The 2026 World Cup and America’s Long, Complicated Relationship with Soccer
As the 2026 FIFA World Cup unfolds across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, Americans are experiencing international soccer on a scale this country has never seen before.
The 2026 tournament is the first World Cup jointly hosted by three nations and the first expanded to 48 teams. It includes 104 matches played across 16 host cities, with most of those cities located in the United States.
For much of the world, soccer—or football—is more than a sport. It is part of national identity, family history, neighborhood loyalty, and local culture.
In the United States, however, soccer has followed a more complicated path.
That is especially true for Italian Americans. Although Italy possesses one of the greatest soccer traditions in the world, many Italian-American families did not pass down a strong attachment to the sport. Instead, they adopted baseball, American football, basketball, and other distinctly American games.
Why were Americans so slow to embrace the world’s most popular sport? Why did many Italian Americans, in particular, become disconnected from a game that means so much in Italy?
And could the 2026 World Cup finally change that?
America Already Had Its Own Games
One of the simplest explanations is that soccer arrived in a country that was already developing its own sporting culture.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, baseball became known as America’s national pastime. College football grew into a major public spectacle. Basketball, invented in Massachusetts in 1891, spread rapidly through schools and community organizations.
Soccer was present too, but it never achieved the same unified national position.
U.S. Soccer’s historical timeline notes that many American colleges abandoned association football in favor of rugby-style football during the nineteenth century. Soccer nevertheless survived and grew in immigrant communities in places such as Fall River, Massachusetts; Kearny, New Jersey; and St. Louis.
This created an important difference between the United States and much of Europe.
In Italy, England, Spain, Germany, and many other countries, soccer developed into a common national language. In the United States, it became one sport among several—and often one associated with particular immigrant neighborhoods.
Soccer Became an Immigrant Sport
Soccer did not fail to exist in America. It was simply pushed away from the center of American popular culture.
Immigrant communities kept the game alive.
English, Scottish, Irish, German, Polish, Portuguese, Italian, Eastern European, Caribbean, Latin American, and other communities formed clubs, leagues, and local rivalries. Immigrants occupied many of the leading positions in early American professional soccer leagues, including the original American Soccer League of the 1920s and later regional leagues in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles.
That ethnic foundation helped soccer survive, but it also limited its broader appeal.
Instead of being presented as an American sport belonging to everyone, soccer was frequently treated as something foreigners played.
Baseball and American football represented assimilation.
Soccer represented the old neighborhood.
For immigrant families eager to prove their loyalty to the United States, that distinction mattered.
Why Italian Americans Drifted Away from Soccer
At first glance, Italian Americans would seem like natural soccer fans.
Italy is a four-time World Cup champion. Italian clubs such as Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Napoli, Roma, Lazio, and Fiorentina have passionate supporters and long histories. In Italy, club loyalty can be tied to a city, a region, a family, and even a particular neighborhood.
But the Italians who immigrated to the United States did not all arrive with the modern soccer culture we now associate with Italy.
Many of the people who came during the great era of Italian immigration originated in poor rural communities, particularly in Southern Italy and Sicily. Historical research has noted that soccer in that period was still more closely associated in some places with urban populations and younger elites than with the rural migrants leaving for the Americas.
In other words, some Italian immigrants did not leave Italy as devoted followers of famous professional clubs. Modern Italian soccer culture was still developing at the same time many of them were building new lives overseas.
Their children and grandchildren then became increasingly American.
They learned English.
They attended American schools.
They served in the American military.
They entered American professions.
They followed the Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, Red Sox, Cubs, Bears, Packers, Lakers, Celtics, 49ers, and other American teams.
For many Italian-American families, embracing baseball or football was not a rejection of Italy. It was a declaration that they belonged in America.
A second-generation Italian-American child in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or San Diego was therefore often more likely to inherit a baseball team than an Italian soccer club.
That is one reason the intense club loyalty found in Italy was not always passed down among Italian Americans.
Baseball Was Especially Important
Baseball held a special place in Italian-American life.
