World Cup Experience in Los Angeles: A Unique Perspective

Los Angeles doesn’t so much welcome you as swallow you whole. Freeways coil around the city, the heat hangs off the concrete and, somewhere inside it all, a World Cup is taking place.

For the first time in 20 years I’m back in a host nation for a major tournament – England aside – and it could hardly feel more different from that carefree ramble around Germany in 2006. Back then it was me, Ian, Matt and Oli, a car of dubious reliability and an endless supply of steins. We danced with Trinidad and Tobago fans, we dodged Brazil v Australia because the hangover and the sun were having their own private duel. The biggest decision was where the next beer was coming from.

Now the big question from home is: “Is there World Cup fever in the States?”

It takes me back to a local TV crew wandering around central Cambridge on the eve of our FA Cup quarter-final with Crystal Palace in 1990, asking earnest shoppers how they felt about the game. Many of them didn’t even know Cambridge had a football team. You sense a similar disconnect here: a colossal sporting event humming away in the background of a country that already has more than enough games to watch.

The same thing happens when the Ashes rolls into Melbourne and someone asks: “What’s the atmosphere down there, Max?” The truth? Most of the time I’m on my hands and knees in the kitchen, trying to wipe rice off the floor while two under-fives wage war on my sanity. Bazball’s flaws are not high on their list of concerns.

On that note, a word for the partners of journalists, players and officials back home, wrestling with real life while we gad about North America pretending that hotel coffee is hardship. They are owed a debt that can’t be repaid with airport Toblerone. If my 18‑month‑old, Willie Rushden, ever reads this: now was absolutely not the moment to pick up hand, foot and mouth.

The other thing you’re reminded of, brutally and repeatedly, is that the US is impossibly big. Los Angeles doesn’t end; it just fades into another version of itself. I tried to LimeGlide – think bike, no pedals – from West Hollywood to Santa Monica and ended up in a non‑cycling zone on a dual carriageway, dragging an inert lump of metal through a hedgerow like a defeated Tour de France domestique. One minute it’s wind in your hair, the next it’s survival exercise.

Between games, with only an hour to spare, our universe shrinks. A Trader Joe’s. The cafe across the road. A hotel pool full of influencers with sculpted abs, debating their new TikTok series or whether they’re on the guest list for the opening of Nylon nightclub. Football, in that world, feels like an eccentric side project.

Yet the games are on in the bars of West Hollywood. US shirts dot the room. A passing Bosnian gets a casual “Good luck later.” The sport is there, if you know where to look.

Early on, though, the noise belonged to basketball. You become a Knicks or Spurs fan almost by osmosis here. I chose Spurs – it felt right – and then watched them blow the biggest lead in NBA finals history, or whatever the precise number was. That, too, felt entirely on brand.

From a distance, the most stirring moment of the trip didn’t come from football at all but from a Guardian Football Weekly listener who happens to be the mayor of New York. Zohran Mamdani’s speech at the Knicks parade, a roll call of basketball names I’d never heard before, sent the hairs on the back of my neck upright. Proper civic theatre, powered by sport.

Football, though, has had its own electric jolt. The US win over Paraguay brought something close to catharsis. Not for the blow‑ins, not for the casuals. For the people who have covered this game in America for years, who have campaigned, argued, pleaded for it to be taken seriously in a landscape dominated by other sports. Their relief was almost physical.

If England win the World Cup or go out in the last 32, the game at home will roll on regardless. The Premier League will still be a juggernaut. Kids will still wear shirts to school. The sport is baked into the culture. For the US and Australia, tournaments like this carry a different weight. A quarter‑final, or better, can change the trajectory of the sport. It’s pressure the players could do without, but they don’t get to choose.

On the other side of the world, in my adopted home of Melbourne, the scenes in Fed Square after Nestory Irankunda’s goal were as close as I’ve come to tears so far. A refugee, taking that touch, scoring that goal, in front of a sea of green and gold – it was pure, uncomplicated joy. In an age of rising populism and nationalism, there is something quietly profound about a player whose family fled conflict representing Australia, a country built on immigration, much like the US.

Connor Metcalfe watching his goal back in the mixed zone only added to the picture. “Far out that was far out, that was ick!” – or something very close to that – was as Australian as it gets. I can’t fully explain why I love the Socceroos in a way that utterly contradicts my feelings when Australia’s cricketers appear, but there it is.

Distance from England has its perks. You don’t have to engage with the latest culture‑war nonsense about whether Thomas Tuchel sings the national anthem. I doubt King Charles is losing sleep over it. Who cares? England are good, and they’re fun. Harry Kane finally has pace around him. Noni Madueke is grinning his way through games. Elliot Anderson is popping up in the right spaces. Djed Spence suddenly looks quicker than the Road Runner. There’s hope, but not the usual, suffocating, terror‑based hope. Not yet.

Daily life here is a strange blend of living with my friend and co‑host Barry Glendenning and watching Fox Sports, while quietly wondering whether Zlatan Ibrahimovic will strangle Alexi Lalas on set before Barry finishes me off in our rental.

The US coverage has been largely solid. There’s a lot of basic “soccer” chat, but BBC and ITV do the same when England play; a World Cup audience isn’t the same as Crystal Palace v Brentford on a Monday night. Not everyone wants inverted full‑back discourse. I could, however, go the rest of my life without seeing Christian Pulisic’s Wells Fargo advert during a hydration break.

As for living with Barry, let’s just say we are not auditioning for a long‑term sitcom. To be fair, I can’t think of a single moment where I’ve annoyed him. Apart from eating an apple too loudly. And not screwing the lid on a bottle of Coke Zero tightly enough. And offering unsolicited advice on how to chop a chilli. And asking if he needed the big saucepan. And putting yoghurt in a bowl. And doing too much laundry. And criticising his unapologetic flatulence, from both ends.

But yes, apart from that, we’re fine.

Somehow this domestic chaos has become content. People follow it on Instagram, on the pod, on YouTube, or wherever you get your fix. It feels faintly ridiculous, like we’ve stumbled into pilot season without realising. Barry has already helped a star of Selling Sunset with her key fob – not a euphemism, sadly – and that, apparently, is how careers are made here.

Maybe we will crack America. Maybe we’ll just keep talking about football into microphones and hoping someone’s still listening. For now, the games keep coming, the city keeps sprawling, and the World Cup rolls on, whether the country notices or not.