclaves, in Beverly Hills and Irvine. Southern California also is where Iran’s soccer team will play its first two group stage games, starting with a June 15 match against New Zealand at SoFi Stadium.
Iranian flags of pre-1979 revolution vintage — flags that many Iranian-Americans wave as a protest against the current regime in Tehran — are banned from the match, per FIFA. Security for the match is expected to be particularly tight.
“My parents will watch Iranian games and American games, but I don’t know if they’ll root for them or not,” said Darius Kirmani, an Iranian-American student who said his family lives in Beverly Hills.
“They left Iran before I was born and wound up in this country about 20 years ago,” he said. “They love America and they love Iran. But it might be hard for them to cheer for either country right now.”
Still, if some international fans are confounded by or disappointed with American politics, the feeling isn’t shared by the leaders of FIFA.
Buried not so deep in the bylaws and statutes that legally define FIFA, is a pledge that the organization will abstain from the vagaries of politics. FIFA, according to its own statutes, should always remain “neutral in matters of politics and religion.”
Yet in December, FIFA issued its first-ever “peace prize” to President Donald Trump. The widely satirized ceremony, in which Trump accepted a medal, came a few weeks after FIFA President Gianni Infantino said he agreed with Trump and supporters who believe the American president should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
The unique prize (it was FIFA’s first and so far only peace prize) and Infantino’s sentiment sparked some pushback. A human rights organization called for an investigation, saying FIFA was violating its own bylaws. And on June 2, soccer officials in Norway sent a letter doubling down on the idea, saying FIFA’s relationship with Trump — as well as with leaders of countries with grim human rights records, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia — is cause for an investigation.
Belgium soccer supporter Moreau said the FIFA peace prize also sparked a call for a boycott much closer to home.
“When my wife saw that news, that’s when she told me I shouldn’t go to World Cup.”
Still, when Belgium plays its second group stage game, at SoFi, on June 21, Moreau will be there.
The Devils will play Iran.