Italian Americans could point proudly to players such as Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Rocky Colavito, and later Mike Piazza.
These players did more than win games. They represented acceptance.
At a time when Italians still faced discrimination and ethnic stereotypes, Italian-American baseball stars demonstrated that the children of immigrants could become national heroes.
Baseball offered Italian Americans an unmistakably American public identity.
Soccer, by comparison, remained connected to Europe and to ethnic enclaves. It did not offer the same route into the American mainstream.
The success of Italian Americans in baseball therefore helped pull attention away from the sport that was becoming Italy’s national passion.
Television Reinforced the Divide
Television also played a major role.
American football, baseball, and basketball became deeply integrated into commercial broadcasting. Their pauses, innings, timeouts, and breaks created natural spaces for advertising.
Soccer’s continuous halves were less convenient for the traditional American television business model.
More importantly, American viewers had limited access to international leagues. For most of the twentieth century, an Italian-American family could not easily watch every Juventus, Napoli, Inter, or Milan match from California or New York.
There was no streaming service carrying every Serie A game.
There were no social-media accounts providing constant highlights.
There were no smartphone alerts, international sports packages, or club websites translated into English.
Without regular access, inherited loyalty became difficult to maintain.
A grandfather might remember a club from his hometown, but his American-born grandchildren could watch the Dodgers, Yankees, or 49ers every week.
The 1994 World Cup Changed the Conversation
The first major turning point came when the United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup.
The tournament demonstrated that Americans would fill stadiums for soccer. It also helped create the conditions for Major League Soccer, which began play in 1996.
Youth soccer expanded.
More American children played the game.
Cable television brought European competitions into American homes.
The English Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, the Bundesliga, and the UEFA Champions League gradually became easier to follow.
The internet then transformed everything.
Today an Italian American in California can follow Napoli, Roma, Juventus, Milan, or Inter as easily as a local American team. Fans can watch matches, read Italian sports newspapers, follow players online, join supporter groups, research their ancestral towns, and speak directly with relatives in Italy.
The distance between Italy and Italian America has never been smaller.
Why the 2026 World Cup Is Different
The 2026 World Cup represents something much larger than a repeat of 1994.
It is not merely a tournament visiting the United States for a few weeks. It is a continental event stretching across Canada, Mexico, and the United States, bringing the sport into some of North America’s largest metropolitan areas.
The expanded field of 48 countries has also made the tournament broader and more diverse than any previous World Cup.
For Americans, this means soccer is no longer being encountered only through distant European broadcasts or occasional international matches. The World Cup is happening in American cities, American stadiums, public viewing parties, restaurants, neighborhood bars, cultural organizations, and family gatherings.
Polling conducted during the tournament found that four in ten Americans planned to watch at least some of the World Cup. Among self-identified American soccer fans, more than eight in ten expected to watch some portion of it.
Another survey found that about six in ten Americans believed the tournament would increase the country’s overall interest in soccer, although a smaller percentage said it had personally increased their own interest.
That distinction is important.
The United States may not instantly become a traditional soccer nation because it hosted one successful World Cup. But the tournament can introduce millions of people to the culture surrounding the game.
Some will remain casual viewers.
Others will begin following the U.S. national team, Major League Soccer, the UEFA Champions League, or a European club connected to their family heritage.
That is how sporting traditions begin.
A Bittersweet World Cup for Italian Americans
For Italian Americans, the 2026 tournament carries a painful irony.
Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for the third consecutive time after losing to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the European playoff process. For a four-time champion, missing three consecutive World Cups would once have seemed almost unimaginable.
There will be no Azzurri run for Italian Americans to celebrate in 2026.
No sea of blue jerseys following Italy through American stadiums.
No possibility of watching Italy lift the trophy on North American soil.
Yet Italy’s absence does not make the tournament irrelevant to Italian Americans.
In some ways, it makes the larger cultural question even more interesting.
