Phillips: I think this means more for U.S. soccer than for U.S. politics. For U.S. soccer, this felt like a threshold. In some ways, the United States still occupies the place it has for just about every World Cup it has appeared in: good enough to command attention, not yet good enough to shape the tournament. Yet the old question of whether soccer has “arrived” in America now feels exhausted. Soccer is here. The harder question is whether the American game can produce not only talent, markets and attention, but also a recognizable soccer culture: a way of playing, thinking, losing, learning and remembering together.
Schneider: Anton, as you say, Belgium is central to European geopolitics — the seat of both NATO and the European Union. In soccer, too, it has punched well above its weight in the past decade, and yet national success seems elusive. How does Belgium see itself, in both sport and politics?
Jäger: Nothing is more tempting than reading national sports events as weather vanes for national moods. I cannot say I’m immune to the temptation. The fervor with which Belgian citizens cheer on their team has something compensatory to it. Except for the king, there are almost no symbols of national unity. That means the team plays an outsize role in uniting an otherwise fractious nation. But its status as a unifier is always precarious: Many Belgian players play abroad, in renowned clubs that grant them quite some individual initiative. As a result, the team has always suffered from fissiparous tendencies during tournaments. The same goes for its international standing: geopolitically relevant, but too individualistic for the performance of, say, a cohesive nation-state such as Norway.
Schneider: Marcela, one for you along similar lines. Argentina, famously, is soccer-mad, but the sport’s politics are harder to parse. With the right-wing libertarian administration of Javier Milei at home, is this tournament playing out any differently from the one in 2022 when the center left, led chiefly by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was in charge?
Mora y Araujo: Soccer and politics are both intrinsically connected and also quite separate. Milei has been notably quiet — although he has been posting pictures of a jersey signed by Erling Haaland, presumably to troll Brazil — and, as elsewhere, various contentious issues have slid into the background while the games are going on. The Argentina squad, for its part, is untouchable. There is a right-wing trope that Kirchneristas — or Ks, as they’re known — don’t want the team to do well. But that is not supported by the vast number of soccer fans from across the political spectrum. We all take part in the joy and sense of belonging that only sporting victories can provide. After the game, it’s back to all the old divisions and polarities.