Italian identity is not limited to supporting the national team once every four years. Italy’s soccer tradition also lives through Serie A, local clubs, regional rivalries, neighborhood loyalties, immigrant histories, and the many players connected to Italian football.
Even without the Azzurri, Italy remains deeply present in the global game. An analysis during the tournament found that Europe’s five largest domestic leagues—including Italy’s Serie A—supplied a substantial share of the players competing in 2026.
Italian Americans can therefore use this World Cup not only to mourn Italy’s absence but to learn more about the sport Italy helped shape.
Younger Italian Americans Are Rediscovering Their Heritage
Many younger Italian Americans are now reclaiming traditions that earlier generations allowed to fade during the process of assimilation.
They are researching genealogy.
Applying for recognition of Italian citizenship.
Learning the Italian language.
Visiting ancestral villages.
Cooking regional dishes rather than relying only on generalized Italian-American cuisine.
Attending patron-saint festivals.
Joining Italian cultural organizations.
Following Italian news and entertainment.
Soccer fits naturally into that rediscovery.
Supporting an Italian club can become another way of connecting with a family’s origins.
Someone with roots in Naples may begin following Napoli.
A family from Sicily may explore Palermo.
Someone with ancestry in Rome, Turin, Milan, Florence, Genoa, Bologna, or another city may discover the clubs and rivalries associated with that place.
Even those without a direct regional club connection can follow Serie A or support the Azzurri when Italy returns to international competition.
The internet makes these connections possible in a way previous generations could not have imagined.
Soccer Is Becoming American in Its Own Way
The growth of soccer does not mean it must replace baseball, football, or basketball.
That is often how the question is framed: Will soccer ever overtake the NFL? Will the World Cup transform America into Europe? Will children stop playing baseball and begin playing soccer instead?
Those are the wrong questions.
American culture rarely replaces one tradition completely with another. It absorbs, transforms, and adds.
Pizza did not replace hamburgers.
Italian festivals did not replace the Fourth of July.
Soccer does not have to replace American football to become an important American sport.
The United States is large enough to support all of them.
In fact, the uniquely American soccer fan may follow several different worlds at once: the U.S. national team, a local Major League Soccer club, a European team, and perhaps another national team connected to family ancestry.
An Italian American can support the United States and still feel emotionally connected to Italy.
There is no contradiction in that.
Two Countries, Two Sporting Traditions
Italian-American identity has always involved a balance between inheritance and assimilation.
Our ancestors came to the United States because they wanted new opportunities. Their children became Americans, often adopting American customs with extraordinary enthusiasm.
That included sports.
We should not criticize previous generations for choosing baseball or football over soccer. Their embrace of American sports reflected their determination to belong to their new country.
But assimilation does not require forgetting.
Today, Italian Americans can appreciate what earlier generations gained while also recovering some of what was lost.
We can attend a baseball game and watch Serie A.
We can cheer for an American football team and still follow the Azzurri.
We can be completely American while remaining proud of our Italian heritage.
Coming Home to the Beautiful Game
The 2026 FIFA World Cup may not suddenly make soccer America’s undisputed national sport.
It does not need to.
Its real legacy may be more personal.
A child may watch a match with a parent and become a lifelong fan.
An Italian-American family may begin asking which club their ancestral town supports.
Someone who never cared about soccer may discover Serie A.
A local Italian cultural organization may organize a viewing party.
A family may begin following both the United States and Italy, whenever Italy finally returns to the World Cup.
For The Italian Californian, soccer belongs beside food, language, faith, festivals, history, immigration, music, art, and travel as part of the larger Italian experience.
The story of Italian Americans and soccer is therefore not simply one of rejection.
It is a story of immigration, assimilation, distance, rediscovery, and return.
Perhaps Americans were never incapable of loving soccer.
Perhaps many of us simply needed the game to become accessible, visible, and connected to our own lives.
And perhaps the 2026 World Cup, staged in our own cities and on our own continent, marks the moment when millions of Americans—including Italian Americans—finally begin coming home to the beautiful game.
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